
Digital Needle - Playing phonograph records with a scanner - phreeza
http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~springer/DigitalNeedle/
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jessevondoom
And for the record, there are some pretty unique distortions here. I know a
lot of artists who'd be pretty excited about the samples themselves...there's
something special about them being a byproduct of a unique process as opposed
to a clicked button or three in protools.

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rflrob
Any idea what those ~2Hz distortions are? In the a and c series recordings,
they have a very strong pitch change, coming in groups of 4...

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jessevondoom
Was wondering the same thing, but I've got no idea. Curious if blur from the
visual scan of denser grooves has anything to do with it. Really interesting
sound.

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leed25d
It seems to me that I read once of a device at the Library of Congress which
is a purpose built laser scanner for extracting such waveforms from old
records, even the drums.

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jessevondoom
Yeah they're IRENE scanners. Pretty amazing, actually. Able to lift sound off
the most delicate old recordings. Probably a lot of possibility for repair of
lost fragments visually:

<http://irene.lbl.gov/>

And there are laser turntables for commercial purposes as well. Not a visual
product, in interesting still...

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qq66
Related: <http://www.elpj.com/>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable>

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tintin
Some time ago I wondered if this could be done with a small CCD (Like the one
in your mouse, see the mouse-scanner project:
<http://spritesmods.com/?art=mouseeye>). I tried it once, but it's very hard
to do this in real-time.

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cubicle67
so, how long before we get an augmented reality app that lets you play your
(parents) records just by pointing your iPhone at them?

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tibbon
Actually, that sounds like a pretty good app. Shopping for a CD and want to
hear it (or at least previews) now? Scan the barcode or album cover and boom..
music

I'd pay $4.99 for that app.

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jorgem
People still shop for CD's in stores?

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phreeza
Reading up on Wikipedia, I think he got the encoding wrong. The samples he
plays are the diff between left and right. Now I want to try this... but I
don't have a scanner handy. Can anyone scan a record for me?

