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From: wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin )
Newsgroups: net.audio
Subject: Playing analog records by laser
Message-ID: <10065@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 19-Apr-85 09:11:44 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.10065
Posted: Fri Apr 19 09:11:44 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Apr-85 02:40:55 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: USAMC ALMSA
Lines: 55

Vindication!  Longtime net.audio readers will recall a brief discussion
some months back, prompted by a posting I made mentioning how it would
seem to be desireable that a laser-based, non-contact mechanism for
playing the existing world stock of analog (ordinary vinyl [or shellac :-])
records be devised. Well, either somebody passed this on to the audio
industry as I had requested, or the idea was in the air and under
independent development at various sites. Here is an item from the trade
paper, AUDIO TIMES, of April 1985 (p.5):

ANALOG TURNTABLE USES LASER TO PLAY LP RECORDS (by Ron Scibilia)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- An American company is developing a high-end turntable
that uses a laser to read conventional vinyl records.

Finial Technology, the 18-month-old company here in the high-tech hub of
northern California that's working on the device, argues that such a 
player would sound better than current high-end turntables that use 
magnetic phono cartridges.

"You'll get superior sound," contends Finial's marketing manager Michael May,
"because of the zero-inertia properties of light as opposed to a 
conventional turntable where you have a stylus dancing back and forth in
a groove at 1,400 G's, all the while grinding down the record at 2,700 psi.
With a laser, there are a lot of physical dynamics you just don't have to
deal with."

May says the company has no plans to demonstrate a market-ready product soon.
Finial will be at the upcoming Summer CES, but will not display the new
unit. Instead, the company will make what May calls an "educational
presentation". "We have no intention of rushing the development of the
product. We want it to meet some very exacting high-performance specs
before we show it," he says. "The last thing we're interested in is
pre-release hype."

When the turntable is ready, May expects Finial to produce the unit itself
as well as possibly license the technology to other companies.

***End of quoted article***

Well, maybe some of you out there in Mountain View can do a little industrial
espionage and post more info about this if you can find it out... This might
get to be another perpetual "pre-product", like the CompuSonics floppy
recorder, but we shall see. Personally, I would have used the word
"tonearm" instead of many of the times the writer used "turntable" in
the above, though I suppose there is no reason to expect that the record
will actually rotate in the eventual product these people produce...

I still think a non-contact player of existing analog discs would be the best
of both worlds...

Regards,

Will Martin

USENET: seismo!brl-bmd!wmartin     or   ARPA/MILNET: wmartin@almsa-1.ARPA