Eli5: Why does dj-ing not wreck the record they’re scratching on?
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The needle stays in the grooves, so it doesn’t really wear it down any more than playing it over and over again.
It does. Any playback of a vinyl record does wear down and smooth the grooves… _eventually_. If the record is dirty, it happens faster. If the needle is forcefully dragged down the grooves, the wear happens much faster.
Not-a-DJ-but-I-know-some, but if someone is scratching a particular record as part of a set thing, like as part of a backing band on a tour, they’re gonna have a few extra copies of that record. When a DJ scratches they’re not dragging the needle across the grooves, but they’re just running the needle through the grooves a lot faster than they’d otherwise go. Its _accelerated_ normal use. So how fast the record wears down will depend on the nature of the scratching.
Through normal use where the DJ is careful with the needle and tracks are played to completion, a vinyl record is good for hundreds of plays. Having said that, a friend who DJ’d a pop station back in the early 90s that hadn’t gone fully CD yet said they ran through a few copies of certain frequently requested heavily play albums. Rumours by Fleetwood Mac etc. Thriller by Micheal Jackson.
The “record scratch” isn’t really dragging the needle sideways across the record like it’s sometimes portrayed. That does mess up the album.
Usually what they’re doing instead is manually rotating the turntable faster than it would normally rotate. That just moves the needle through the groove faster than usual and causes the audio to more or less be fast-forwarded/rewound.
We *can* take into account that the needles are always wearing down *and* causing wear and tear on the records themselves, but that’s more of a concern for people with very fancy players and speakers who are worried about top-notch fidelity. DJs only need a record to sound moderately OK for most of their purposes, as it’s getting blasted at high volume into a room of people who are having fun and not necessarily criticizing the dynamic range.
A dj uses special equipment. If you scratch on a normal record player you would damage the record.
Also the needle could break or the belt drive.
DJ here (vinyl and digital). It does cause more wear, but it’s not extreme. Over time it will cause the grooves to wear out and also the needle. Because it’s gradual (yet accelerated compared to regular play) it’s not immediately noticed. The exception is if the needle cuts across grooves.
It does wear it down. In fact regular play wears down the record which is a negative of vinyl records. When they’re scratching they’re not pushing the needle down harder but they are spinning the record, and usually a specific part of it, faster across the needle and this accelerates wear. That being said it takes a lot of use to wear it down to the point where it’s unusable and especially for DJs it doesn’t matter as much. Sure a small part of each record is worn down but since it’s played highly accelerated or distorted they don’t care to maintain the quality perfectly, it’s hard to tell for the audience anyways due to the volume.
DJs also generally have multiple copies of records.
In the past 25 years or so it doesn’t, but before that it always did. Before the invention of the digital turntables it absolutely destroyed it, now when you see people do it it’s not a real record that’s being played.
It slowly wrecks it, because “scratching” plays the same area over and over. It is an effect called “cue burn”, a fuzzy sound.
Playing the record backwards will also cause more wear. Only a common spherical/conical stylus tip has the same profile forward to backwards. An ellipical stylus will have been thinned out more, and often have a facet cut that is more aggressive in the “wrong” direction.
Additionally, tonearms use anti-skate, pulling outwards with a spring to balance a naturally occurring force pulling inward, arising from the geometry. Going backwards gives the opposite force, pushing both the self-generated and the anti force against the same outer groove wall. DJs will often turn antiskate down or off to avoid skips, but then you still get the wrong correction in both directions.
Then instead of pulling the cantilever through the groove like a rake, you are pushing it like a shovel. This makes any deflection forces not naturally self-correcting.
DJs and radio stations used ruggedized cartridges (the best not being made any more). They use higher tracking weights, which also promotes premature wear.
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