This graphic display offers understanding and comprehension for how the Westrex stereo cutting system works. For years trying to grasp this by looking at books and pictures made understanding elusive but this graphic display brought all the points together very rapidly.
When you consider the mechanics of a stereo cutter, and the mechanics of a playback cartridge, it's a wonder the whole system works at all, much less as well as it does! A lot of R & D went into the 45/45 degree stereo cutter! Very, very good video. Thanks for posting.
Great job demonstrating the process. I've read a few articles over the years describing how it works, but it never really clicked in my mind. Seeing everything in motion makes it so much easier to wrap my head around.
Brian, Being a man of a certain age [63] and having been a audiophile my entire life, I've always wanted to know what the 45/45 cutter looked like and actually worked. Now I know! Thanks for putting this together!
FINALLY! Best explanation yet for how two walls on opposite sides of a single groove, traced by a single stylus, can produce distinctly different channels. Also explains why the magnets in my AT-440MLb are arrayed in a right angle "V". Nicely done!
Glad you liked. It took me a while to get my head around the whole concept. Fairly easy to visualize it with my little simulator. Besides, it looks cool. How did you like the Ampex MM1000 knob in the center? Straight from 1969.
Wonderful demo, helpful for an introduction. Another detailed instruction set on why specifically things are done, like out of phase cutting. Either way, great fun to watch, thank you for taking the time to demo this to the world.
Hello Bryan, I am 63 and over all these years I thought that one stereo channel was the vertical motion of the stylus with respect to the plane of the record and that the other stereo channel was the back and forth horizontal motion of the stylus in the groove and I had no idea till I watched your video at least twice how it all really works. If you are planning to cut records with the head you showed us at the end of the video I wish you the very best that that will work perfectly for you and I hope you will do yet another RUclips video to show all that working. All the best, Peter Nolan.(Ph.D., experimental physics). Dublin. Ireland.
I thought I replied to your note months ago. Sorry for the delay. There have been heads in history that did work the way you mention - One driver for vertical, and one driver for lateral.
Peter Nolan, Hello, I'm a 52 year old ex auto tech, I already knew a lot about the cutting of the groove, What I'm having a hard time understanding is how the hell you programmed an Arduino that well! Ugg !!!!!!!
Finally a clear explaination about how a vinil lathe head work! I'm curious to know what happer if i put 2 solenoids in place of servos... anyway, thanks again!
Hi my friend, i've followed the totally of your post on lathetrolls, very impressed by your creativity, accuracy in your experiences, documentation of them ❤
wow I totally thought channel phase differences at low freqs would cause a requirement for compromises in grooves, (so my thought was correct) even though I new nothing about any of this tech,(didn't know of depth axis) what fun. I still think stereo from one groove has other such implications, will have to study these types of vids more...speculate other channel separation-like issues etc that will be interesting. thanks for great vid and fun demo device. Hitec good brand imo. Low freq phase differences are usually not desirable in general anyway, for listening etc.
The best illustrative description of the process. Could you please make detailed video instruction how to build stereo recorder with 2 speakers and stylus of bicycle/motorcycle spoke and motors of scanner for cutting head?
Incredible stuff. I would like to see how a specific instrument sound is transferred/cut to vinyl. How a single song is made/cut onto vinyl second by second. That would be wild. Anyone ever tell you that you sound like Jerry Garcia? 🙂
interesting! i cant wait to get to stereo level in my experiments...i have been told that its impossible to mount a heavy stereo cutter on my mono lathe cuz itd be too heavy (the cutting arm already weighs a ton) but yours are made of plastic and someone suggested some kind of overhead suspension thing to take some of the weight off.... so when im ready i would like to talk to you about perhaps purchasing one of your heads!
Nice one. So the mic(s) picks up sound which is amplified to line level by a mic amp, then fed to a power amp or pre to power amp with the pre being the mixing desk to adjust levels, then the power amp drives the cutting head generators which operate as voice coils within a magnetic gap. They drive the cutting heads. Meantime, the lathe alters the inward feed for a set time from outer to inner groove using presumably a high torque stepless motor?
Hey Bryan. I'm making one of these.. After all these years of experience. What is the best exciter/speaker/driver I can get my hands on? Can you provide a link? I figure i'll start there.
At 6:09 you call circular stylus motion "nonsense" but in fact the quadraphonic SQ recording method used by Columbia and others in the 1970s showed a diagram on the inner sleeve of their albums explaining that a helical motion, like your very clever device produces there, is used to encode the rear channel information on their records.
Are the cutterhead coils wired out of phase so when there is a mono signal, left coil is moving in and right is moving out? What happen with the vertical signal if the coils are wired out of phase and how can it go up and down?
If we had a microscope to see the groove shape, what would be the difference between a groove carved playing a C note with a violin, and the groove carved playing the same C note with a trumpet?
When cutting , do you have to make allowance for the speed difference from the outer edge to inner ? If I record a digital click track (metronome) onto vinyl and then play the record alongside the click track , the vinyl eventually steps out of time , almost by as much as 4 beats by the end of a 4 min track , I put this down to the relative speed of the vinyl under the stylus , the start or outer edge being relatively faster than the inner part .
Actually, the issue is a difference in cutting and playback speed. Cut a reference tone like 1khz, then play it back on your turntable. Use either a frequency counter of software on your PC to measure the frequency and adjust playback speed until 1khz is right on the money. My gut says your lathe is probably off due to wear on the spindle or rubber idler.
To give you some context , I do a little digital DJ'ing and after converting my vinyl records into .wav files , I find that almost all of the recordings suffer from this latency I spoke about . I have to use software to time stretch the audio to keep a constant tempo . They were all recorded using a Technics 1210 with Stanton cartridges .
Oh, I see. So you are not talking about actually cutting a master lacquer and playing it back both in the analog world. What you are running into is a sample rate issue between the source and destination. One example could be using a CD type rate of 44.1khz and the other being more PRO type rate of 48khz. Dive into that and you will find the solution. You will also find out why not only is the tempo off slightly but also the pitch. The two sample rates noted are just for example. You could be running at totally different sample rates and that's what you need to look at...
(please note: at the time of posting this comment I have not played the video yet so if my question is answered in the video please excuse my ignorance) so is a record cutter what actually put the music onto Vinyls, or is it something else; to keep it short and simple, I record music onto CDs in my studio and atleast once I would like to record music onto a Vinyl record
This video is extremely well done. Where did you get those cutting drivers? And all this info? I've been looking for exact designs of stereo cutters for years and couldn't find a thing!
Hi, very interesting video ! Where I can find a such transducer Please ? Do you have any reference or internet site for me ?! Thank you for sharing your knowledge
+Clément DURET Yes, the ones I am using are very similar except mine have through holes for mounting. It turns out several mods need to be done to reduce mass and improve high frequency response.
uncleben03 In this case, the record is cut in real time. So if your a cutting 15 minutes of audio on a disc, it takes 15 minutes to cut the grooves. Plus the setup time to get everything ready.
+uncleben03 Tri Ergon were cut in very slow speed. Possible, because they used the own invention of optical sound track on film, to record the music, after this they played it slowly to the wax foil.
It is somewhat analogous to how a microphone and speaker works in that an electrical signal representing audio waveforms is converted to mechanical motion in the cutting head.that impresses shapes in the medium that can then be converted back later as a recording/playback cycle. They are all in essence transducers converting from one form of energy to another. The difference is that the microphone and speaker convert acoustic air pressure waves to an electrical signal and vice versa. The cutting head and playback stylus convert electrical signal to a shape cut into vinyl representing the waveforms and vice versa.
I've been to lathe trolls.. Most people are little helpful.. So i got an old book. that tells mes to fix my head the old fashioned way.. With parts you have to look hard for...?? Good video.. didnt need to know the mioddle of the video.. but not a bad video.. My deck is crystal oriented ?? and its Mono..
Most of us don't know about crystal cutting heads, like used in Wilcox-Gay recorders. There is a company that rebuilds them including the Astatic brand. A quick search will find them. I think the crystals have an issue absorbing moisture from the air over time but that company can replace the crystals make them work like new.
I called west tech several times.. with various types of cutter heads. One got lost in the mail, and i didnt insure it.. so Its probably in a ditch somewhere in ohio.. Oh well..?? I'll make something work.. M41 head burned, now am using a speaker and that Burned out.. So Such Luck.. :( .. haveing touble getting it to cut loud...
I watched that video this AM. That was AWESOME! Thanks for posting that! I didn't know about that video. I've watched "Myth Busters" on and off for years, and actually saw Adam and Jamie doing a live stage show here in Eugene a few years ago. That was fun...
quadraphonic is recorded the same way. it's just that an encoded information is along the way with sound. Quadraphonic reproducer contains a decoder wich separates 4 channels.
If I may add to that, in the one particular system I have studied the information for the front and back speakers is coded in the same groove wall, the same applies to the other groove wall for the other speakers. However, the groove wall carries two separate sets of frequencies: a lower band that the human ear can hear and a higher band modulated on a carrier frequency of around 35 KHz. This signal will obviously have to be mixed down to retrieve the audible frequencies so we can be able to hear it again. Now because some people only have a stereophonic system the lower band has to carry the information for both the front and back speakers (a+b) in order for them to receive the whole sound picture, so to speak. The higher band carries, interestingly enough, the difference (a-b). In quadraphonic systems the signals go through an algebraic process to restore the correct signal to the speaker involved: (a+b) + (a-b) becomes 2a and (a+b)-(a-b) becomes 2b.
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Probably the best description of the basic mechanics of a cutting head I have seen on RUclips.Nice work Brian.
This graphic display offers understanding and comprehension for how the Westrex stereo cutting system works. For years trying to grasp this by looking at books and pictures made understanding elusive but this graphic display brought all the points together very rapidly.
I completely agree 100%!!
When you consider the mechanics of a stereo cutter, and the mechanics of a playback cartridge, it's a wonder the whole system works at all, much less as well as it does! A lot of R & D went into the 45/45 degree stereo cutter! Very, very good video. Thanks for posting.
Thank you for breaking everything down to a palatable and comprehensive explaination. Excellent video!
Great job demonstrating the process. I've read a few articles over the years describing how it works, but it never really clicked in my mind. Seeing everything in motion makes it so much easier to wrap my head around.
Thank you Bryan that video scratched a huge itch I've had for years!!
Brian, Being a man of a certain age [63] and having been a audiophile my entire life, I've always wanted to know what the 45/45 cutter looked like and actually worked. Now I know! Thanks for putting this together!
FINALLY! Best explanation yet for how two walls on opposite sides of a single groove, traced by a single stylus, can produce distinctly different channels. Also explains why the magnets in my AT-440MLb are arrayed in a right angle "V". Nicely done!
Glad you liked. It took me a while to get my head around the whole concept. Fairly easy to visualize it with my little simulator. Besides, it looks cool. How did you like the Ampex MM1000 knob in the center? Straight from 1969.
Ha! I did not catch that. Nice detail 😁
Wonderful demo, helpful for an introduction. Another detailed instruction set on why specifically things are done, like out of phase cutting. Either way, great fun to watch, thank you for taking the time to demo this to the world.
At 10:47, a homemade one! That looks very professional! Nice video, good explanation!
Hello Bryan,
I am 63 and over all these years I thought that one stereo channel was the vertical motion of the stylus with respect to the plane of the record and that the other stereo channel was the back and forth horizontal motion of the stylus in the groove and I had no idea till I watched your video at least twice how it all really works. If you are planning to cut records with the head you showed us at the end of the video I wish you the very best that that will work perfectly for you and I hope you will do yet another RUclips video to show all that working.
All the best,
Peter Nolan.(Ph.D., experimental physics). Dublin. Ireland.
I thought I replied to your note months ago. Sorry for the delay. There have been heads in history that did work the way you mention - One driver for vertical, and one driver for lateral.
Hello Bryan,
Many thanks.
Peter Nolan. Ph.D.(physics). Dublin. Ireland
Peter Nolan, Hello, I'm a 52 year old ex auto tech, I already knew a lot about the cutting of the groove, What I'm having a hard time understanding is how the hell you programmed an Arduino that well! Ugg !!!!!!!
Finally a clear explaination about how a vinil lathe head work! I'm curious to know what happer if i put 2 solenoids in place of servos... anyway, thanks again!
@@fedevekdid you try?
Hi my friend, i've followed the totally of your post on lathetrolls, very impressed by your creativity, accuracy in your experiences, documentation of them ❤
That is definitely the best video that explains stereo recording. Thanks! :)
Brilliant presentation and model by a master teacher!
Excellent explanation! Thanks for this great, very detailed demonstration.
I saw many of your vidoes, Im very happy to found this video and I promess to build this!
wow I totally thought channel phase differences at low freqs would cause a requirement for compromises in grooves, (so my thought was correct) even though I new nothing about any of this tech,(didn't know of depth axis) what fun. I still think stereo from one groove has other such implications, will have to study these types of vids more...speculate other channel separation-like issues etc that will be interesting. thanks for great vid and fun demo device. Hitec good brand imo. Low freq phase differences are usually not desirable in general anyway, for listening etc.
That was totally fascinating.
The best illustrative description of the process. Could you please make detailed video instruction how to build stereo recorder with 2 speakers and stylus of bicycle/motorcycle spoke and motors of scanner for cutting head?
Exactly the info I was looking for thanks!
Wow u really put a lot of effort to explain that process. Thanks.
Thanks!
Very good explanation for dummies! Thank you!
wow a old máster lp recording.
thanks for the video.
Awesome demonstration ！
Great video. Thanks for sharing!
Awesome!! Super clear explanation. Thanks
This is fantastic, thank you.
National Record store day sells tona of great music. Who woulda known all this prysics & science going on pre press
good video
This was fantastic! Thank you! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Cool video!
Incredible stuff. I would like to see how a specific instrument sound is transferred/cut to vinyl. How a single song is made/cut onto vinyl second by second. That would be wild. Anyone ever tell you that you sound like Jerry Garcia? 🙂
interesting! i cant wait to get to stereo level in my experiments...i have been told that its impossible to mount a heavy stereo cutter on my mono lathe cuz itd be too heavy (the cutting arm already weighs a ton) but yours are made of plastic and someone suggested some kind of overhead suspension thing to take some of the weight off.... so when im ready i would like to talk to you about perhaps purchasing one of your heads!
The project 3d for download please !!!
Greatful - 78iger with Rave und Teknomusik possble. For a Grammophone !
Nice one. So the mic(s) picks up sound which is amplified to line level by a mic amp, then fed to a power amp or pre to power amp with the pre being the mixing desk to adjust levels, then the power amp drives the cutting head generators which operate as voice coils within a magnetic gap. They drive the cutting heads. Meantime, the lathe alters the inward feed for a set time from outer to inner groove using presumably a high torque stepless motor?
Awesome 👍
Hey Bryan. I'm making one of these.. After all these years of experience. What is the best exciter/speaker/driver I can get my hands on? Can you provide a link? I figure i'll start there.
At 6:09 you call circular stylus motion "nonsense" but in fact the quadraphonic SQ recording method used by Columbia and others in the 1970s showed a diagram on the inner sleeve of their albums explaining that a helical motion, like your very clever device produces there, is used to encode the rear channel information on their records.
where did you get those drivers??
What is the azimuth of the stylist stop 90 degrees how much angle offset is it set at
Hola ...puedes darme más información....??
Are the cutterhead coils wired out of phase so when there is a mono signal, left coil is moving in and right is moving out? What happen with the vertical signal if the coils are wired out of phase and how can it go up and down?
how do u make those drivers, instead of using speakers?
If we had a microscope to see the groove shape, what would be the difference between a groove carved playing a C note with a violin, and the groove carved playing the same C note with a trumpet?
Hi there, When grooves are being cut on to the record, is the sound or electrical signal also being transferred onto the record as well ?
Are there lathes with two heads? Do you know any that exist?
How does the cutting of a album translate into multiple instruments being played on a album simply by putting a needle in a groove?
CD4 quadro to record 4 instruments on different channels? 5 time played and it's stereo.
When cutting , do you have to make allowance for the speed difference from the outer edge to inner ?
If I record a digital click track (metronome) onto vinyl and then play the record alongside the click track , the vinyl eventually steps out of time , almost by as much as 4 beats by the end of a 4 min track , I put this down to the relative speed of the vinyl under the stylus , the start or outer edge being relatively faster than the inner part .
Actually, the issue is a difference in cutting and playback speed. Cut a reference tone like 1khz, then play it back on your turntable. Use either a frequency counter of software on your PC to measure the frequency and adjust playback speed until 1khz is right on the money. My gut says your lathe is probably off due to wear on the spindle or rubber idler.
To give you some context , I do a little digital DJ'ing and after converting my vinyl records into .wav files , I find that almost all of the recordings suffer from this latency I spoke about . I have to use software to time stretch the audio to keep a constant tempo . They were all recorded using a Technics 1210 with Stanton cartridges .
Oh, I see. So you are not talking about actually cutting a master lacquer and playing it back both in the analog world. What you are running into is a sample rate issue between the source and destination. One example could be using a CD type rate of 44.1khz and the other being more PRO type rate of 48khz. Dive into that and you will find the solution. You will also find out why not only is the tempo off slightly but also the pitch. The two sample rates noted are just for example. You could be running at totally different sample rates and that's what you need to look at...
genius
WHAT! ??? You mean two little prehistoric bird like dinosaurs don't do that? The Flintstones lied to us!
hi everybody, can somebody put the link to see more of this like brian said?
(please note: at the time of posting this comment I have not played the video yet so if my question is answered in the video please excuse my ignorance)
so is a record cutter what actually put the music onto Vinyls, or is it something else; to keep it short and simple, I record music onto CDs in my studio and atleast once I would like to record music onto a Vinyl record
This video is extremely well done. Where did you get those cutting drivers? And all this info? I've been looking for exact designs of stereo cutters for years and couldn't find a thing!
ZBIguy Hey breed have a shitty day
Hi, very interesting video ! Where I can find a such transducer Please ? Do you have any reference or internet site for me ?! Thank you for sharing your knowledge
+Clément DURET Yes, the ones I am using are very similar except mine have through holes for mounting. It turns out several mods need to be done to reduce mass and improve high frequency response.
what is the model number of the driver
The whole L+R/ L-R thing is still baffling, but less so now.
Glad it helped.
Very interesting! How long does it take to cut an album?
uncleben03 In this case, the record is cut in real time. So if your a cutting 15 minutes of audio on a disc, it takes 15 minutes to cut the grooves. Plus the setup time to get everything ready.
Cool, I had wondered if that was the case. Thanks!
Contrarly to tape copy, it's realtime or longer (Halfspeed recording or the procedure for Tri Ergon records)
about as long as the piece being recorded and any setup time minus any screwup by the performers, I should judge.... at the actual recording site.
+uncleben03 Tri Ergon were cut in very slow speed. Possible, because they used the own invention of optical sound track on film, to record the music, after this they played it slowly to the wax foil.
Good afternoon. I saw that you were about to build your own cutting heads for vinyl recording. Did you make them?
Home made head? Do it work?
6:50 thanks
I still dont get how the complicated unik soundpicture would be stored in a groove and interpret xD
It is somewhat analogous to how a microphone and speaker works in that an electrical signal representing audio waveforms is converted to mechanical motion in the cutting head.that impresses shapes in the medium that can then be converted back later as a recording/playback cycle. They are all in essence transducers converting from one form of energy to another. The difference is that the microphone and speaker convert acoustic air pressure waves to an electrical signal and vice versa. The cutting head and playback stylus convert electrical signal to a shape cut into vinyl representing the waveforms and vice versa.
You could be the younger brother of Russell Solomon. Kind of an interesting coincidence...
I'm honored. Quite the legend but I'm better looking ;)
I've been to lathe trolls.. Most people are little helpful.. So i got an old book. that tells mes to fix my head the old fashioned way.. With parts you have to look hard for...?? Good video.. didnt need to know the mioddle of the video.. but not a bad video.. My deck is crystal oriented ?? and its Mono..
Most of us don't know about crystal cutting heads, like used in Wilcox-Gay recorders. There is a company that rebuilds them including the Astatic brand. A quick search will find them. I think the crystals have an issue absorbing moisture from the air over time but that company can replace the crystals make them work like new.
I called west tech several times.. with various types of cutter heads. One got lost in the mail, and i didnt insure it.. so Its probably in a ditch somewhere in ohio.. Oh well..?? I'll make something work.. M41 head burned, now am using a speaker and that Burned out.. So Such Luck.. :( .. haveing touble getting it to cut loud...
isn't this somewhat how stereo fm is broadcast?
S U P E R ....
al lthis acuaracy,then why do we get faulty records,confused
Very cool brian. I enjoyed adam savages tour of third man records... m.ruclips.net/video/PF4A4wdnXkU/видео.html was neat to see it all in action.
I watched that video this AM. That was AWESOME! Thanks for posting that! I didn't know about that video. I've watched "Myth Busters" on and off for years, and actually saw Adam and Jamie doing a live stage show here in Eugene a few years ago. That was fun...
mono sounds better than stereo,as it,s more authentic to the original studio, stereo just magnifies not point at all
Would it be asking too much for you to explain how a quadraphonic track is cut?
quadraphonic is recorded the same way. it's just that an encoded information is along the way with sound. Quadraphonic reproducer contains a decoder wich separates 4 channels.
If I may add to that, in the one particular system I have studied the information for the front and back speakers is coded in the same groove wall, the same applies to the other groove wall for the other speakers. However, the groove wall carries two separate sets of frequencies: a lower band that the human ear can hear and a higher band modulated on a carrier frequency of around 35 KHz. This signal will obviously have to be mixed down to retrieve the audible frequencies so we can be able to hear it again. Now because some people only have a stereophonic system the lower band has to carry the information for both the front and back speakers (a+b) in order for them to receive the whole sound picture, so to speak. The higher band carries, interestingly enough, the difference (a-b). In quadraphonic systems the signals go through an algebraic process to restore the correct signal to the speaker involved: (a+b) + (a-b) becomes 2a and (a+b)-(a-b) becomes 2b.
Cool video!