Simon Booth (sgbooth@unity.ncsu.edu)
Thu, 22 Jul 1999 12:51:28 -0400
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p9&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/99/7/22/ecfclub22.html<<FontFamily><param>Arial</param><smaller>> This is all double-dutch to m> but the possibilities are intriguing.
With a software package, I would say the possibilities are limited.
There is nothing like actually having the record and being able to
touch it, stop it, reverse it, basically do whatever you want with it. Thats why CD mixers and the like haven't really taken off. Stacks
of vinyl are still where it is at right now.
But that day may soon be gone. Going the MP3 format is the best
way. Lets face it, dragging those things around is heavy, not to
mention the potential damage, or the possibility of losing them on
the airplane - for whatever reason. Now I'm going to go off on an
idea I've had, its pretty high level concepts but a lot of engineering
terms.
What if, instead of having a turntable with vinyl, we had a turntable
with "virtual vinyl" where the virtual vinyl is the slipmat. There would be no need for tonearm, all you have is a platter with slipmat, and a
pitch control. Inside the actual turntable is an embedded
processor, and two lasers. The lasers are for tracking the
movement of slipmat (somehow), and you need two because when
the direction changes, the leading edge of the signals will change
therefore indicating a change in direction. The lasers send a signal
back to the processor and the processor decodes the MP3 on top
of the signal from the laser. So what happens to the slipmat
happens to the MP3 decoding process. If you slow down the
platter, you slow down the MP3 decoding rate, if you stop it, the
MP3 stops. Though you can't physically touch the medium, you
can do everything with vinyl and more.
Add other cool features like digital outputs, digital mixers with
loads of DSP's (for all the signal tweaking you can want like notch
filters, low pass, high pass, power spectral density analysis), and
you have a truly next generation product.
And thats just the start of the idea, there possibilities are endless
with something like this. As much as I love my vinyl, digital music
is the future - and its not going to just go away.
simon
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