Have you ever tried to listen to one of your dads LP's form his collection? Noticed the warm, mahogany-rich sound of the music? Digital audio doesn't give you the same experience. Vinyl distorts that sounds of the instruments that provides that warmth.
THE SCIENCE OF VINYL RECORDS
A digital recording takes snapshots of the analog signal at a certain rate (for CDs it is 44,100 times per second) and measures each snapshot with a certain accuracy (for CDs it is 16-bit, which means the value must be one of 65,536 possible values). While a home stereo the CD or DVD player takes this digital recording and converts it to an analog signal, which is fed to your amplifier. The amplifier then raises the voltage of the signal to a level powerful enough to drive your speaker.
A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's waveform. This means that no information is lost. The output of a record player is analog. It can be fed directly to your amplifier with no conversion. This causes the waveforms from a vinyl recording can be much more accurate, and that can be heard in the richness of the sound. But there is a downside, any specks of dust or damage to the disc can be heard as noise or static. Also when there is a blank space in the music you hear distortions.
This means that, by definition, a digital recording is not capturing the complete sound wave. It is approximating it with a series of steps. Some sounds that have very quick transitions
VINYL AND TURNTABLISM
My favourite contribution of course is turntablism as a Hip Hop head! Nothing beats that chirping sound when a DJ scratches on a dope track on beat back and forth.
"Vinyl is fuller, rounder, and has deeper bass. There is no warmth from an MP3. The slightest bit of clipping created by the DJ will cause harsh distortion coming from a digital medium; vinyl is much more forgiving."- Digital DJ Tips
This clip below is one of my favorite scratching sets till date by Skratch Bastid's in his Star Wars themed battle set at the 2001 Scribble Jam DJ battle, Cincinnati, Ohio.
THE INDIAN VINYL INDUSTRY
India used to be a major producer of Vinyl Records until the early 80's with companies the likes of Saregama/ HMV who were produced vinyl records. You can find a few stores around India that still sell records that are sourced form collectors, and from back in the day when bollywood music was pressed on vinyl.
AMARRASS RECORDS- BRINGING BACK VINYL TO INDIA
Meet Ashutosh Sharma and Ankur Malhotra who have revived the art of pressing vinly records in India that has been dead after around 40 years. They formed their record label in 2009 in New Delhi. One of their main objectives is to preserve traditional music and bring it to a wider audience. Currently what they use to press records can only press one at a time.
The duo travel to remote villages and interact with folk musicians who play instruments such as the sindi sarangi has three main strings made of goat intestine and 23 sympathetic strings made of steel, the kamancha is another stringed instrument, something like the balalaika, that has roots in Central Asia, brought here by Muslim conquerors hundreds of years ago. With Commercialization and with Bollywood culture dominating, traditional and folk artists either switch professions or perform for tourists. Even the makers of the instruments are scarce.
INTERESTING FACTS
The first recorded sound was Thomas Edison’s voice, captured on phonograph in 1877 reciting part of the nursery rhyme song “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
"In 2021,for the first time since MRC Data (formerly Nielsen SoundScan) started tracking music sales in 1991, annual sales of vinyl records surpassed those of compact discs (CDs) in the US."- qz.com
The Stranger Things season 4 soundtrack is being released on vinyl by Legacy Recordings this September '22.
Tyler, The Creator’s 2021 album Call Me If You Get Lost topped this week’s Billboard 200 chart, after the album became available to purchase on Vinyl.
Hope you guys enjoyed this piece. I always enjoyed turntablism because of my love for Hip-Hop which made me dig into the subject a bit.
SOURCES:
howstuffworks.com