Eli5: How can our ears distinguish between different frequencies/instruments played on a vinyl record?

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A vinyl record is a copy of a musical recording. How can a series of grooves or channels cut into a peice of vinly medium reproduce different instruments and sounds precisely to our ears? Apologies if this is this more of a medical question or sound engineering question. I understand how the music is cut and transferred to a vinyl medium but how do we know it’s a piano vs a distorted guitar? How can these primative grooves hold such information or does every soundwave hold that specific information? A digital stream or even a cassette tape makes more sense than how a vinly disc plays back music of different genres.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Outside of the technical aspect of vinyl playback, it’s a psychology thing more than anything else. We know what a piano or a guitar sounds like, so we’re able to pick out those sounds from the playback. If a person had never heard a piano before, for example, they wouldn’t be able to pinpoint that sound to the same degree as we do. It’s similar to taste in the sense that you need to have knowledge of what different ingredients taste like to be able to isolate a specific flavour within a dish.

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