VINYL Design moment
A century and a half after the first sound recording, there’s a new appreciation for vinyl discs. gets into the groove. Chris Pearson
“Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow.” In 1877, in his New Jersey workshop, Thomas Edison (pictured at top right) uttered these simple words into a device he called a phonograph. Then, miraculously, he played them back. While faint and crackly, their significance eclipsed any shortcomings: he had just invented recorded sound.
Edison’s machine recorded his rhyme onto a sheet of tinfoil wrapped around a revolving cylinder. A stylus produced a groove in the foil in response to his voice; a second stylus played it back. The sound was faint and the tinfoil lasted for just a few playings, but Edison could already see great potential. He cited 10 uses for his invention, including dictation, teaching elocution, books for the blind and, fourth on the list, music reproduction.
Alexander Graham Bell (of telephone fame) tweaked the device in the 1880s, introducing hardier, wax-coated cardboard cylinders and a cutting stylus that produced better sound. Later that decade, Emile Berliner invented the record as we know it, swapping the cylinder for a flat disc with a groove spiralling towards the centre.
Gradual improvements were made to the turntable, stylus, sound processing and discs (shellac records gave way to vinyl in the early 1950s), but the concept remained essentially unchanged until the 1970s, when cassette tapes made music more portable. Then the ’80s ushered in the compact disc and its arguably superior sound, without hisses or crackles. It should have been the record’s nemesis, the vinyl countdown.
But even the CD wasn’t infallible. First came MP3 downloads. Now, with speedier broadband, streaming services such as Spotify are delivering instant music.
But at the same time, something strange has happened. In a case of back to the future, vinyl has made a comeback. And it’s not just baby boomers trying to wind back the clock. In the UK in 2016, according to researchers ICM Unlimited, nearly 50 per cent of vinyl buyers were 35 or younger, while those aged 45 to 64 notched up 28 per cent of sales. WHAT IT MEANS TO US From 2015 to 2016, according to the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), revenue from streaming was up from $71.1m to $135.5m, digital downloads of albums and individual tracks were down from $132.5m to $105m, and sales of CD albums dropped from $110.6m to $87.2m. But vinyl shot up from $8.9m to $15.1m (from 374,097 units to 655,301), an increase of more than 70 per cent.
“Vinyl is all about the sound quality,” says Len Wallis of Sydney’s Len Wallis Audio, who opened his business in 1978 when records ruled and has seen many audio formats come and go. “With a good turntable, the best equipment and records in good condition, it’s the best sound format. With CDs and MP3, the music is compressed, so they can’t capture the dynamics and the warmth and involvement of vinyl. To a generation that has grown up with compressed music, vinyl sounds good.”
So, hipsters are tuning in to vinyl while baby boomers are dusting off their stored LPs, reliving the nostalgia of putting albums back in their sleeves and poring over the cover notes and artwork. In response, new turntables, such as the Gramovox ‘Floating Record’ player, are getting sexier.
“It’s ironic,” says Wallis. “The technology in vinyl is archaic – a diamond needle vibrating on a plastic disk – yet the future’s in streaming
and vinyl, as crazy as that sounds.”