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The Needle Wiggler

Play any audio on your favorite phonograph
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Its size and shape is like a vinyl record, but has three adjustable “feet” so it stands ever so slightly above your rotating turntable. This “record” doesn’t spin, but it plays through the needle like a record would. And here’s how:

There’s a special “cup” on the Needle Wiggler into which the phonograph needle rests. This tiny cup vibrates by the movement of electromagnets, similar to the way a recording lathe cuts a groove in a record. The Needle Wiggler disk has circuitry to simulate a record groove's motion and an input jack. Plug your ordinary portable CD player, computer, or mp3 player into this device, and start your phonograph. The platter turns, the tonearm moves and the needle settles into the cup which wiggles the phono cartridge’s needle in response to the music. Listen to CDs on your familiar old vacuum tube amp record player.

The reason it’s designed much like a real record is so that most turntables will play it without modifications. The hb member [Freefall] suggested playing a CD directly, and this may be possible with a special “laser reader” head (and other changes, a bunch come to mind). But this idea is to allow you to hear digital sounds played by your own phonograph needle.

I would dearly like to spin it, like a real record, and have versions with various levels of authentic "pop" and "hiss" available. But it's not possible to wiggle the whole thing properly ...or it is it?...

Amos Kito, Oct 22 2003

vector-mapped waveforms. Store "analog" on a digital computer. http://www.halfbake...-mapped_20waveforms
The idea that brought up "The Needle Wiggler", which I'd been kicking around for a while. [Amos Kito, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]


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Annotation:







       Won't the cup be carried around in a circle by the turntable's table-turniness? Seems it would have to be mounted on its own arm from the center, or in a circular track. Or do the feet extend past the platter to stand on the record player's body and hold the disc slightly above the platter? (Actually, after writing that out as a question, it's apparent that that last option is exactly what you said in your first sentence, but it wasn't clear to me what that sentence meant until I had the question of whether it meant what it turns out to mean in mind.)
notexactly, Sep 29 2019
  

       It would be ever so slightly interesting to see what happens to sounds if they are repeatedly put through D-to-A and A-to-D. I suppose after enough iterations you'd lose the original input and just get the sound of pure analogness (or digitalness).
MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 29 2019
  

       [+]
Voice, Sep 29 2019
  


 

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