Analog Sequencer/Sampler?

[patchell]

    Being in the "hard drive industry", although, I am only really
involved in spinning disks, what little I know of hard disk heads, I don't
think you would be able to record analog signals too well with them.  The
heads are pretty specialized, and the bandwidth on them is something like
300MHz and growing.  They are really intended for recording very high
frequency pulses.  Another problem is track widths.  The tracks are so
narrow that the heads have to be servo'd to the track to remove
non-repeatable runout (repeatable runout is not too big of a problem).

    Floppy drives are another matter.  I wouldn't know if you could record
analog signals or not, but, one thing you would have to do is create
basically the same sort of recording electronics you would find in a tape
deck, that is, you would need a high frequency bias oscilator to add to
the audio signal to record.  All of this is pretty simple.  A typical
floppy rotates at 300rpm, which give you about 200 milliseconds per
revolution.  A problem with floppy disks is that they do wear out fairly
quickly.  If you need to rotate faster, they will wear out faster.

    Still, an interesting idea.

Hallgeir Helland wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Do you think it'd be possible to record sound waves on a floppy disk?
> That way you could have lots of sounds on one disk, with the highest
> fidelity on the outmost track. Finding loop points would be easy once
> you got the RPM of the disk. However to play at different pitches will
> require speed changes on the drive motor...
> Any thoughts? Can this be an idea?
>
> Hallgeir   (how'bout analog signals on a hard drive???)
> --
> HELLAND MUSIKK TEKNOLOGI
> -=  Hallgeir Helland  =-
> hhelland at mailandnews.com

--
 -Jim
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