[HN Gopher] How to pack a stereo signal in one record groove
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       How to pack a stereo signal in one record groove
        
       Author : pubby
       Score  : 217 points
       Date   : 2023-04-04 03:43 UTC (19 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.vinylrecorder.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.vinylrecorder.com)
        
       | ozornin wrote:
       | Hm, I thought that stereo vinyl records are recorded in a way
       | that vertical groove profile is V=L+R and the horizontal
       | represents H=L-R. It's backward compatible with older mono
       | gramophones that read only L+R and stereo players do H+V=2L and
       | H-V=2R to decode.
       | 
       | Also, while writing this, I realised that it's exactly the same
       | as in the article. Just another way of thinking about it.
        
       | teeray wrote:
       | It sounds antithetical to the analog nature of vinyl, but has
       | anyone experimented with digital audio on vinyl?
        
         | crazygringo wrote:
         | I assume you mean actual binary encoding into the vinyl?
         | 
         | Now that's a hacker idea if I ever heard one. I assume the way
         | to do it would be to use a modem the same way the internet
         | operated over dial-up. Listening to the vinyl would sound the
         | same as when you accidentally picked up a phone on the same
         | line, a static-y kind of squeal.
         | 
         | It does make me wonder what the maximum practical bitrate would
         | be -- more than phone lines with their severely limited
         | frequency range, that's for sure. Could it handle CD-quality
         | FLAC audio?
         | 
         | It also makes me wonder how you'd manage records wearing out.
         | What type of distortion occurs, and how might that affect how
         | you'd spread bits over the spectrum, or would it affect which
         | error correction code you'd use?
        
           | CocaKoala wrote:
           | You can indeed encode digital data onto a vinyl and then play
           | it back meaningfully to a computer -
           | http://boginjr.com/it/sw/dev/vinyl-boot/ is somebody making a
           | vinyl boot disk and using it to boot DOS.
        
             | crazygringo wrote:
             | Ah ha, exactly! Wow.
             | 
             | What's next, encoding a ZIP file onto a wax cylinder?
        
           | roddylindsay wrote:
           | DTS is a lossy codec that can encode multiple audio channels
           | into normal stereo audio. The encoded waveform sounds exactly
           | like a dialup modem.
        
           | dweymouth wrote:
           | > Could it handle CD-quality FLAC audio?
           | 
           | I doubt it, since CD-quality audio is already objectively
           | better (for human hearing) than analog audio on LPs. The only
           | thing LPs are better at, sound quality wise, is extension
           | into the ultrasonic range of 20-30+ kHz (which we can't hear
           | anyway) but the SNR and distortion metrics are much worse in
           | the ultrasonic band than the audible range.
           | 
           | I'm not sure if this is a named principle, but it seems
           | intuitively obvious to me that on any particular encoding
           | medium (magnetic tape, vinyl groove, etc.), you can encode
           | "more" data in an analog way than digital, since with digital
           | encoding you need to be able to make distinct symbols onto
           | the medium, and represent any signal fluctuation with a
           | series of such symbols; whereas with analog encoding a tiny
           | fluctuation in what's recorded to the medium can correspond
           | to a tiny fluctuation in the signal. Of course the tradeoff
           | is that digital data is much more immune to distortion from
           | imperfections in the medium.
           | 
           | If the same track width and pit sizes on CDs were used to
           | encode audio in an analog way like LaserDisc does video (the
           | continuous distance between pits being modulated by the
           | signal), no doubt it could encode well into the ultrasonic
           | range and surround audio channels via modulating them into
           | different frequency bands. But it would have its own
           | characteristic "surface noise" and "pops and clicks" just
           | like vinyl.
        
             | crazygringo wrote:
             | > _it seems intuitively obvious to me... you can encode
             | "more" data in an analog way than digital_
             | 
             | It doesn't seem obvious to me, because I'm not talking
             | about encoding distinct symbols into the medium. I'm
             | talking about using the entire available frequency range to
             | encode digital information the way a modem does. And I'm
             | talking about using lossless compression as well. And as
             | you say, if an LP can encode ultrasonic information, that
             | opens up all sorts of extra space for information that is
             | useless in analog.
             | 
             | It may very well be the case that an LP couldn't record CD-
             | quality audio, but I do very much wonder what kind of
             | bitrate would actually be achievable. A dial-up modem is 56
             | kbps, using the frequency range 300 hZ to 3.3 kHz. CD audio
             | is 1,411 kbps, but vinyl frequency range is from 7 hZ to 50
             | kHz, which is 16x wider than a dial-up modem. _And_ you can
             | pack _much_ more data into higher frequencies.
             | 
             | So on the face of it, digital CD-quality audio seems like
             | it might be very much achievable in theory on vinyl. But
             | again, when you account for error correction and
             | degradation and particularly distortion, I wonder if you
             | could actually get it reliably in practice.
        
               | dweymouth wrote:
               | Hmm that's a good point, that you can use the ultrasonic
               | bandwidth of the LP, which is useless for analog audio,
               | to increase the bitrate. I'd say it's a bit generous to
               | give an LP a bandwidth of 50 kHz, especially in the inner
               | tracks though. I think what I was getting at would apply
               | where the bandwidth of the analog signal you want to
               | encode is as wide as the bandwidth of your media though.
               | Take compact cassettes, let's say they have a bandwidth
               | of 18 kHz and a dynamic range of 60 dB. If you want to
               | encode an arbitrary audio signal with a bandwidth of 18
               | kHz and with 60 dB dynamic range, you could only do that
               | in the usual analog way. But if you wanted to encode a
               | digital telephone signal (say at 8 kHz bandwidth, 30 dB
               | dynamic range) maybe you could use the 18 kHz cassette
               | bandwidth to encode that signal digitally.
        
         | marcodiego wrote:
         | Yes. Not necessarily digital audio, but digital data:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexi_disc
        
         | empyrrhicist wrote:
         | Most modern vinyl records have digital processing somewhere in
         | their source. I do remember recently reading about video games
         | on vinyl also.
        
       | klodolph wrote:
       | I will add that the "mid-side" technique is used elsewhere,
       | besides record grooves:
       | 
       | - In compressed audio file (such as MP3)
       | 
       | - In signal processing chains in the studio (process mid and side
       | channels separately, then convert back to L/R)
       | 
       | - In certain stereo microphone recording techniques (there is a
       | type of microphone which records left and right, but with
       | opposite phase)
        
         | pjc50 wrote:
         | Arguably YUV (luminance plus two chroma dimensions), as used in
         | lots of video codecs.
        
           | klodolph wrote:
           | Yes, that's a good point. And then in NTSC, the UV is further
           | rotated to produce IQ, which are given different amounts of
           | bandwidth in the color subcarrier.
        
         | pavon wrote:
         | I thought that was where the article was heading when it
         | mentioned that horizontal was better (and the unstated fact
         | that mono was horizontal), but it still took me a minute to
         | realize that the 45 degree pickups are equivalent to midside.
         | In (digital) mid-side you encode M=L+R and S=L-R. With this, if
         | you breakdown the horizontal and vertical components:
         | HL = +L/sqrt(2)    VL = +L/sqrt(2)   L = sqrt(HL^2 + VL^2)
         | HR = +R/sqrt(2)    VR = -R/sqrt(2)   R = sqrt(HR^2 + VR^2)
         | H = HL + HR        V = VL + VR            = (L+R)/sqrt(2)  V =
         | (L-R)/sqrt(2)
         | 
         | Note that VR is negative and HR is positive because the sign of
         | the pickup is inverted in the diagrams.
        
         | TylerE wrote:
         | It's also kinda related to how NTSC works - the color signal is
         | at a frequency and phase such that it falls inbetween
         | consecutive horizontal lines (e.g. pixels), so that when played
         | on a black and white TV that isn't aware of color, the
         | chrominance (as opposed to luminance) isn't visible since it
         | occurs when the beam is advancing.
        
           | klodolph wrote:
           | I'm not sure I agree with that explanation of the color
           | subcarrier.
           | 
           | The color subcarrier is modulated to a higher frequency, but
           | on an old B&W TV, there are no pixels, only lines. The color
           | subcarrier can appear as a pattern superimposed over the
           | picture if it is not filtered out with a low-pass filter--and
           | indeed, B&W TVs made after the advent of color television
           | contain such a filter, which can be removed if you want to
           | use the TV as a higher-resolution monitor for your home
           | computer (ask how I know...)
           | 
           | The two chroma channels are, however, "rotated", similar to
           | the way mid-side encoding is done. You take a YUV signal, you
           | extract the chrominance UV channels, and then you rotate them
           | to IQ channels. The I and Q channels are then quadrature
           | modulated with _different_ amounts of bandwidth assigned to
           | the I and Q channels. The I channel gets, like, 3x as much
           | bandwidth.
        
             | dweymouth wrote:
             | Broadcast NTSC did actually modulate the color signal into
             | a "comb-shaped" frequency spectrum that was overlaid onto
             | the complimentary "comb-shaped" spectrum of the B+W signal,
             | because they didn't want to have to re-allocate higher
             | broadcast channel bandwidths to be able to support color
             | (and therefore have fewer channels available). The comb-
             | shaped nature of the spectrum is an artifact of the
             | discrete lines the picture signal is made up of, and the
             | pause between each line when the electron beam reset itself
             | and prepared to draw the next line. The fact they were able
             | to figure out how to do color in the same bandwidth in a
             | backward-compatible way is actually kind of insane, and
             | I've seen it mentioned somewhere as one of the, if not
             | _THE_ most impressive engineering achievements of the 20th
             | century.
        
         | tgv wrote:
         | Also in FM stereo, if I'm not mistaken. One band contains L+R,
         | the other one, which is not played on a mono radio, L-R.
        
         | b1c837696ba28b wrote:
         | FM radio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_broadcasting
         | 
         | > left and right, but with opposite phase
         | 
         | The classic mid-side mic technique uses two capsules. The first
         | (middle) is a cardioid or omnidirectionsl facing the subject,
         | the latter (side) is a figure-8 turned 90 degrees. The capsules
         | should be as close to each other as possible to avoid low-
         | frequency phase errors. The signals are converted to L+R via a
         | simple Mid/Side network:
         | 
         | L = 0.707 * (M+S), R = 0.707 * (M-S)
         | 
         | which is where "opposite phase" comes into play.
         | 
         | https://www.uaudio.com/blog/mid-side-mic-recording/
        
       | IYasha wrote:
       | But wait till you see quadrophonic records!
        
         | ozornin wrote:
         | Is that a thing?
        
       | jgrahamc wrote:
       | I was recently in a large shop that sells books, music, etc. and
       | I was _amazed_ at the number of  "LPs" (as I used to call them)
       | of music old and new. The one thing that I really like about that
       | format is... cover art. Cover art kind of survived the CD but the
       | large size of a 12" record sleeve means you get real art.
       | 
       | I asked someone way younger than me (some students of about
       | 19/20) why they buy records and they expressed how much they like
       | the physical format and owning the music.
        
         | eesmith wrote:
         | I bought (and long ago gave away, alas) an LP copy of the
         | Jethro Tull's "Thick As A Brick" because it opened up to a
         | 12-page newspaper, while the CD had a smaller abridged copy.
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | as someone that was a vinyl DJ in a former life that saw the
         | transition from vinyl to CDs to where it is now, vinyl is
         | absolutely my favorite precisely because of the physicality of
         | it. it was the closest to feeling of playing an instrument.
         | learning the touch and feel of picking up the stylus cartridge
         | without the infamous screeching/scratch sound, how light/heavy
         | to touch the platter/spindle/label to push/pull/drag to speed
         | up or slow down the record to keep line up the beats were all
         | things that reminded of playing an instrument (I played
         | woodwinds) with how much air to use, how hard to hit the reeds,
         | and the various other physical things to play. there was also
         | the fact that it had to be played and not programmed that i
         | appreciate from playing vinyl.
         | 
         | as a medium for just sitting back and enjoying some tunes at
         | home, it's gotta be the worst! LPs might give you 3,4,5 songs
         | per side, but you still would have to get up and flip it or
         | find another LP. singles like 45s or 12"s were even worse as it
         | was one song at a time. a 12" at 45rpm only has somewhere
         | around 10mins of recording. an LP at 33rpm might have 20-ish
         | minutes. so that's a lot of interruptions in the music flow. if
         | you really enjoy that manual switching out, then i'd suggest
         | just taking the next step and being a DJ constantly mixing
         | track to track.
        
           | grujicd wrote:
           | For me it's the other way around. Striming or local digital
           | collection trigger my "let's skip to next song" impulse.
           | While with LP I'll listen to entire album. So vinyl is for me
           | medium of choice for sitting and listening at home.
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | This is where the cassette or CD are great mediums for
             | listening to the full album (using the cassette's autoflip
             | mode).
             | 
             | recently, i started going back through music collection to
             | listen to full albums instead of the streaming track to
             | track as you've mentioned. it was a very nice change of
             | pace from just hearing random tracks continuously. it seems
             | to be popular enough that even youtube has Full Album
             | titles. the playlist assembling full albums are rather
             | annoying for those albums with no gaps between tracks, but
             | are better than nothing if that's all that's available. so
             | now it's best of both worlds where it is streaming but
             | still the full album experience.
        
         | lispisok wrote:
         | Reasons I buy vinyl:
         | 
         | 1. It's a different listening experience than the "song shuffle
         | on Spotify" that dominates now. It's more a more active and
         | focused listening experience. You put an album on to listen to
         | that album from start to finish.
         | 
         | 2. I want to support musicians by buying their albums. However
         | I dont like buying digital music because it doesnt have the
         | permanence a physical object has. I dont like spending money on
         | what's basically ctrl-c ctrl-v files onto my hard drive. CD's
         | are too flimsy. Vinyl has heft.
         | 
         | 3. I'm not into the album art that much but a lot of my guests
         | are and like to thumb through my records and look at the art.
         | 
         | 4. I'm a hipster contrarian. When vinyl started to get too
         | popular I started buying cassettes too
        
           | grujicd wrote:
           | Records for sure beat longevity of most media. I got a 1979
           | record from a friend. One side was full of dust. I guess it
           | was parked that way on record player for few decades. After
           | simple gentle wash and dry it was as good as new! Of course,
           | if it's scrached it's not good. And if you listen it hundred
           | times it will degrade, but it will still work.
        
         | jfengel wrote:
         | Indeed, there was news last month that vinyl now outsells CDs:
         | 
         | https://www.bbc.com/news/64919126
         | 
         |  _" Music lovers clearly can't get enough of the high-quality
         | sound and tangible connection to artists vinyl delivers,"
         | Glazier said, "and labels have squarely met that demand with a
         | steady stream of exclusives, special reissues, and beautifully
         | crafted packages and discs."_
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | Eisenstein wrote:
       | My great 'aha' moment of 'technology is actually sometimes really
       | simple when broken down' was realizing that magnetic sound
       | recording is just running past a speaker coil at a constant speed
       | while holding something long and ferrous next to it. To play it
       | back do the same thing but plug the coil into the input.
        
       | PopAlongKid wrote:
       | Trivia: well into the 1970s, promotional copies of hit songs were
       | released to U.S. radio and record stores on vinyl 7-inch 45 RPM
       | format, one side in mono, and one side in stereo.
        
       | wingineer wrote:
       | Very clear visual. Does anyone have a similar visual reference
       | for how quadraphonic records work?
        
         | gorkish wrote:
         | They work exactly the same way. All of the popular quadraphonic
         | formats work modulating or encoding the four channels together
         | into two signals which are cut just like a stereo record.
         | 
         | There were/are a great many schemes for achieving the
         | multichannel encoding/decoding all with inherent advantages,
         | disadvantages, and compatibility with legacy equipment. Dolby
         | Pro Logic (and related successor tech) were probably the most
         | successful multichannel tech that people will be familiar with,
         | though that particular scheme came after the heyday of vinyl.
        
       | roddylindsay wrote:
       | Quadraphonic CD-4 records from the 1970's encode 4 discrete
       | channels into a single record groove!
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Discrete_4
       | 
       | The trick is to encode two additional channels on a 30kHz carrier
       | signal above human hearing range, then demodulate those channels
       | in the receiver.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | askvictor wrote:
         | I have a Pink Floyd LP in quadrophonic; never had a record
         | player that could play it in it's full glory though. And now I
         | understand how it works!
        
       | muhwalt wrote:
       | This is one of those things I never gave much thought but is
       | super facinating. The technology connections youtube channel just
       | did a video about this, too:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DdUvoc7tJ4
        
         | brewdad wrote:
         | I was just going to post this. Others have given some of the
         | math and technical explanation below but if you would like to
         | see this in action with a bit more of the history behind it
         | all, I highly recommend this video.
        
         | IYasha wrote:
         | I was actually expecting the HN link to be it )
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | What age range is this channel's target audience? The slow pace
         | and sophomoric description of 2 channel audio at the beginning
         | makes me thing it is aimed at a young audience.
        
           | rideontime wrote:
           | I'm 30 or 40 years old, and this is one of my favorite
           | youtube channels. :)
        
             | svckr wrote:
             | I am also 30 or 40 years old. I'm Schrodingers millenial.
             | 
             | I quite enjoy the delivery of technology connections. A
             | nice change of pace imo, compared to other youtubers that
             | edit out every millisecond of quiet time between words and
             | sentences.
             | 
             | But I'm not watching the videos to learn new stuff either
        
               | rideontime wrote:
               | Slower videos just means they last longer, and that I can
               | keep up with them while I'm crocheting.
        
           | heleninboodler wrote:
           | I absolutely love this channel even though I find the guy's
           | delivery excruciatingly slow and his style very annoying. I
           | watch it on 2x to solve the first problem and just cringe
           | through the dorkiness.
        
             | netsharc wrote:
             | Yeah, the dorkiness can be a bit too much sometimes. One
             | time he made a dorky joke, and then made a meta-joke
             | addressing how dorky that joke was, and it was extra
             | cringe...
        
           | LegitShady wrote:
           | I think the simple explanations are just that guy's style. He
           | often has oddball videos about stuff you've probably seen but
           | never thought about in depth - from lava lamps to
           | retroreflectors.
           | 
           | He gets quite a few views and educates a lot of people. No
           | need to look down on it - if it isn't for you thats ok.
        
           | fknorangesite wrote:
           | > The slow pace and sophomoric description
           | 
           | This seems needlessly condescending. 1.5x is your friend.
           | 
           | > a young audience.
           | 
           | Or just people who don't know much about 2 channel audio (or
           | whatever else he's talking about this week/month/whatever).
           | Not everyone does, after all.
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | It's not playback speed that's slow. It's the sophomoric
             | definition of stereo. It's the absolute dragging of the
             | feet to deliver that definition that isn't even a good
             | description of stereo.
        
               | [deleted]
        
         | foobarbecue wrote:
         | The TC video was good, but the link here sure is a faster way
         | to learn the same basic information!
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | watching paint dry is faster than getting info out of that
           | video.
        
         | mgdlbp wrote:
         | Video of the needle and grooves under an electron microscope:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuCdsyCWmt8&t=301s
        
           | justinator wrote:
           | Incredible video!
        
         | incanus77 wrote:
         | I frequently find myself wanting to think more critically and
         | guess about things like this. If I had thought a bit further
         | before reading (one needle, but what is the groove like?) I
         | would gotten to assuming that it was one dimensional, but then
         | stepped from there to it actually affording two dimensions.
         | 
         | Does anyone have recommendations for reading or exercises to
         | improve this kind of thinking?
        
       | mikro2nd wrote:
       | OK, now do quadraphonic...
        
         | corysama wrote:
         | Typed while you were typing
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35440858
        
       | doctorhandshake wrote:
       | A few years back I had the privilege of working for the New York
       | City edition of the Red Bull Music Academy, and, perhaps
       | unsurprisingly, a large portion of the lectures and general
       | discussion focused on things related to vinyl.
       | 
       | One thing I remember standing out to me was a mention by a vinyl
       | mastering engineer that he would manually roll up the bass level
       | on the EQ over the length of the side as the record was cut. He
       | explained that this was because on most record players the
       | tonearm is more or less parallel to the groove at the start of
       | the side and by the end of the side is less so, which decreases
       | bass response, requiring more bass energy in the signal to
       | compensate.
        
         | buildsjets wrote:
         | I don't think that a constant roll-in of EQ would be helpful.
         | On playback, the stylus is actually parallel to the groove at
         | two positions, both in the middle of the disc, not at the edge,
         | as depicted on a cartridge alignment protractor.
         | 
         | https://www.audio-technica.com/en-us/support/audio-solutions...
         | 
         | So you start playing a record and the stylus has a small
         | lateral load bias to one side, has a zero crossing, an small
         | opposite side bias, another zero crossing, and then finishes up
         | with a high lateral load bias on the inner groove and all the
         | female vocals sound terrible due to the extreme sibilance
         | distortion.
        
       | lqet wrote:
       | Now _there_ is something Bartosz Ciechanowski should write a blog
       | post about!
       | 
       | I also think something important is missing from this
       | explanation: the vertical/horizontal solution would not have been
       | backwards compatible in two ways: (1) A mono needle would not
       | have been able detect the vertical movement, resulting in a
       | missing channel. (2) A stereo needle able to play such a record
       | would not have been able to play a classic mono record, because
       | the mono signal would have only been translated into a single
       | channel (the left or right channel), and the other channel would
       | have remained silent.
       | 
       | (1) would've made stereo records unattractive for customers who
       | already owned an existing mono player, and (2) would've made
       | stereo players unattractive to customers who already had a
       | substantial mono record collection.
       | 
       | With the 45 degree solution, existing mono players were able to
       | play stereo records (the horizontal movement is exactly the sum
       | of the two channels), and stereo players were able to play
       | existing mono records. For this to work, the left and right
       | signals were recorded in opposite phase. A really elegant
       | solution, which somehow reminds me of the cover of GEB [0].
       | 
       | PS: if you are interested in cutting-edge record groove
       | technology, the "Fullschriftverfahren" invented by Eduard Rhein
       | might interest you. It was an early compression technology for
       | audio. The method was based on earlier work by the London-based
       | Columbia Graphophone Company, but their work was never used in
       | practice. Basically, before this invention, the spacing between
       | the grooves on a record was fixed, with enough margins so that
       | large amplitudes would not cut into neighboring grooves. Rhein
       | build a machine that dynamically spaced the grooves based on the
       | maximum local amplitude, allowing much smaller groove margins for
       | quiet parts of an audio file, and therefore increased information
       | density. This nearly doubled the running time of typical records.
       | 
       | Sadly, I only found an extensive description of this technology
       | in German, including original patents [1]. But the figures are
       | self-explaining.
       | 
       | [0] https://i.stack.imgur.com/OKBvZ.jpg
       | 
       | [1] https://grammophon-platten.de/page.php?530
        
         | PopAlongKid wrote:
         | >For this to work, the left and right signals were recorded in
         | opposite phase.
         | 
         | I don't know, but found the following comment in an
         | audiophile/collector forum, note the comment about phase.
         | 
         | https://www.discogs.com/forum/thread/774378?message_id=76970...
         | 
         |  _" When Stereo records first appeared circa 1958, it was
         | important that they were NOT played on existing mono equipment,
         | as the two playback modes were incompatible with regards to
         | wear and tear. A mono player would damage the stereo record
         | primarily because a stereo record required the stylus to wiggle
         | up and down as well as left and right. Mono only required left
         | and right, and mono players of the time had little up and down
         | capacity.
         | 
         | "Mono record players (or more specifically cartridges and
         | stylii) then incorporated the ability to play stereo records
         | and modern, of the time (late 1960's) players could therefore
         | play a stereo record without damage. At the same time mono
         | records were phased out, so people needed to be assured they
         | could still purchase records (which were only available in
         | stereo) and play them without causing damage.
         | 
         | "It has nothing to do with the record, everything to do with
         | the playback equipment.
         | 
         | "As a further point stereo records were limited by phase - they
         | needed to ensure that at various critical frequencies there was
         | no difference in phase between left and right (bass is
         | critical), otherwise the stylus might jump out of a groove.
         | Some digital formats have recordings that contain much out of
         | phase information - creating a holographic type impression. If
         | these contain low frequency sounds out of phase, then these
         | need to be modified prior to be prepared for release on a
         | record. "_
        
           | starkparker wrote:
           | This is why there are still mastering engineers who
           | specialize in vinyl. See also https://badracket.com/vinyl-
           | mastering/ for more vinyl-specific mastering concerns.
        
           | jlarcombe wrote:
           | Yeah the phase thing is quite a pain, I always thought it was
           | just for really low stuff, but a band I was helping out had a
           | master rejected by the pressing plant for excessive out-of-
           | phase audio even when the passages in question weren't
           | particularly 'heavy'.
           | 
           | Since then I've been quite paranoid about it before sending
           | masters off, and it's surprising how many mixes have a load
           | of out-of-phase stereo. It can usually be tamed with some M/S
           | EQ but then you miss the spaciousness in headphones...
        
         | jameshart wrote:
         | > A really elegant solution, which somehow reminds me of the
         | cover of GEB
         | 
         | The thing is, when you play a record on a GEB phonograph, you
         | run the risk of your phonograph vibrating itself apart.
        
         | timmg wrote:
         | > (1) A mono needle would not have been able detect the
         | vertical movement, resulting in a missing channel. (2) A stereo
         | needle able to play such a record would not have been able to
         | play a classic mono record, because the mono signal would have
         | only been translated into a single channel
         | 
         | I _think_ the way they do it with FM radio is: one channel is
         | A+B and the other is A-B. The A+B channel is the  "mono"
         | channel for backward compatibility. (Then they add/subtract to
         | get left/right: (A+B)-(A-B)=B; (A-B)+(A+B)=A.)
         | 
         | Pretty elegant solution, IMHO.
        
           | phkahler wrote:
           | I don't recall why or how, but the A-B channel is of lower
           | bandwidth, or otherwise more likely to drop out. Hence when
           | you're starting to lose FM, you may find it dropping to mono.
        
             | timmg wrote:
             | I think the reason is less interesting: when you start to
             | go out of range, your radio _thinks_ there is only a mono
             | signal, so it switches to mono mode.
             | 
             | Same reason "static" on your TV is black and white. Your TV
             | didn't detect a color signal, so it is looking for the
             | black and white one.
             | 
             | (For anyone old enough to remember static on their tv :)
        
       | Aldipower wrote:
       | I love nineties styled websites. Clear and precise.
        
       | corysama wrote:
       | Then encode a surround sound signal as a Dolby Pro Logic II
       | stereo signal and you've got a surround sound record!
       | 
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Pro_Logic
       | 
       | DPLII was based on the fact that if you invert one channel of a
       | stereo signal, it sounds effectively the same. So, they had some
       | way of encoding front and back signals as some sort of
       | symmetry/anti-symmetry between the left and right signal.
        
         | pnut wrote:
         | They actually did that:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Discrete_4
        
         | js2 wrote:
         | DPLII was originally worked out as a blind upmixer using analog
         | circuitry. See this interview with Jim Fosgate, who designed
         | it:
         | 
         | https://www.stereophile.com/interviews/1204fosgate/index.htm...
         | 
         | Later Fosgate worked with Roger Dressler at Dolby and Dolby's
         | engineers converted the analog circuit to digital. See these
         | two posts from Dressler for additional detail:
         | 
         | https://www.avsforum.com/threads/dolby-pro-logic-ii-vs-dolby...
         | 
         | https://www.avsforum.com/threads/dolby-pro-logic-ii-vs-dolby...
         | 
         | The encoder came later, after the DPLII blind upmixer was
         | already designed.
        
       | intalentive wrote:
       | Or stereo signal coming from a single cable.
        
       | pl90087 wrote:
       | Aside from the contents, let's all take a moment to admire the
       | simplicity of this page. A few animated pictures and everybody
       | got right away what's going on. Absolutely amazing!
        
       | agentofoblivion wrote:
       | That all looks erotic.
        
         | Aldipower wrote:
         | Oh yeah!
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-04-04 23:00 UTC)