The vinyl record has always seemed shrouded in mystery as to how it works. It is a complex production process, but in fact a simple idea.

The grooves on a record, are in fact not straight lines, they are 'wiggly'. You have seen a sound waveform display on your computer. The grooves on a record are direct versions of these waveforms. Clearly the deviations (movements of the wave) are much less on a record.

This is achieved by passing the audio through a global industry standard, the RIAA curve. This is an EQ curve/filter that reduces bass and boosts high frequencies before the record is cut (see how a record is made).

The reduction in bass is for 2 reasons, the first, is so that a lot of music time can be put on a disc (imagine trying to fit those waveforms from your computer onto a record, how many would you fit, one?).

The second is that the playback arm could never track such extreme deviations, left to right, and would skip off the record. Also, the treble is boosted to combat surface noise, which can be present on records, so a higher treble signal becomes a lot louder than any surface noise.

This RIAA, EQ reduction is always, as exactly as possible, returned to the sound we began with, at the pre-amp stage of playback. This reverses the process, before audio amplification.  Have you ever plugged your turntable into a line input, not a phono input? It's all treble and no bass. Now you know why.

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