I was going to do something like this for contactless transfer (ideally live) for a box of old cylinder records that I have. I still have the DVD head and fiber optics, for the confocal setup. Cylinder records are nice because they only have one channel of audio, with the waveform represented as a vertical displacement, perfect for something like this, on a screw drive, that just has to read depth and correct some slight tracking error.
I don't know about cylinder records, but for typical vinyl disc records, the biggest issue I've heard about with contactless transfer is that a needle will displace dust particles while (obviously) a laser will not.
“a needle will displace dust particles while (obviously) a laser will not.”
I don’t think this setup will displace dust particles, but that’s not completely obvious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_tweezers: “The trapped particles are usually micron-sized, or smaller.”
I think the smallest dust particles are small enough to be manipulated in an optical tweezer.
I was going to do something like this for contactless transfer (ideally live) for a box of old cylinder records that I have. I still have the DVD head and fiber optics, for the confocal setup. Cylinder records are nice because they only have one channel of audio, with the waveform represented as a vertical displacement, perfect for something like this, on a screw drive, that just has to read depth and correct some slight tracking error.