How the Internet Archive digitizes 78rpm records

Truly, this was the internet I was promised — or at least hoped for — decades ago when it began.

Somehow I imagined the internet as a giant library — the Library of Alexandria for the modern age. The Encyclopedia Galatica.

Others thought it might better be the world's largest catalog. The Sky Mall.

I've personally scanned and cleaned up many old children's science-related documents and uploaded them to the Internet Archive.

I don't know why I didn't think to check into this sooner, but I inherited my grandfather's record collection that is >5,000 records, and I just couldn't bear donating it to some random thrift store, and I knew that selling them would just mean someone picking through the collection and leaving the dregs. This is a solution that I've been looking for. I do listen to some of the records, and I enjoy it, but I don't have time to digitize the whole collection, but this is actually a better solution, because now other people will be able to enjoy my grandfather's collection besides my family.

The late Ken Perkins of Australia had a collection of 80,000 records when he past away in 2018:

* https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-18/australias-largest-re...

Though this article from 2016 indicates one Zero Freitas has six million "in a 25,000-square-foot former candle factory in São Paulo":

* https://www.reedyoung.com/vinyl/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Freitas

A 2013 article about John Tefteller, "who has stockpiled over 75,000 blues and rock & roll 78s":

* https://www.factmag.com/2013/10/01/tommy-johnson-blues-becom...

See also this 2009 documentary about Paul Mawhinney, who had three million items, and which was sold to Freitas:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwXayHbUQ2o

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record-Rama

This made me remember what happened with what.cd. Never had an account myself, but I feel like we truly have failed to a common, lasting, platform for storing arbitrary data.

bittorrent was ahead of it's time, the tech is IMO really cool. It is just too bad that it does not really make anyone rich and thus cannot be accepted.

There is such a laser record player, which costs $15k [1] and can only play black vinyl records [2].

[1] https://diffuser.fm/laser-turntable/ [2] https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/elp-lt-1lrc-laser-...

Optical turntables have major issues with dust and dirt. The records need to be extensively cleaned prior to being played [1], even for unplayed "virgin" vinyl. 78rpm (shellac) records are older than vinyl records, and tend to have more dust / dirt, so would require a lot of cleaning prior to archiving.

Although the more expensive of the optical turntables (the LT-master) has 78rpm capabilities, such capabilities are optional even on this high-end version.

I think it's basically down to costs - the costs of cleaning each record (I know they're cleaned already, but the process may need to be more involved to remove all dust), along with the tens-of-thousands for the player, probably don't make this economical on the scale the Internet Archive are looking for.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable#Performance

I suspect you really in fact do want to record the audio as it was intended to be played back. With the mass of the tone arm, the tracking and such as the tone arm swings closer to the inner radius of the disc, the RIAA equalization....

Seems if you strictly are extracting the topography of the record ... good for printing a new one, but would require all kinds of simulation to playback accurately?

Here's what our digitization expert, George Blood, has to say: LPs are soft and played with a very small diamond. 78s are made from shellac which is hard and abrasive. Originally they were played with steel needles at 10x the tracking weight used by our modern equipment. They also use a much larger diamond with 5-10x the surface area. The tracking force is spread over a larger area than vinyl playback. The contact pressure is less than 10% of vinyl playback.

More than that, they use 4 different styluses and let you choose which one you think sounds best for a particular record.

I think it's kind of sad that this is a purely volunteer effort and not an official effort of the Library of Congress.

Any dirt in the grooves screwed up the playback in the case of using a laser. Remember the pits that are read on CD/DVD are under a clear coating and cannot get dirt in them.

These are not "normal styli" at least not for the old shellac records. It was very educational to watch this Techmoan video - https://youtu.be/AYn7aZZBMRA - and learn that the original shellac records were harder than the steel styli; these wore down in one or two playings and so were bought in bulk, and the tracking force was on the order of 100 grams.

Why does this matter? Because it probably keeps down the fine high-frequency crackle from very minor dust and surface imperfections. But I can see that you wouldn't subject a precious antique 78 to that kind of playback these days.

Here's what George Blood, the IA digitization expert, said: "LPs are soft and played with a very small diamond. 78s are made from shellac which is hard and abrasive. Originally they were played with steel needles at 10x the tracking weight used by our modern equipment. They also use a much larger diamond with 5-10x the surface area. The tracking force is spread over a larger area than vinyl playback. The contact pressure is less than 10% of vinyl playback. "

Here's what George Blood, the digitizer, reports: "laser turntables are designed to play 33rpm discs. Most will not spin at 78rpm. There is broad agreement they do not sound as good as stylus playback. I.R.E.N.E. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRENE_(technology)) captures the disc as an image, then transforms that into sound. It is not way slower than real time, and while it is arguable that the resolution of the image is superior to stylus playback, the software is not yet able to produce results as good as stylus playback. And it introduces it’s own, idiomatic noise spectrum. On the other hand it is far and away the best system for ‘playing’ damaged or compromised discs, such as lacquers that are beginning to delaminate."

laser readers are worse than using a needle because you can't rely on the laser to push dust & detritus out of the way nor to ignore smaller faults that would not even register using a stylus, so the recording ends up requiring more noise reduction and attention than using bog standard low price styli.

previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14964384

I work with the Internet Archive, and asked George Blood about the wear and tear using a stylus. Here's what he had to say: "LPs are soft and played with a very small diamond. 78s are made from shellac which is hard and abrasive. Originally they were played with steel needles at 10x the tracking weight used by our modern equipment. They also use a much larger diamond with 5-10x the surface area. The tracking force is spread over a larger area than vinyl playback. The contact pressure is less than 10% of vinyl playback. "

Ok, I turned to the expert himself, George Blood, who responded: "laser turntables are designed to play 33rpm discs. Most will not spin at 78rpm. There is broad agreement they do not sound as good as stylus playback. I.R.E.N.E. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRENE_(technology)) captures the disc as an image, then transforms that into sound. It is not way slower than real time, and while it is arguable that the resolution of the image is superior to stylus playback, the software is not yet able to produce results as good as stylus playback. And it introduces it’s own, idiomatic noise spectrum. On the other hand it is far and away the best system for ‘playing’ damaged or compromised discs, such as lacquers that are beginning to delaminate."

I believe so. At least, they accept donations of wax cylinders.

https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360017876312-How-...