When pressing vinyl records, a stamp called a “father” is used which is an inverted copy of the original, with ridges instead of grooves. What would it sound like if you played it on a normal turntable?

Question

When pressing vinyl records, a stamp called a “father” is used which is an inverted copy of the original, with ridges instead of grooves. What would it sound like if you played it on a normal turntable?

In: Physics

Answer 1

You couldn’t play it.

The needle rides in the grooves and gets the signal from variations in the sides of those grooves causing vibration. Inverting the groove doesn’t just invert the signal, it removes the groove altogether and turns it into a ridge, which the stylus cannot track because now the channels are on opposite sides of the ridge and the now adjacent ridge is actually from the next groove over so they aren’t related at all so you’re trying to read two inverted signals that have nothing to do with each other.

Edit: there’s a physical component to the configuration that you can’t just invert like you could if it was a purely digital medium. The physical properties of the medium itself drive the electrical signal.