Laser turntable
A laser turntable (or optical turntable) is a phonograph that plays standard LP records (and other gramophone records) using laser beams as the pickup instead of using a stylus as in conventional turntables. Although these turntables use laser pickups, the same as Compact Disc players, the signal remains in the analog realm and is never digitized.
developed by physicists Carl Haber and Vitaliy Fadeyev of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Installed in the Library of Congress late in 2006, IRENE (for Image, Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etc.)[21] uses a camera rotating around the record and taking detailed photographs of the grooves. Software then uses the digital images to reconstruct the sound.[22] In 2018 the system was used to play, for the first time, the only known recording of Alexander Graham Bell's voice. IRENE often produces a large amount of hiss with the recording, but it is very capable of removing pops and clicks produced by imperfections on the record surface.[23]
IRENE
developed by the Swiss National Sound Archives and the School of Engineering and Architecture of Fribourg.
VisualAudio
A laser beam reflection method was developed by Japanese scientists in Hokkaido university in 1986 for the purpose of reading audio recordings of Ainu language made on fragile wax cylinders.
[25]
A similar technology is to scan or photograph the grooves of the record, and then reconstruct the sound from the modulation of the groove revealed by the image. Research groups that developed this technology include:
LaserDisc
Uozumi, Jun, and Toshimitsu Asakura. "Reproduction of sound from old disks by the laser diffraction method." Applied optics 27.13 (1988): 2671-2676.
Nakamura, Takashi, et al. "" Proceedings of SPIE. Vol. 3190. 1997.
Optical reproduction of sounds from old phonographic wax cylinders.
Uozumi, Jun, and T. Asakura. "Optical methods for reproducing sounds from old phonograph records." International Trends in Optics and Photonics: ICO IV (1999): 409-425.
Uozumi, Jun, Tsuyoshi Ushizaka, and Toshimitsu Asakura. "Optical reproduction of sounds from negative phonograph cylinders." Optics and Lasers in Biomedicine and Culture: Contributions to the Fifth International Conference on Optics Within Life Sciences OWLS V Crete, 13–16 October 1998. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2000.
Asakura, Toshimitsu, et al. "Study on reproduction of sound from old wax phonograph cylinders using the laser." Optics and Lasers in Biomedicine and Culture: Contributions to the Fifth International Conference on Optics Within Life Sciences OWLS V Crete, 13–16 October 1998. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2000.
Fadeyev, Vitaliy, and Carl Haber. "" Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 51.12 (2003): 1172-1185.
Reconstruction of mechanically recorded sound by image processing.
Stotzer, Sylvain, et al. "" IASA Journal (2003): 38-47.
Visualaudio: an optical technique to save the sound of phonographic records.
Penn, William A., and Martha J. Hanson. "" First Monday 8.5-5 (2003).
The Syracuse University Library Radius Project: Development of a non-destructive playback system for cylinder recordings.
McCann, M., P. Calamia, and N. Ailon. "Audio Extraction from Optical Scans of Records." (2004).
Stotzer, Sylvain. Diss. Université de Fribourg, 2006.
Phonographic record sound extraction by image processing.
Tian, Baozhong, and John L. Barron. "" Irish Machine Vision and Image Processing Conference. 2006.
Reproduction of sound signal from gramophone records using 3d scene reconstruction.
Li, Beinan, Simon de Leon, and Ichiro Fujinaga. "" ISMIR. 2007.
Alternative Digitization Approach for Stereo Phonograph Records Using Optical Audio Reconstruction.
Cornell, Earl W., et al. "" Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment 579.2 (2007): 901-904.
Using optical metrology to reconstruct sound recordings.
Aleksandrović, Vesna. "" Review of National Center for Digitization 12 (2008): 37-42.
Analog/digital sound. National Library of Serbia digital collection of 78 rpm gramophone records.
Boltryk, P. J., et al. "Noncontact surface metrology for preservation and sound recovery from mechanical sound recordings." Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 56.7/8 (2008): 545-559.
Li, Beinan, Jordan BL Smith, and Ichiro Fujinaga. "" ISMIR. 2009.
Optical Audio Reconstruction for Stereo Phonograph Records Using White Light Interferometry.
Tian, Baozhong, Samuel Sambasivam, and John Barron. "Practical digital playback of gramophone records using flat-bed scanner images." Audio Engineering Society Convention 131. Audio Engineering Society, 2011.
Hayes, James. "Lasers get groovy." Engineering & Technology 6.11 (2011): 58-59.
Janukiewicz, Kristofer. "" (2016).
A Laser Triangulation Approach for Optical Audio Reconstruction of Phonograph Records.
Chenot, Jean-Hugues, Louis Laborelli, and Jean-Étienne Noiré. "" Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage 11.3 (2018): 14-1.
Saphir: optical playback of damaged and delaminated analogue audio disc records.
Chenot, Jean-Hugues, Louis Laborelli, and Jean-Etienne Noiré. ""
Saphir: Digitizing broken and cracked or delaminated lacquer 78 rpm records using a desktop optical scanner.
Hawkins, Julia, and Bryce Roe. "" Journal of Digital Media Management 9.3 (2021): 262-278.
IRENE audio preservation at the Northeast Document Conservation Center: Developing workflows and standards for preservation projects that use innovative technology.
Chenot, Jean-Hugues, and Jean-Etienne Noiré. "" Audio Engineering Society Conference: AES 2023 International Conference on Audio Archiving, Preservation & Restoration. Audio Engineering Society, 2023.
Challenges in Optical Recovery of Otherwise Unplayable Analogue Audio Disc Records.
Using Optical Metrology to Restore Sound Recordings
Using Physics to Restore Early Sound Recordings
Reconstruct Sound Recordings
ELP Japan website
ELPJ – About the laser turntable
– Sound Reproduction R & D Home Page
Record scanning using IRENE
– VisualAudio: An optical technique to save the sound of phonographic records
Record scanning
(archived 30-03-2024)Japan External Trade Organization