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I absolutely thought it was a joke! Thanks for the context!

Any clue it’s possible to read vinyl records this way or are the grooves/material too ill suited for lasers to easily read? Reading deformities of grooves seems like it would require orders of magnitude more precision than the length and spacing of pits, but I know nothing about the physics and hardware here.

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ELP Japan has you covered!

https://www.elpj.com/

Last time I looked into this, I heard it was good if you had a REALLY good record cleaner. It’s extremely sensitive to dust in the groove.

Contact-free laser record players exist and have for quite a while, yeah. Main benefit AFAI can tell is avoiding wear on the vinyl.

None are sold to the common consumer or even usable if you had the money [1].

Vinyl wear by using a needle is overstated anyway [2].

[1]: https://youtu.be/2oeTqAogMvA?t=248

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf_cPU8gtd8

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