How It's Made - Headphones

ProJect Debut Carbon Turntable Setup Tutorial

Old documentary about vinyl records (1956)

Close Up of a Needle in the Groove

I'm not sure who took this amazing photo, but someone shared it on Facebook and I thought to share it here as well simply because it's a wonderful pic. If you took this please let me know so that I can credit you for it!

Phonograph Answering Machine using Vinyl Discs

This Peatrophone phonograph answering machine from 1953 directly recorded telephone messages to a blank disc and could store 140 messages, each limited to 23 seconds of recording time... however the catch was that the recording was permanent. Yes, that would be permanent. Forever and ever. No recording over the old messages! A brand new disk was required every single time the old disc was full of messages. Haha! Anyhow it was the only answering machine available at the time and apparently it worked.

These pictures are from the Popular Science magazine of May 1953.

Well that was one use of vinyl recording that I didn't know about before! ;-)

How It's Made - turntables

Audio frequency range of LP vs. CD

...but of course we knew this all along! 

                            

How to Set-Up Your Pro-Ject Turntable

Refoaming a pair of Snell E3 speakers (it's easier than you think)

When buying a second hand pair of speakers that are older than 10 - 20 years it is always a good idea to check them carefully for foam rot. Over time the foam surrounding the speaker cone can get perished and quite literally fall apart. The sound quality will be severely degraded when the foam is a gonner and especially the bass will be affected badly, and if left unattended you will eventually cause permanent damage to your drivers which will potentially be very expensive to replace.

Look at these examples of speaker rot I found online:

 

It's a very common problem but fortunately it is also very easy to remedy. For those who feel they cannot take on a DIY project like this most hi fi repair shops can do this repair fairly easily and at a reasonable cost. For those of us with some basic DIY skills repairing our own speakers is a piece of cake and much cheaper than having someone else doing the refoaming it for us.

How To Setup A Turntable

Recreate the Disco Era! - How-to make a Disco Ball

Got all that old disco music and want to throw a great disco theme party? Well you will need to get the mood right and this easy DIY disco ball would be just the right thing to help you get your boogie down:

Don't have any disco music to have a disco party? No problem, Amazon have a brilliant 5 cd collection of classic disco music that will keep you jiving for hours! Click on the link below and have it delivered to you in super quick time:

Guest Post: "Acrylic Flexy Rack" by Arnold Cruz from his blog "The road to nirvana"

I recently looked into upgrading my shelving for my hifi setup and in my searches I came across what looked like a very good looking and practical shelving system called the Flexy Shelf (or Table) and had it in the back of my mind to build one and post my results here on Vinyl Philosophy. As it turned out I went with the wall mounted shelves instead, mainly because I already had almost everything I needed lying around at home.

Despite this I still wanted to do one and continued to look at other peoples attempts to plan my way forward. In my searchings I came across a particularly nice looking example on the website of Arnold Cruz at The road to nirvana and then proceeded to ask him if I could repost his Flexy Shelf post right here on Vinyl Philosophy so that more people could benefit from what I think is one of the prettiest Flexy Shelves out there. So with his permission here it is:

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Acrylic Flexy Rack

An article on the online site TNT Audio inspired me to try working on a version that suits my personal preferences. The original article calls for MDF shelves, but I decided to go a notch higher by using Acrylic (or sometimes called Plexiglass).

My first version was based on the layout and measurements of the original article and looked like this:

How to Build a Speaker

My 7 Simple Tips to improve your Listening Experience

While most of us dream of having the space for a separate listening room just for our music listening pleasure the reality of the matter is normally somewhat less dreamy. The fact is most of our sound systems are located in the lounge areas of our homes and this area normally also serves as a tv watching room, family congregation room, games room, chill out room, reading room, etc.

Few of us will ever have the same high level listening room as this one that was custom built by ModWright Instruments on their premises:

...but we can dream can't we? ;-)

"Behind the scenes" at Abbey Road - Vinyl Cutting

Caring for your Vinyl Records

Having spent a great deal of money purchasing your precious vinyl record collection you will certainly want to make sure that you take good care of them. I will give you my own suggestions and tips gleaned from 40 years of hands on experience. Please keep in mind that these are merely my own recommendations and many other opinions exist (especially on internet forums) so just take this as a starting point and then figure out over time what works best for you.

Storage:

When storing records it is important to ensure that the place you store them is cool and dry. Vinyl records do not react well to heat and will warp if left in direct sun for even a short period of time. I had a friend once that stored a number of records directly on a wooden floor that turned out to have damp issues and the rising damp caused the record covers to mould and in a few cases even caused the paper sleeves to stick to the vinyl itself. The general rule for me would be to only store records on good sturdy shelving, off the floor and away from any direct sunlight.

Also make sure that your records are placed vertically, and not stacked horizontally, to prevent having weight on them that can lead to warping or buckling. Vinyl weighs a lot more than you think!

How Vinyl Records Are Made

I am a sucker for these "how it's made" type videos, and I found this particular one very interesting. I'll never look at my LP records quite the same way as I did before knowing the incredible engineering that goes into producing these almost magical black vinyl discs of musical purity!