Mechanical to Optical to Sound

For really old vinyl records, the standard advice is to clean the records and then play in your player – carefully. But, what are the options when you have some old recordings that cannot be saved. Scientists at LANL and Smithsonian museum have used an optical scanning technique that takes an optical scan of the record. If the recordings are etchings on the surface or the edges then it takes a 2D scan to extract the data as a long image file. However, if the recordings were made using a depth cue then it requires a 3D scan. This long scans can then be corrected for aberrations and also for any dust or imperfections. This could be a great technique for scanning vinyl records too for the highest fidelity. However, some serious software processing required.