[UpgradeTech] had a proof-of-concept itch they needed to scratch: making a playable record out of a tortilla using a laser cutter. The idea was spawned from the goofy “tortilla vinyl” YouTube video.
Uncooked flour tortillas were used. Corn tortillas were too lumpy while cooked tortillas shredded on the record player. To get the recording onto the tortilla, Audacity was used to modify a stereo WAV file. Using the RIAA equalization standard is a great choice here as it was originally adopted to prevent excess wear and tear on record grooves as the needle passed through. A Python script generated the files for the laser cutter, creating a text file with the sound data which was then processed into a vector PDF of the grooves. For each record it takes 30 minutes for the laser cutter to turn a simple flour tortilla into the musical variety.
Each tortilla can play 30-40 seconds of music at 45 or 78 RPM, but they start to warp once they dry out. Time to build a humidor around the record player! There is background noise that can make certain songs harder to hear, but there is unarguably audible music. There is plenty of room for optimizing the sound file, grooves, and cutting. We hope this project inspires others to make their own musical tortilla. Playing with your food has taken on a whole new meaning!
Delicious.
just cause you can, doesn’t mean you should
that’s exactly why we should.
Brings a new meaning to burning your music.
Oh man… it’s been so long since I’ve made an audio CD that reference totally escaped me. Nice job!
Tortillas I know are basically omelette with potatoes (tortilla francesa), so I was expecting something made from somehow solidified egg stuff.
That’s a spanish tortilla your thinking of, a mexican tortilla is just a thin, flat bread, but if you want to make a record with eggs I’ed suggest you build an Edison recorder and record on the egg shell. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to eat a bean and cheese Los Lobos record.
Edison recorder burrito player, ship it!
yes – yes – mod the eggbot to cut grooves into the shell and we’ve got an edison cylinder(ish) player…
Egg-ison recorder, that is?
obvious: I guess this is optimized for salsa music?
*groan* :)
Don’t tell this the (german) RIAA (equivalent). We pay fees to the music industry for every blank CD-R we buy, if they get to know about this, we’ll have to pay for each Tortilla.
What if you’re using the CD-R for data / software?
It depends on whether the blank is labeled as “Data” or “Music”. Music blanks are more expensive because they include the RIAA Tax, but their usage is mandated by hardware restriction on certain consumer CD Recorders.
Check the venerable CD-R FAQ. http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq07.html#S7-17
“What’s the difference between “data” and “music” blanks?
“Consumer” stand-alone audio CD recorders require special blanks. See section (5-12) for details. There is no difference in quality or composition between “data” blanks and “music” blanks, except for a flag that indicates which one it is.
…
The “music” blanks are more expensive than the “data” blanks because a portion of the price goes to the music industry. The specifics vary from country to country. In the USA, the money goes to the RIAA, which distributes it to artists who have navigated through a complicated application process.”
What if you burn MP3s to a data CD and use it in your CD player that reads MP3s?
I’m sure in germany it doesn’t matter if you buy Music or Data. We even pay for HDDs, SD-cards, every storage medium. We pay the Press & Book association for Printers because we can copy books with it…
We pay for everything that can hold data or copyrighted material.
Even if there is never any music on the cd/dvd/hdd/sdcard/floppydisk/printable paper/… we need to pay for it.
I guess i pay more money for this than for actual cds from artists that actually might get this money…
And it is technically illegal to copy anything that has some kind of protection. Well… at least all movies you can buy are protected. But you pay for your right to copy them. But only if you don’t break any protection. pretty stupid.
Headline fail… it’s brand new and not vintage and there’s no vinyl
Great now I have to deal with a whole new wave of audiophiles who swear by tortillas :P
Well the best tortillas are made with oxygen free distilled spring water because they give greater “presence” and “ambiance”, etc., etc…
I don’t think you’d want to have pure hydrogen anywhere near a burning ND-YAG laser :D
Maybe YOU don’t.
Are they modulating the lasers intensity or are they drawing a waveform side to side along the curved path? I’m amazed this works. Would never have guessed tortilla could be smooth enough or rigid enough to produce an output like wax. Neat.
I think the laser is essentially toasting small hard grooves into the tortilla, leaving those portions rigid while the rest remains flexible.
hang on, I have an incoming call from Kellogs. they want to discuss some kind of ‘analog breakfast cereal’ option. be right back.
Does it have to be flour tortilla or would corn work as well? How about gluten-free? (c:
corn would be interesting. play back an 1812 corn tortilla and you might have popcorn by the final canon blast.
Wow, 1812, Popcorn, and Pachelbel’s Canon. What a mash-up.
you won’t have to worry about mash-up as long as you keep it away from moisture ;)
rtfa
Now I want to get movies on my maize. A hardware version of Popcorn Time!
Mexican hat dance on a tortilla… probably some Latino activist out there calling a lawyer right now…
No, no, no… The INVERSE RIAA equalization was not adopted to prenent wear and tear excess. Bass frequencies grooves take more room on a record than high frequencies. inverse riaa eq aims to reduce this issue (to prevent the sylus to skate or drop). When the record is done, (regular) riaa eq embeded on record players pcb will bring frequencies to normal. So really nothing related to wear or tear. The only tear I see is the one in my eye reading this riaa definition :-/
Could be really useful for the spy/espionage crowd… send them a message and after listening to it, eat it!
Print the Nutrition information on an audio format on it. Side A for English Side B for Spanish
Could you do the same thing but with a blank CD or circle of acrylic instead?
Yup.
http://hackaday.com/2012/07/23/cutting-a-record-on-a-cd/
https://github.com/kallaballa/sndcut
amir from metalab.at wrote a very nice piece of software that converts .wav into .svg files for our LASERCUTTER.
he made records that actually play on a turntable.
the first test was the imperial march ;) and the record is exhibitet to see and hear at the metalab in vienna now.
unfortunately i can’t find much documentation on this project for the moment..