33 RPM RECORD LICENSE

The tone arm then swung back into place and the music would continue. Once a side of a 45 finished playing after five or six minutes, the tone arm moved away long enough for the next record to drop down onto the platter. While the LP promised up to 22 minutes of uninterrupted music per side, RCA’s crowed that their 45s could be stacked on the special tall, fat spindle-about 6 inches high-that was exclusive to RCA-manufactured turntables. Why would they do something like that? Two reasons.

33 RPM RECORD LICENSE

Rather than license Columbia’s technology for their releases, RCA introduced their own new record, the 7-inch single that spun at 45 RPM and had a center hole that measured 1.5 inches in diameter. However, Columbia’s archrival, RCA, was most annoyed at this new format. When Columbia Records introduced the 33 1/3 RPM long-playing album in 1948, they kept the hole in the center the same size. That was also the size of the hole drilled into all records. The downside to all this, of course, is a reduction in playback time per side.Īll of the detail aside, 45 RPM records just sound better (providing they’re mastered with skill and manufactured correctly, of course), and this is why many “audiophile” album releases are 45 RPM LP’s spread over a couple of discs.Īll the above is true for 12-inch 45 records as well as the usual 7-inch format.Here is a fundamental question that every vinyl lover has asked: why is the hole of a 7-inch single so big?įor the first fifty years of the turntable’s existence, the spindle on which you placed the record was a standard size: approximately. If that wasn’t enough, 45 RPM cuts experience less inner-groove distortion, as the increased groove velocity helps to minimize the loss of high frequencies and an increase in distortion as the groove moves to the center. The higher the RPM, the greater the length of vinyl picked up by the stylus, and ultimately, the more accurate our sound reproduction becomes.Īdditionally, longer wavelengths, smaller angles in the grooves, and the less complicated geometry at 45 RPM help to cut very precise grooves with very fine detail. If you drew the same animation on 33 and 45 pages respectively, you’d have to flip your 45-page version quicker to get the same speed animation as the 33-page version, but the changes from page-to-page would contain more detail, making the animation considerably smoother.

Since 45 records travel faster than 33 RPM, more waveform definition can exist on the record surface in other words, there are more bumps and grooves created, which means better audio quality. There are quite a few technical details as to why this is the case, so for the purpose of this article, I will try to key this simple: 12-Inch LP’s mastered at 45 RPM sound better.

What’s the Difference Between 33 and 45 RPM?ģ3 RPM records have always presented a compromise in sound quality, in exchange for longer playback time. Most lack dynamics, and sound thin and noisy. Sadly, most of these releases are style over function and don’t sound particularly good. More often, however, when we think of picture discs, we think of collector’s items with full-color graphics over the playback surface. In fact, they date back as far as 1900, when the Canadian Berliner Gramophone Company had the “His Master’s Voice” dog-and-gramophone trademark lightly etched into the playback surface of some seven-inch shellac records as an anti-piracy measure. The roots of picture disc records go back further than you might think. We’ve all seen those picture discs hanging on the wall in record shops. After about fifty plays, the loss in sound quality becomes noticeable. Traditionally, the material of a dubplate is much softer than pressed vinyl.

These dubplates will often be unreleased recordings, exclusive versions, or remixes of existing recordings. They’re also used by drum and bass and other electronic music producers. In reggae dancehall culture, a dubplate refers to an exclusive, ‘one-off’ acetate disc recording that only some DJs have access to. (Most are 10-inch discs, but 12-inch versions are available). Very nostalgic nonetheless.Ī dubplate is a type of sample disc (referred to as an acetate disc) used in mastering studios for test recordings before proceeding with the final master, and mass-produced vinyl pressing. As you can imagine, the quality wasn’t great as the thin material and subsequent shallow grooves didn’t reproduce great sound.

33 rpm record