![]() ![]() How to pack a stereo signal in one record grooveThey sold K-Tel over here in the UK. They were shorter single edits, but still. ![]() Ha, yeah, first album I got as a little kid was a K-Tel album (hits album like "Now That's What I Call Music") that boasted on the cover "22 original hits". ![]() How to pack a stereo signal in one record groove When you put too many songs on a side, the grooves have to be so close together that you can't get as much movement, which means less level/fidelity, and as later grooves are cut they can push the earlier (adjacent) grooves out of shape because there's not enough vinyl between the grooves. Trying to make it too bass-y or too loud can cause the "needle" to move so much it jumps out of the groove. The stylus in a record moves both up & down, and side-to-side. I bought vinyl growing up (and still have shelves of the stuff) and on the early volumes of, for instance "Now That's What I Call Music", which used to cram 8 songs per side on vinyl, there was noticeably inferior sound-quality compared to those same tracks on their original albums, where typically you'd have 5 songs per side.Ha, yeah, first album I got as a little kid was a K-Tel album (hits album like "Now That's What I Call Music") that boasted on the cover "22 original hits". The stuff above groove width is certainly what I've always believed, though I confess that it was all pre-internet, and I haven't googled it since. Later, improvements in cutters made that unnecessary. Notice Motown 45s don't have anything below 70Hz? The lower speed gave the cutter head more time to move but since they handled bass inefficiently, the bass suffered. In the early days at Motown, they cut their 45s at half speed to get hotter masters at the cost of deep bass. A flat transfer on a 12" 45 will sound worse than a well-cut 12" 33 1/3 RPM disk any day. Of course, the end product depends more on the person doing the cutting than the technical specifications of the disk. Now if you could have a 12" 45, that might be something. ![]() 45 RPM is theoretically better than 33 1/3rd but the small disk causes more groove distortion, so the advantage is almost moot. The switch from shellac to vinyl with electronic repro circuits made the 33 1/3rd RPM record superior in every way to 78 RPM. I bought vinyl growing up (and still have shelves of the stuff) and on the early volumes of, for instance "Now That's What I Call Music", which used to cram 8 songs per side on vinyl, there was noticeably inferior sound-quality compared to those same tracks on their original albums, where typically you'd have 5 songs per side.īesides the ability to put more length on a slower spinning record (45, 33-1/3 "Long Playing") is there any advantage or disadvantage to higher or lower rotational speeds?ħ8RPM was necessary before Hi-Fi amps to allow enough movement of the needle to hear the playback. I'll spend a minute or two looking for a quick write up on this to pass along.The stuff above groove width is certainly what I've always believed, though I confess that it was all pre-internet, and I haven't googled it since. Once you understand how it actually works it will be easier to figure out why different formats sound better or worse. Sorry I don't have all the details, but I'd suggest looking up just how a record reproduces sound - 78's are different from 33's & 45's, and stereo/mono makes a difference. OTOH, something like a 12" 45 rpm dance single, the format was chosen because you could get better sound quality (especially bass) that way. Heck, you could possibly cram 10 minutes on one side of a 7" 45 rpm but, again, the sound quality would be worse. You can cram 30 minutes on one side of a 33 rpm record but the sound will suffer. Oh, and the amount of info (length) affects quality, too. ![]()
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