OldADC
Active Member
Folks,
After another long hiatus from when I engaged on this board in 2010, I am back with more questions.
Years ago, I was a phonograph cartridge designer at ADC. There is an old thread here in 2010 that has a bunch of that information. It is really quite intriguing that vinyl is seeing such a resurgence and it does tempt me to build a new cartridge design or two. One might be a moving coil similar to the design used in a paper I published in AES from the 1982 Montreaux conference. Another would likely be to use diamagnetic materials to magnetically suspend the cantilever assembly in a stable ferromagnetic/induced diagmagnetic arrangement such that the cantilever isn't actually physically touching anything.
The burning question is.....does anyone care? It would seem that with the resurgence of vinyl, then a re-imagining of cartridge design to take advantage of more modern materials would be welcome (and by that I mean, guys would actually buy them not just say glowing things about them on web boards.....hahaha)
Finally, and much more radically....would anyone actually be interested in a pure optical analog recording technique and medium? I have worked in the laser design business now for the past 24 years and know that a high dynamic range, pure analog recording technique is possible. The materials for recording and reproduction are possible. The only real difficulty is the capitalization (~$100M) required to introduce a new software media format that would allow all of the recording hardware to write/optically those records (the piece equivalent to a vinyl record), the hardware necessary to manufacture in volume all those records, and all the hardware at the consumer level required to play back those recordings. Clearly, I might (and can) do the technology but will have to team with a serious industry giant who would have the financial resources to introduce a new media format.
Would a sufficient number of people care that there would be available an analog technique that would be even more "purist" than vinyl? All of the analog goodness of vinyl without any of the problems of vinyl...
Curious to hear your feedback either encouraging or not....
Thanks,
Eric
After another long hiatus from when I engaged on this board in 2010, I am back with more questions.
Years ago, I was a phonograph cartridge designer at ADC. There is an old thread here in 2010 that has a bunch of that information. It is really quite intriguing that vinyl is seeing such a resurgence and it does tempt me to build a new cartridge design or two. One might be a moving coil similar to the design used in a paper I published in AES from the 1982 Montreaux conference. Another would likely be to use diamagnetic materials to magnetically suspend the cantilever assembly in a stable ferromagnetic/induced diagmagnetic arrangement such that the cantilever isn't actually physically touching anything.
The burning question is.....does anyone care? It would seem that with the resurgence of vinyl, then a re-imagining of cartridge design to take advantage of more modern materials would be welcome (and by that I mean, guys would actually buy them not just say glowing things about them on web boards.....hahaha)
Finally, and much more radically....would anyone actually be interested in a pure optical analog recording technique and medium? I have worked in the laser design business now for the past 24 years and know that a high dynamic range, pure analog recording technique is possible. The materials for recording and reproduction are possible. The only real difficulty is the capitalization (~$100M) required to introduce a new software media format that would allow all of the recording hardware to write/optically those records (the piece equivalent to a vinyl record), the hardware necessary to manufacture in volume all those records, and all the hardware at the consumer level required to play back those recordings. Clearly, I might (and can) do the technology but will have to team with a serious industry giant who would have the financial resources to introduce a new media format.
Would a sufficient number of people care that there would be available an analog technique that would be even more "purist" than vinyl? All of the analog goodness of vinyl without any of the problems of vinyl...
Curious to hear your feedback either encouraging or not....
Thanks,
Eric