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THE OPTICAL PHONOGRAPH
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Starting the turntable...

Master a vinyl PNG

Choose a WAV, then press Master. By default, master the bundled Rhapsody in Blue. SAVE downloads the finished PNG.

Sound, etched into pixels

Your WAV is mixed to mono. Its changing waveform bends a single spiral groove sideways: louder sounds make wider movements. The spacing between turns grows for loud passages and tightens for quiet ones.

Each PNG pixel stores two things. Gray gives the vinyl and label their appearance. Alpha stores the groove: zero between turns, high in the groove, with fractional coverage at its edges to capture positions smaller than a pixel.

The player reads that alpha groove under the needle and converts its sideways displacement back into sound — not the original WAV. A gentle filter softens pixel noise, but some aliasing remains.

Mastering stays on your device. Unsaved records disappear on reload.
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