As vinyl sales are reaching heights that haven’t been seen in decades, we’re starting to see increased innovation in the medium. With new pressing techniques on the way, it now appears that an increase in audio quality and volume are going to follow.
Austrian company Rebeat Digital has filed a patent in the EU which promises to increase the volume and informational capacity of records by 30% within three years. Patents for the rest of the world have yet to be filed but they are expected to come soon.
Currently, since vinyl was all but dead not too long ago, records are mostly pressed using a time consuming, manual process based on technology from the ’60s. With the medium’s surge in popularity, however this has lead to a bottleneck effect in the production process as labels try to meet increasing demand.
Rebeat Digital plans to use 3D topographical mapping and laser encryption to yield a superior product in a much quicker fashion. The company claims that this new process will decrease production costs by 50%, while decreasing production time by 60%, alleviating the bottleneck. Most encouragingly, records produced using this proposed method will be 100% compatible with turntables currently available.
At this point, this is still all hypothetical. Even so, it is encouraging enough that the debate over whether vinyl sounds better than digital files — it does, and science can prove that — may soon be put fully to rest.
Via: Digital Music News