Why not use a non-contact stylus on a turntable?

This is a rather amusing thread - dear OP are the following not attempts to improve the transducer arts?

1. Laser turntable?
2. MC cartridges - with various materials in the body and stylus - including countless profiles;
2. Moving Iron cartridges  (variables as above)
3. Coming Magnet Cartridges - (same variables again)
4. Strain Gauge Cartidges
5. Optical cartridges
6. Condenser cartridges

The problem is one of the following:

1. Someone has already considered it - believe it or not the likes of John Carr at Lyra; Van Den Hul... are - believe it or not - pretty bloody intelligent too.
2. It takes megabucks and mega minds to do it (look at the DS optical cartridges - that are a spin off for a tech company that happens to have a vinyl nut working there)
3. the methods you suggest are likely to require digitisation somewhere along the line - it defeats the purpose of being analogue (my only reason for not getting a TACT amp that 'room corrects')

parrotbee

Good list -- thank you. I never claimed there have been no attempts at progression.

Yes, it will take dogged determination and some significant capital to improve/implement other transducers.

I agree -- must be linear translation with no AD conversion in the process.

But aren't we talking about the survival of vinyl technology in playback?

We are way into the law of diminishing returns on the traditional stylus. Will there be a future in vinyl unless we try a 'new mousetrap'?

Kind regards,

Greg

No. We're not talking about "survival".  The vinyl medium has a life of its own for many, many reasons, not all of them rational but most of them compelling to those of us who pursue the art, and so far sustaining.  Meantime, it seemed to me that you were asking for a way of reading the analog information encoded in a groove and transducing that mechanical information to an audio signal, without actually contacting the groove.  None of the advances in the art cited by Parotbee, except the laser turntable of which there is only one, have that goal in mind.  Nor did they get us anywhere nearer to it.  How do you get around the fact that nearly zero LPs are perfectly centered (this will throw off any noncontact reading device) and that all LPs will have some dirt particles or dust in the grooves?  These are problems that the developers of the ELP laser turntable have had to deal with.

But now I am not sure what you think we should want. (I won't say that you want it; you seem to be here to gloat.)  Most of us prefer analog to digital, but some use both media.  You can be forgiven for preferring digital, but beyond trolling, why are you here?  (As you can tell, I think there is no reason beyond trolling.)