Wouldn't cylinders have been better for reproduction than platters?

[Doc]

I've been reading about some of the myriad complexities involved in
creating LP's, and it seems a lot of the difficulties stem from the
fact that the speed of the surface changes - i.e. slows - constantly.
Strictly from a standpoint of reproduction, wouldn't a cylinder
configuration have been more advantageous for high quality
reproduction than the platter? Or no?

[videochas www.locoworks.com]

On Jan 18, 8:54�pm, Doc > wrote:
> I've been reading about some of the myriad complexities involved in
> creating LP's, and it seems a lot of the difficulties stem from the
> fact that the speed of the surface changes - i.e. slows - constantly.
> Strictly from a standpoint of reproduction, wouldn't a cylinder
> configuration have been more advantageous for high quality
> reproduction than the platter? Or no?

Only if the vertical modulation was not used. Cylinders were made by
the Edison company, and they consisted of a series of peaks and
valleys. That doesn't work well for high frequencies because the
stylus doesn't have time to fall back into the valley before the next
peak comes along. The lateral modulation of the LP works much better
for that. Edison firmly believed in vertical modulation.

[Sean Conolly]

"Doc" > wrote in message
...
> I've been reading about some of the myriad complexities involved in
> creating LP's, and it seems a lot of the difficulties stem from the
> fact that the speed of the surface changes - i.e. slows - constantly.
> Strictly from a standpoint of reproduction, wouldn't a cylinder
> configuration have been more advantageous for high quality
> reproduction than the platter? Or no?

It was certainly much harder to reproduce cylinders than platters, which is
why they fell out of use when mass production of recordings started.

Sean

[Karl[_4_]]

"Soundhaspriority" > wrote in message
...
>
> "videochas www.locoworks.com" > wrote in message
> ...
> On Jan 18, 8:54?pm, Doc > wrote:
>> I've been reading about some of the myriad complexities involved in
>> creating LP's, and it seems a lot of the difficulties stem from the
>> fact that the speed of the surface changes - i.e. slows - constantly.
>> Strictly from a standpoint of reproduction, wouldn't a cylinder
>> configuration have been more advantageous for high quality
>> reproduction than the platter? Or no?
>
> Only if the vertical modulation was not used. Cylinders were made by
> the Edison company, and they consisted of a series of peaks and
> valleys. That doesn't work well for high frequencies because the
> stylus doesn't have time to fall back into the valley before the next
> peak comes along. The lateral modulation of the LP works much better
> for that. Edison firmly believed in vertical modulation.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> As far as the cylinders, I seem to recall that the abandonment in favor of
> discs was purely for cost. The cylinders were extremely expensive to
> make -- is that correct?

That's right. You can't press a cylinder. You have to cut each one
individually. I'm sure in time, someone might have figured out a way to
expand the master or shrink the copy, but I think pressing discs is just
easier. Plus, they're easier to store.

[Karl[_4_]]

"videochas www.locoworks.com" > wrote in message
...
> On Jan 18, 8:54?pm, Doc > wrote:
>> I've been reading about some of the myriad complexities involved in
>> creating LP's, and it seems a lot of the difficulties stem from the
>> fact that the speed of the surface changes - i.e. slows - constantly.
>> Strictly from a standpoint of reproduction, wouldn't a cylinder
>> configuration have been more advantageous for high quality
>> reproduction than the platter? Or no?
>
> Only if the vertical modulation was not used. Cylinders were made by
> the Edison company, and they consisted of a series of peaks and
> valleys. That doesn't work well for high frequencies because the
> stylus doesn't have time to fall back into the valley before the next
> peak comes along. The lateral modulation of the LP works much better
> for that. Edison firmly believed in vertical modulation.

I'm not sure vertical modulation is intrinsically better than lateral
modulation at high frequencies. Stereo recordings have a fair amount of
vertical modulation with out-of-phase conditions, which can occur randomly
in a true stereo recording. The stylus handles it quite well.

[Jason]

In article <b5e25642-8f37-4f2a-8df0-396bb9752c56
@e6g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, says...
> I've been reading about some of the myriad complexities involved in
> creating LP's, and it seems a lot of the difficulties stem from the
> fact that the speed of the surface changes - i.e. slows - constantly.
> Strictly from a standpoint of reproduction, wouldn't a cylinder
> configuration have been more advantageous for high quality
> reproduction than the platter? Or no?
>
About 25 years ago, when I worked at IBM, I tried to make the case for a
floppy disk alternative that was a hollow cylinder (a tube) with the
oxide on the inside wall. Constant velocity was the motivation. It
turned out someone there whose job actually involved magnetic storage
research had looked into it already and had concluded that it was more
or less a tie with floppy technology which, of course, had a head start,
so it was dropped.
--
reverse my name in email address

[Ian Iveson]

videochas wrote:

*****
Only if the vertical modulation was not used. Cylinders
were made by
the Edison company, and they consisted of a series of peaks
and
valleys. That doesn't work well for high frequencies
because the
stylus doesn't have time to fall back into the valley before
the next
peak comes along.

*****

Why not? Ratio of sprung to unsprung weight must be high for
both lateral and vertical tracking. There should be no
difference in terms of max acceleration, surely? But maybe
gravity contributes to even harmonics at low frequency?

Ian

HTML is inconvenient.

[Ian Iveson]

> ...Ratio of sprung to unsprung weight...

Er, mass. Not wishing to add to the confusion.

Ian

[Adrian Tuddenham]

Bret Ludwig > wrote:


[...]
> But cylinders had the downside of needing to be individually cut.
> Reproduction by stamping was impossible.


Stamping was not an appropriate process, but moulding was. Commercial
cylinders were reproduced by various moulding processes from a master.

They were only individually-cut in the very earliest days before the
moulding process was perfected.


--
~ Adrian Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk