Is Laser-Cut ‘HD Vinyl’ a New Audio Medium?

Music enterprise company Rebeat Innovation recently secured $4.8 million in private funding to deliver two $6,000,000 industrial lasers capable of searing micro groves into specially designed ceramic discs. Guenter Loibl, owner of Rebeat, wants to take the fidelity of analog audio beyond anything done so far and this investment will help his company do just that.

‘HD Vinyl,’ so dubbed by Loibl, will not change the size or material of turntable records. HD Vinyl technology plans to make improvements to vinyl records physically and audibly through changing how they are traditionally made.

The current process uses nickel stampers to imprint a copy of the groves onto the vinyl. However, since the stampers aren’t the original and the process of manufacturing vinyls this way uses toxic chemicals, the resulting vinyls may lose some audio information and are expensive to make due to clean up of toxic waste.

HD Vinyls fix this problem as each groove on the disc will be digitally mapped and recreated via laser in much higher detail. Because of that, Loibl claims mastering engineers will be able to produce vinyl with longer playback time and increased dynamics.

Additionally, traditionally manufactured discs have to be changed throughout the pressing process to maintain sound quality, but the ceramic discs do not – it means that the first pressing will be identical to the very last. Laser cutting and ceramic discs also remove all the potential toxic chemicals.

Loibl is extremely self confident in his technology stating that “We strongly believe that within five to seven years, 95 percent of the production of vinyl will be HD Vinyl.”