Making guns and electric guitars is pretty impressive, but it seems as though the current boom in 3D printing advancements has found found a proper use. Well, a proper, somewhat poetic use which is currently in beta stage. Researcher and Instructables DIY project site team member Amanda Ghassaei has discovered a way to use the technology to turn any MP3 into a fully functional vinyl record.
I won’t go too deep into the whole irony of using technological advancements to reproduce the products of the technology it supercedes, but I thought I’d at least mention it. Using a program she designed, Ghassaei has created a way to convert the digital peaks and troughs of an MP3 to physical peaks and troughs recognisable by your stock-standard record player. Using the mysterious and powerful Objet Connex500 3D printer, the new inventor was able to create a record from scratch.
As you’ll see in the below video, there are some slight errors which will require further program tinkering but the final result is totally listenable. The vinyl encoding is sampled at a rough rate 11kHz (in other words, inferior to standard sample rate of today’s digital music), but that oft-talked about “warmth” inherent to vinyl is totally there.
Ghassaei printed off a few tracks which all seemed promising, including Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit and Daft Punk’s Around The World. Any moment now she’ll most likely get a pretty stern email from some record label execs.
Watch: 3D Printer Makes Vinyl Records Out Of MP3s
(Via Tone Deaf)
