LP record

This article is about vinyl or gramophone records. For music albums in general, see Album.

"Long play" and "Long Player" redirect here. For the video format, see Long play (VCR format). For video game playthroughs, see Longplay (video games). For the album by the Faces, see Long Player (album).

LP

At top, format logo used on early issues. Below, a typical LP, showing its central spindle hole and label surrounded by the grooved area. Three separate "tracks" are visible, but all are parts of one continuous spiral groove.
Media type	Audio playback
Encoding	Analog groove modulation
Capacity	Originally 22 minutes per side, later increased by several minutes, much longer possible with very low signal level
Read mechanism	Microgroove stylus (maximum tip radius 0.001 in or 25 µm)
Dimensions	12 in (30 cm), 10 in (25 cm)
Usage	Audio storage
Extended from	1948
Extended to	Present

The LP (long play), or ​33 ¹⁄₃ rpm microgroove vinyl record, is a format for phonograph (gramophone) records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry. Apart from relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound capability, it has remained the standard format for vinyl albums.

Format advantages

At the time the LP was introduced, nearly all phonograph records for home use were made of an abrasive (and therefore noisy) shellac compound, employed a much larger groove, and played at approximately 78 revolutions per minute (rpm), limiting the playing time of a 12-inch diameter record to less than five minutes per side. The new product was a 12- or 10-inch (30 or 25 cm) fine-grooved disc made of vinyl and played with a smaller-tipped "microgroove" stylus at a speed of ​33 ¹⁄₃ rpm. Each side of a 12-inch LP could play for more than 20 minutes. Only the microgroove standard was truly new, as both vinyl and the ​33 ¹⁄₃ rpm speed had been used for special purposes for many years, as well as in one unsuccessful earlier attempt to introduce a long-playing record for home use.

Although the LP was especially suited to classical music because of its extended continuous playing time, it also allowed a collection of ten or more typical pop music recordings to be put on a single disc. Previously, such collections, as well as longer classical music broken up into several parts, had been sold as sets of 78 rpm records in a specially imprinted "record album" consisting of individual record sleeves bound together in book form. The use of the word "album" persisted for the one-disc LP equivalent.

History

Soundtrack discs

Neumann SX-24 Record Cutting Machine

Neumann SX-24 Record Cutting Machine

Neumann SX-24 Record Cutting Machine

The prototype of the LP was the soundtrack disc used by the Vitaphone motion picture sound system, developed by Western Electric and introduced in 1926. For soundtrack purposes, the less than five minutes of playing time of each side of a conventional 12-inch 78 rpm disc was not acceptable. The sound had to play continuously for at least 11 minutes, long enough to accompany a full 1,000-foot (300 m) reel of 35 mm film projected at 24 frames per second. The disc diameter was increased to 16 inches (40 cm) and the speed was reduced to ​33 ¹⁄₃ revolutions per minute. Unlike their smaller LP descendants, they were made with the same large "standard groove" used by 78s.

Unlike conventional records, the groove started at the inside of the recorded area near the label and proceeded outward toward the edge. Like 78s, early soundtrack discs were pressed in an abrasive shellac compound and played with a single-use steel needle held in a massive electromagnetic pickup with a tracking force of five ounces (1.4 N).

By mid-1931, all motion picture studios were recording on optical soundtracks, but sets of soundtrack discs, mastered by dubbing from the optical tracks and scaled down to 12 inches to cut costs, were made as late as 1936 for distribution to theaters still equipped with disc-only sound projectors.

Radio transcription discs

Syndicated radio programming was distributed on 78 rpm discs beginning in 1928. The desirability of a longer continuous playing time soon led to the adoption of the Vitaphone soundtrack disc format. 16-inch ​33 ¹⁄₃ rpm discs playing about 15 minutes per side were used for most of these "electrical transcriptions" beginning about 1930. Transcriptions were variously recorded inside out like soundtrack discs or with an outside start.

Longer pieces recorded live which extended over the course of several discs, pioneered the system of recording odd-numbered sides inside-out and even-numbered sides outside-in so that the fidelity would match when changing sides or discs. Since no changers were present in radio broadcasting, the sides had to be pressed in a hybrid of manual and automatic sequencing, arranged in such a manner that no single disc had to be turned over to play its other half, i.e., instead of a three-disc set having 1–2, 3–4 and 5–6 for manual or 1–6, 2–5 and 3–4 for automatic, broadcast sequences would have 1–4, 2–5 and 3–6.

Some transcriptions were recorded with a vertically modulated "hill and dale" groove, as this was found to allow not only a deeper bass due to the fact that turntable rumble was laterally-modulated in early radio station turntables, but also an extension of the high-end frequency response, neither of which was necessarily a great advantage in practice because of the limitations of AM broadcasting. However, today we can enjoy the benefits of those higher-fidelity recordings, even if the original radio audiences could not.

Initially, transcription discs were pressed only in shellac, but by 1932 pressings in RCA Victor's vinyl-based "Victrolac" were appearing. Other plastics were sometimes used. By the late 1930s, vinyl was standard for nearly all kinds of pressed discs except ordinary commercial 78s, which continued to be made of shellac.

Beginning in the mid-1930s, one-off 16-inch ​33 ¹⁄₃ rpm lacquer discs were used by radio networks to archive recordings of their live broadcasts, and by local stations to delay the broadcast of network programming or to prerecord their own productions. In the late 1940s, magnetic tape recorders were adopted by the networks to prerecord shows or repeat them for airing in different time zones, but 16-inch vinyl pressings continued to be used into the early 1960s for non-network distribution of prerecorded programming. The LP's microgroove standard started to be incorporated in the late 1950s, and in the 1960s the discs were reduced to 12 inches, becoming physically indistinguishable from ordinary LPs.

Unless the quantity required was very small, pressed discs were a more economical medium for distributing high-quality audio than tape, and CD mastering was, in the early years of that technology, very expensive, so the use of LP-format transcription discs continued into the 1990s. The King Biscuit Flower Hour is a late example, as are Westwood One's The Beatle Years and Doctor Demento programs, which were sent to stations on LP at least through 1992.

RCA Victor

RCA Victor introduced an early version of a long-playing record for home use in September 1931. These "Program Transcription" discs, as Victor called them, played at ​33 ¹⁄₃ rpm and used a somewhat finer and more closely spaced groove than typical 78s. They were to be played with a special "Chromium Orange" chrome-plated steel needle. The 10-inch discs, mostly used for popular and light classical music, were normally pressed in shellac, but the 12-inch discs, mostly used for "serious" classical music, were normally pressed in Victor's new vinyl-based Victrolac compound, which provided a much quieter playing surface. They could hold up to 15 minutes per side. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, performed by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski, was the first 12-inch recording issued. The New York Times wrote, "What we were not prepared for was the quality of reproduction ... incomparably fuller." Unfortunately for Victor, it was downhill from there. Many of the subsequent issues were not new recordings but simply dubs made from existing 78 rpm record sets. The dubs were audibly inferior to the original 78s. Two-speed turntables with the ​33 ¹⁄₃ rpm speed were included only on expensive high-end machines, which sold in small numbers, and people were not buying many records of any kind at the time. Overall record sales in the US had crashed from a high of 105.6 million records sold in 1921 to 5.5 million in 1933, because of competition from radio and the effects of the Great Depression. Few if any new Program Transcriptions were recorded after 1933 and two-speed turntables soon disappeared from consumer products. Except for a few recordings of background music for funeral parlors, the last of the issued titles had been purged from the company's record catalog by the end of the decade. The failure of the new product left RCA Victor with a low opinion of the prospects for any sort of long-playing record, influencing product development decisions during the coming decade.

Columbia

CBS Laboratories head research scientist Peter Goldmark led Columbia's team to develop a phonograph record that would hold at least 20 minutes per side. The team included Howard H. Scott, who died September 22, 2012, at the age of 92.

Research began in 1941, was suspended during World War II, and then resumed in 1945. Columbia Records unveiled the LP at a press conference in the Waldorf Astoria on June 18, 1948, in two formats: 10 inches (25 centimetres) in diameter, matching that of 78 rpm singles, and 12 inches (30 centimetres) in diameter. The initial release of 132 were: 85 twelve-inch classical LP's, 26 ten-inch classics, 18 ten-inch popular numbers and 4 ten-inch juvenile records. According to the 1949 Columbia catalog, issued for August 1948, the first twelve-inch LP was Mendelssohn's Concerto in E Minor by Nathan Milstein on the violin with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Bruno Walter (ML 4001). Three ten-inch series were released: 'popular', starting with the reissue of The Voice of Frank Sinatra (CL 6001); 'classical', numbering from Beethoven's 8th symphony (ML 2001), and 'juvenile', commencing with Nursery Songs by Gene Kelly (JL 8001). Also released at this time were a pair of 2-LP sets, Puccini's La Bohème, SL-1 and Humperdinck's Hansel & Gretel, SL-2.

Public reception

When the LP was introduced in 1948, the 78 was the conventional format for phonograph records. By 1952, 78s still accounted for slightly more than half of the units sold in the United States, and just under half of the dollar sales. The 45, oriented toward the single song, accounted for just over 30% of unit sales and just over 25% of dollar sales. The LP represented not quite 17% of unit sales and just over 26% of dollar sales.

Ten years after their introduction, the share of unit sales for LPs in the US was almost 25%, and of dollar sales 58%. Most of the remainder was taken up by the 45; 78s accounted for only 2% of unit sales and 1% of dollar sales. For this reason, major labels in the United States ceased manufacturing of 78s for popular and classical releases in 1956 with the minor labels following suit, with the final US-made 78 being produced in 1959.

Canada and the UK continued production into 1960 and India, the Philippines and South Africa continued to produce 78s up until 1965, with the last holdout, Argentina continuing the practice until 1970.

The LP's popularity ushered in the Album Era of English-language popular music beginning in the 1960s as performers took advantage of the longer playing time to create coherent themes or concept albums. Although the popularity of LPs fell in the late 1970s with the advent of first cassettes and later compact discs, the album survived as a popular format well into the 2000s.

Vinyl LP records have enjoyed an increased resurgence amongst a younger generation in the early 2010s. Vinyl sales in the UK reached 2.8 million in 2012.

Competing formats

The LP was soon confronted by the "45", a 7-inch (180 mm) diameter fine-grooved vinyl record playing at 45 rpm. It was introduced by RCA Victor in 1949. In an attempt to compete with the LP boxed albums of 45s were issued, along with EP (Extended Play) 45s, which squeezed two or even three selections onto each side. Despite these efforts the 45 succeeded only in directly replacing the 78 as the format for issuing singles of individual popular songs.

Reel-to-reel magnetic tape recorders posed a new challenge to the LP in the 1950s, but the higher cost of prerecorded tapes was one of several factors that confined tape to a niche market. Cartridge and cassette tapes were more convenient and less expensive than reel-to-reel tapes and became popular for use in automobiles beginning in the mid-1960s. However the LP was not seriously challenged as the primary medium for listening to recorded music at home until the 1970s, when the audio quality of the cassette format was greatly improved by better tape formulations and noise reduction systems. The 1983 world-wide introduction of the digital Compact Disc (CD), which offered a recording that was normally noiseless and not audibly degraded by repeated playing or slight scuffs and scratches, eventually succeeded in toppling the LP from its throne as the initially high prices of CDs and CD players continued to fall.

Along with phonograph records in general, some of which were made of other materials, LPs are now widely referred to simply as "vinyl". From the late 1990s and growing steadily through the 21st century onwards, a renewed interest in vinyl has occurred and the demand for the medium has been on a steady increase yearly in niche markets, particularly among audiophiles, DJs and fans of indie music. Most sales of music are of compact discs or digital file formats because of their generally cheaper prices and wider availability.

The common practice for musicians in recent years has been to release a vinyl disc, CD, and digital file at the same time. In some cases if one invests in the slightly higher price of a vinyl disc, they are also given a CD or digital file download code free of charge with the purchase.

Playing time

When initially introduced, 12-inch LPs played for a maximum of 45 minutes, divided over two sides, with 10-inch versions carrying a maximum of 35 minutes again over two sides.

Owing to marketing attitudes at the time, the 12-inch format was reserved solely for higher-priced classical recordings and Broadway shows. Popular music appeared only on 10-inch records. Executives believed classical music aficionados would leap at the chance to finally hear a Beethoven symphony or a Mozart concerto without having to flip over a seemingly endless series of four-minute-per-side 78s, but popular music fans, used to consuming one song per side at a time, would find the shorter time of the 10-inch LP sufficient. This belief would prove to be erroneous in the end, and by the mid-1950s the 10-inch LP, like its similarly sized 78 rpm record, would lose out in the format wars and be discontinued. Ten-inch records would reappear as mini-albums in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the United States and Australia as a marketing alternative.

Exceptions

See also: Unusual types of gramophone records § Unusually long playing times

However, in 1952, Columbia Records began to bring out extended-play LPs that played for as long as 52 minutes, or 26 minutes per side. These were used mainly for the original cast albums of some Broadway musicals, such as Kiss Me, Kate and My Fair Lady, or in order to fit an entire play, such as the 1950 production of Don Juan in Hell, onto just two LPs. The 52+ minute playing time remained rare, however, because of mastering limitations, and most LPs continued to be issued with a 30- to 45-minute playing time throughout the lifetime of their production.

An extremely limited number of albums would eventually exceed even the 52-minute limitation, with single albums going to as long as ninety minutes in the case of Arthur Fiedler's 1976 LP 90 Minutes with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, made by Radio Shack. However, such records had to be cut with much narrower spacing between the grooves, which allowed for a much smaller amount of dynamic range on the records, and meant that playing the record with a worn needle could damage the record. It also resulted in a much quieter sound. Other notably long albums included the UK version of The Rolling Stones' Aftermath, with each side exceeding 26 minutes in length; Genesis' Duke, with each side exceeding 27 minutes; Bob Dylan's 1976 album Desire, with side two being just shy of thirty minutes; Brian Eno's 1975 album Discreet Music, whose A-side exceeded 30 minutes; Miles Davis' 1972 album Get Up with It, totalling 124:15 min over four sides; Todd Rundgren's 1975 album Initiation, totaling 67:32 min over two sides, and his 1973 album A Wizard, A True Star, whose second side reaches almost thirty minutes; La Monte Young's Dream House 78' 17", whose two sides were each just under 40 minutes (the running time of the album is indeed 78:17 min); and André Previn's Previn Plays Gershwin,, with the London Symphony Orchestra, whose sides each exceeded 30 minutes. Single-LP releases of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony contained over 30 minutes on each side, with the third movement split into two parts. The Greenpeace International Record Project released in 1985 also approaches 40 minutes per side over its two sides. An extremely rare two-disc German pressing restores full sonic clarity and dynamic range lost by the compression to single-disc.

Spoken word and comedy albums, not having a wide range of musical instrumentation to reproduce, can be cut with much narrower spacing between the grooves; for example, The Comic Strip, released by Springtime Records in 1981, has a side A lasting 38:04 min and a side B lasting 31:08 min, for a total of 69:12 min.

In any case, the standard 45-minute playing time of the LP was a significant improvement over that of the previous dominant format, the 78 rpm single, which was generally limited to three to four minutes. At around 14 minutes per side for 10-inch and 23 minutes per side for 12-inch, LPs provided a measured time to enjoy a recording before having to flip discs.

Changers

Some record turntables, called record changers, could play a stack of records piled on a specially designed spindle and arm arrangement. Because of this, many multiple-record sets were released in what is called "automatic sequence". A two-record set would have Side 1 and Side 4 on one record, and Side 2 and Side 3 on the other, so the first two sides could play in a changer without the listener's intervention, and then they could simply flip the stack over. Larger boxed sets used appropriate automatic sequencing (1–8, 2–7, 3–6, 4–5 for example) to allow for ease of continuous playback, but difficulties if searching for an individual track.

In contrast to compact disc players, very few record players, e.g., laser or selected linear tracking turntables like Sharp RP-107/117, could provide a per-track programmable interface, so the record albums play in the same order every time. As the LP achieved market dominance, musicians and producers began to pay special attention to the flow from song to song, to keep a consistent mood or feel, or to provide thematic continuity, as in concept albums.

Vulnerabilities

Vinyl records are much more vulnerable to scratches than CDs. On a record, a scratch can cause popping sounds with each revolution when the needle meets the scratch mark. Deeper scratches can cause the needle to jump out of the groove altogether. If the needle jumps ahead to a groove further inward, information gets skipped. And if it jumps outward to the groove it just finished playing, it can repeat in an infinite loop. This particular result of damage spawned the common simile "like a broken record", referring to anything that repeats seemingly endlessly. Additionally, records used in radio stations can suffer cue burn, which is a result of putting the needle on the record and then backing it up approximately a quarter turn so that it will play at the proper speed when the DJ starts the song. When this is done repeatedly, a hissing sound will preface the start of the actual song.

The large surface area of the record, being vinyl which is a material that is susceptible to becoming statically charged, pulls dust and smoke suspended particles out of the air, also causing crackles, pops, and (in the worst cases of contamination) distortion during playback. Records may be cleaned before playing, using record cleaner and/or antistatic record cleaning fluid and anti-static pads.

Since LP discs are delicate, as well as heavy for their size, people are less inclined to lug a stack of them around – for example, when visiting friends or when traveling – than a similar quantity of music compiled onto 90-minute cassettes, compilation-tapes, or today's digital formats.

Groove

The average LP has about 1,500 feet (460 m or about a third of a mile) of groove on each side. The average tangential needle speed relative to the disc surface is approximately 1 mph, 1.4 km/h or 0.4 m/s. It travels fastest on the outside edge, unlike audio CDs, which change their speed of rotation to provide constant linear velocity (CLV). (By contrast, CDs play from the inner radius outward, the reverse of phonograph records.)

Thin, closely spaced spiral grooves that allowed for increased playing time on a ​33 ¹⁄₃ rpm microgroove LP led to a faint pre-echo warning of upcoming loud sounds. The cutting stylus unavoidably transferred some of the subsequent groove wall's impulse signal into the previous groove wall. It was discernible by some listeners throughout certain recordings but a quiet passage followed by a loud sound would allow anyone to hear a faint pre-echo of the loud sound occurring 1.8 seconds ahead of time. This problem could also appear as "post"-echo, with a ghost of the sound arriving 1.8 seconds after its main impulse.

The RIAA equalization curve (used since 1954) de-emphasizes (weakens) the bass notes during recording, allowing closer spacing of record grooves and hence more playing time. It also boosts the high frequencies so the playback mirror image correction reduces surface noise. On playback, the turntable cartridge pre-amplifier reverses the RIAA curve to flatten out the frequencies again restoring the bass notes to normal and reducing the high frequencies to normal while reducing the inherent background hiss produced by the stylus contacting an imperfect vinyl surface. The net effect of RIAA equalization is to allow longer playing time and lower background noise while maintaining full fidelity of music or other content.

Fidelity and formats

LPs pressed in multicolored vinyl (Sotano Beat: A Todo Color, a various-artists compilation) and clear yellow vinyl - (Rock On Elvis by Tulsa McLean) both from Argentina.

The audio quality of LPs has increased greatly since their 1948 inception. Early LP recordings were monophonic; Alan Blumlein patented Stereophonic sound in 1931 (although stereophony had been demonstrated in 1881) but unsuccessful attempts were made to create stereophonic records from the 1920s, including Emory Cook's 1952 idea of using two tracks, and a system using vertical modulation (harking back to Edison's 1877 experiments) for one channel and (then-universal) horizontal for the other, until the modern system ultimately released by Audio Fidelity Records in November 1957. This format uses two modulation angles, equal and opposite 45 degrees from vertical (and so perpendicular to each other), that can also be thought of as using traditional horizontal modulation for the sum of Left plus Right channels (mono), making it essentially compatible with simple mono recordings, and vertical-plane modulation for the difference of the two channels.

The following are some significant advances in the format.

• stereo sound became commercially available in late 1957/early 1958
• helium-cooled cutting heads that could withstand higher levels of high frequencies (Neumann SX68)— (Previously, the cutting engineer had to reduce the HF content of the signal sent to the record cutting head, otherwise the delicate coils could burn out.)
• Elliptical Stylus (marketed by several manufacturers at the end of the 1960s)
• cartridges that operate at lower tracking forces (~200 mN), beginning from mid-1960s
• half- and one-third-speed record cutting, which extend the usable bandwidth of the record
• Matrixed quadraphonic records (SQ, QS, EV-4, UHJ)
• "discrete" quadraphonic CD4 records, which enabled frequencies of up to 50 kHz to be recorded and played back
• longer-lasting, antistatic record compounds (e.g.: RCA Dynaflex, Q-540)
• better stylus tip shapes (Shibata, Van den Hul, MicroLine, etc.)
• Direct Metal Mastering
• noise-reduction (CX encoding, DBX encoding), starting from 1973
• In the late 1970s, engineers Jerry Block and Tom Bates devised a preview system of mastering vinyl which allowed about 10-20% more music per disc while not sacrificing dynamic range. The preview head was 60 seconds before the cutting head, thus allowing the cutter to know to allow less space for quiet passages. The Compudisk system was sold to Philips.
• In the 1970s, quadraphonic sound (four-channel) records became available, both "discrete" and "matrix". These did not achieve the popularity of stereo records, partly because of scarcity of consumer playback equipment, competing and incompatible quad record standards (most of which were compatible with two-channel stereo equipment) and partly because of the Analog Quadraphonic Formats lack of quality in quad-remix releases. Quad never escaped the reputation of being a "gimmick", and the various (mutually incompatible) discrete 4-channel sound required an ultrasonic carrier signal that was technically difficult to capture and suffered degradation with playing. Three-way and quadraphonic recordings, which were favored and championed by artists like Leopold Stokowski and Glenn Gould, are now making a modest comeback, with older masters being turned into multi-channel Super Audio CDs. (However, a fair number of new surround recordings—primarily classical—are being made for SACD and Blu-ray Audio.)

The composition of vinyl (more precisely, a co-polymer of vinyl chloride acetate) used to press records has varied considerably over the years. Virgin vinyl is preferred, but during the 1970s energy crisis, it became commonplace to use recycled vinyl—melted unsold records with all of the impurities. Sound quality suffered, with increased ticks, pops and other surface noises. Other experiments included reducing the thickness of LPs, leading to warping and increased susceptibility to damage. Using a bead of 130 grams of vinyl had been the standard, but some labels experimented with as little as 90 grams per LP. Today, high fidelity pressings follow the Japanese standard of 160, 180 or 200 grams.

Besides the standard black vinyl, specialty records are also pressed on different colors of PVC or special "picture discs" with a card picture sandwiched between two clear sides. Records in different novelty shapes are also produced.

Use by disc jockeys

Disc jockeys (or DJs) in clubs still rely heavily on vinyl records, as cuing tracks from cassette tapes is too slow and CDs did not allow creative playback options until quite recently. The term "DJ", which had always meant a person who played various pieces of music on the radio (originally 78s, then 45s, then tape cartridges and reels; now cuts from CDs or tracks on a computer) – a play on the horse-racing term "jockey" – has also come to encompass all kinds of skills in "scratching" (record playback manipulation) and mixing dance music, rapping over the music or even playing musical instruments, but the original dance club (non-radio) definition was simply somebody who played records, alternating between two turntables. The skill came in subtly matching beats or instruments from one song to the next, providing a consistent dance tempo. DJs also made occasional announcements and chatted with patrons to take requests while songs were actually playing, similar to what radio disc jockeys have been doing since the 1940s.

See also

• Record Store Day
• Vinyl revival

External links

• How a Vinyl Record is made from 1note.co.uk
• Dreams of Vinyl: The Story of the LP record by Jac Holzman