The idea was to reduce the bass and boost the treble content in the record groove. So long ago a clever system was devised: the RIAA equalization curve. If the sound were transferred directly to the groove unaltered, the grooves would have to be extremely wide to accommodate all the bass content, shortening the record’s side and possibly making it unplayable. The lower the frequency (think bass), the wider the groove. This is because a record needle has to physically track the sound waves that are inscribed in the grooves. Like digital formats, vinyl can reproduce the entire audible frequency spectrum-but how vinyl achieves this is quite different than the way it works in the digital domain. It can even skip if the sonic errors are too egregious. A badly mastered record, on the other hand, can cause a turntable’s stylus to track poorly in the record’s grooves, causing unwanted distortion. When a vinyl record is properly mastered, its warmth and depth will immediately distinguish it from its digital counterpart. Mastering for vinyl requires special knowledge of the format and a skilled ear. The resulting audio is then sent off for mastering, which is the process of preparing the album for reproduction. It all starts in a studio, where musicians work with engineers to record and mix their album. While easier to mass produce than Edison’s cylinders, these records had an annoying habit of shattering if not coddled like a baby.

The next evolution in music playback took a more familiar form: a flat acetate record that spun at 78 rpm. In 1877, Thomas Edison became the first person to snatch sound waves out of the air and engrave them onto tinfoil cylinders that could be read by a needle and played out loud.Įdison’s invention that started it all.

Small vinyl records