_Inverted Grooves
Extrait du blog www.kempa.com
"Another fun trick that can be employed while cutting the master plates for a vinyl release is the inverted groove - that is, a record that plays from the inside out. Since the direction in which a standard turntable 'turns' to plays a record is not reversible (Without human intervention), the direction of the grooves is reversed.
This practice appears to have practical origins in radio and soundtrack applications. Radioarchives.org is a site dedicated to preserving first generation copies (ie vinyl) of early radio programming. Some choice bits in the way of explanation from their site:
"Another fun trick that can be employed while cutting the master plates for a vinyl release is the inverted groove - that is, a record that plays from the inside out. Since the direction in which a standard turntable 'turns' to plays a record is not reversible (Without human intervention), the direction of the grooves is reversed.
This practice appears to have practical origins in radio and soundtrack applications. Radioarchives.org is a site dedicated to preserving first generation copies (ie vinyl) of early radio programming. Some choice bits in the way of explanation from their site:
"During the golden age of radio, programs were generally recorded on 16" disks. Some were recorded during a live broadcast; others were pre-recorded for distribution to local stations. Since the concept of repeating a recorded broadcast didn't really take hold until the early 1950s, many of these recordings were not retained once they had been played for reference purposes."
...
Were inside-out records common back then, for that or other purposes? I did hear that there are a number of novelty records being made that way today, but with caution that they wreak havoc on modern tracking systems. Could one reason for using inside-out records in movies be that, with the assumption that outer tracks sound better than inner tracks, it saves the best quality sound for last?" The only reply that this post garnered was the following:"Sixteen-inch transcriptions were done in the days before hot-stylus cutting, so audio that was crisp and clear at the edge of a 33 1/3 rpm record would become muddy and muffled near the label. Therefore, transcriptions were usually done alternating outside-in for side 1, inside-out for side 2, outside-in for side 3, etc. This meant that the sound quality would change gradually over a 30 minute cycle, rather than a jarring difference every 15 minutes when the record sides switched.""Another reason for inside-out records was that they required less babysitting while being cut. The chip cut from a lacquer has a tendancy to drift towards the center. If the record runs from the outside in, the operator has to sit there and constantly brush the chip away from the approaching cutting stylus. If it's cut inside out, the cutting stylus is moving away from the chip, and the operator has one less thing to worry about."
"In the '50s, hot-stylus cutting and chip suction came along and made both of these issues moot points. Of course, they came with their own set of problems, but that's a different story..."
posted by Ekleroshock at 11:38 PM
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