Phonograph record

For about half a century, the discs were commonly made from shellac and these records typically ran at a rotational speed of 78 rpm, giving it the nickname "78s" ("seventy-eights").

After the 1940s, "vinyl" records made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) became standard replacing the old 78s and remain so to this day; they have since been produced in various sizes and speeds, most commonly 7-inch discs played at 45 rpm (typically for singles, also called 45s ("forty-fives")), and 12-inch discs played at 33⅓ rpm (known as an LP, "long-playing records", typically for full-length albums) – the latter being the most prevalent format today.

[1] Since the 1990s, records continue to be manufactured and sold on a smaller scale, and during the 1990s and early 2000s were commonly used by disc jockeys (DJs), especially in dance music genres.

[citation needed] The phrase broken record refers to a malfunction when the needle skips/jumps back to the previous groove and plays the same section over and over again indefinitely.

To claim that the records have succeeded in exact and complete reproduction of all details of symphonic or operatic performances ... would be extravagant ... [but] the article of today is so far in advance of the old machines as hardly to admit classification under the same name.

Victor's first public demonstration of the Orthophonic Victrola on 6 October 1925, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel was front-page news in The New York Times, which reported: The audience broke into applause ... John Philip Sousa [said]: '[Gentlemen], that is a band.

[36] During the Second World War, the United States Armed Forces produced thousands of 12-inch vinyl 78 rpm V-Discs for use by the troops overseas.

[37] After the war, the use of vinyl became more practical as new record players with lightweight crystal pickups and precision-ground styli made of sapphire or an exotic osmium alloy proliferated.

For example, on 10 June 1924, four months after the 12 February premier of Rhapsody in Blue, George Gershwin recorded an abridged version of the seventeen-minute work with Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra.

[49] German record company Odeon pioneered the album in 1909 when it released the Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky on four double-sided discs in a specially designed package.

[51] In 1978, guitarist and vocalist Leon Redbone released a promotional 78-rpm single featuring two songs ("Alabama Jubilee" and "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone") from his Champagne Charlie album.

[52] In the same vein of Tin Pan Alley revivals, R. Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders issued a number of 78-rpm singles on their Blue Goose record label.

In the 1990s Rhino Records issued a series of boxed sets of 78-rpm reissues of early rock and roll hits, intended for owners of vintage jukeboxes.

These vinyl Rhino 78s were softer and would be destroyed by old juke boxes and old record players, but play well on newer 78-capable turntables with modern lightweight tone arms and jewel needles.

[57][58][59] Unwilling to accept and license Columbia's system, in February 1949, RCA Victor released the first 45 rpm single, 7 inches in diameter with a large center hole.

EP discs were cheaper to produce and were used in cases where unit sales were likely to be more limited or to reissue LP albums on the smaller format for those people who had only 45 rpm players.

[68] The term "high fidelity" was coined in the 1920s by some manufacturers of radio receivers and phonographs to differentiate their better-sounding products claimed as providing "perfect" sound reproduction.

[76] The system deliberately reduced disk noise by 10 to 12 dB(A) only[77] to remain virtually free of recognizable acoustical artifacts even when records were played back without an UC expander.

[86] The first 45 rpm record created for sale was "PeeWee the Piccolo" RCA Victor 47-0147 pressed in yellow translucent vinyl at the Sherman Avenue plant, Indianapolis on 7 December 1948, by R. O.

[91] The HD process works by converting audio to a digital 3D topography map that is then inscribed onto the vinyl stamper via lasers, resulting in less loss of information.

[92] In May 2019, at the Making Vinyl conference in Berlin, Loibl unveiled the software "Perfect Groove" for creating 3D topographic audio data files.

[98] Following the vinyl revival of the 21st century, select manufacturers adopted bioplastic-based records due to concerns over the environmental impact of widespread PVC use.

[103] A further limitation of the gramophone record is that fidelity steadily declines as playback progresses; there is more vinyl per second available for fine reproduction of high frequencies at the large-diameter beginning of the groove than exist at the smaller diameters close to the end of the side.

[109] Thin, closely spaced spiral grooves that allow for increased playing time on a 33+1⁄3 rpm microgroove LP lead to a tinny pre-echo warning of upcoming loud sounds.

Additionally, turntable rumble and acoustic feedback obscures the low-end limit of vinyl but the upper end can be, with some cartridges, reasonably flat within a few decibels to 30 kHz, with gentle roll-off.

However, for accurate transfer, professional archivists carefully choose the correct stylus shape and diameter, tracking weight, equalisation curve and other playback parameters and use high-quality analogue-to-digital converters.

[121] Groove recordings, first designed in the final quarter of the 19th century, held a predominant position for nearly a century—withstanding competition from reel-to-reel tape, the 8-track cartridge, and the compact cassette.

Vinyl records experienced a sudden decline in popularity between 1988 and 1991,[123] when the major label distributors restricted their return policies, which retailers had been relying on to maintain and swap out stocks of relatively unpopular titles.

[130] In spite of their flaws, records continued to have enthusiastic supporters, partly due to a preference of its "warmer" sound and its larger sleeve artwork.

[132] The Entertainment Retailers Association in the United Kingdom found in 2011 that consumers were willing to pay on average £16.30 (€19.37, US$25.81) for a single vinyl record, as opposed to £7.82 (€9.30, US$12.38) for a CD and £6.80 (€8.09, US$10.76) for a digital download.