>>11212715To understand the genius behind vinyl you first need to understand how sound waves work. Sounds are produced by vibrations and travel through the air as waves, which are vibrating particles. The waves transfer energy from the source of the sound out to its surroundings. Your ear detects sound waves when vibrating air particles cause your eardrum to vibrate. The bigger the vibrations the louder the sound. The groves you can see on a vinyl record are actually sound waves or more like a type of fingerprint of the sound waves captured in a lacquer disc that we call a vinyl record. These three-dimensional grooves cut in the vinyl record are a recording of how the sound waves behave as they move through the air.
A typical record player has a type of needle called a stylus that is placed gently on the vinyl record resting in the beginning of one of the groves. As the vinyl disc steadily rotates the stylus moves through the wavy three dimensional groves. The stylus is a tiny crystal of sapphire or diamond mounted at the very end of a lightweight metal bar like a needle. As the crystal vibrates in the groove, its microscopic bounces are transmitted down the bar. The stylus fits onto the end of an electromagnetic device called a cartridge, containing a piezoelectric crystal. The metal bar presses against the crystal and each time it moves, it wobbles the crystal slightly, generating an electrical signal. These signals are fed out to the amplifier to make the sounds you hear through your speakers or headphones. Not all record-player cartridges use piezoelectricity to convert sound vibrations to electrical signals. Some have tiny electrical coils and a magnet inside them. When the stylus moves, it pushes the magnet up and down past the coil, generating electrical signals that are fed to the amplifier to create sound through your speakers.
