So this might be a dumb question but I’ve never understood how etching a Grove into some plastic can lead to the same sound as a human singing with backing instrumental? It just never made any sense to me
In: Technology
Sound is simply variations in sound pressure. Take a sheet of paper, and mount it in a frame, so that it’s held securely. If you blow on it, it’s going to flex away from the air.
Now attach a needle to that and make it make a groove in something, which will follow those vibrations in the air.
That’s really all there is to it. All sound, no matter how complex, adds up to some amount of deflection during a point in time. If there’s multiple sounds at once they just add up with each other.
The needle scratches a piece of vinyl with grooves that have the sound. With the power of electricity, the sound of the needle rubbing those grooves makes an audible sound.
In slow motion it goes like *wub-wub-wub-wub* but you hear Queen’s We are the Champions
The only difference between my voice and your voice is the shape those waveform make as they travel through a medium. A microphone converts those waveforms into an electronic signal by using a piezoelectric crystal, and that exact shape is cut into the vinyl. A stylus is connected to another piezo crystal, and as it runs along the waveform cut into the vinyl, the same voltages are induced as when the microphone initially converted that physical movement of the waveform into an electronic signal, and the same sound that went into the mic comes out of the speaker. Microphones and speakers are, in many ways, the same thing only reversed.
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