What's retro, organic, best for the environmental surroundings, and fun to listen to? In the event that you answered wooden records, you win the prize. While lasers and the introduction of the compact disc largely killed the vinyl record, an innovative software laser engraver, Amanda Ghassaei, has resurrected the lowly album using wood and a laser cutter.

The effect is a surprisingly beautiful platter with the familiar shape and circular ridges entirely on vinyl albums. The grain of the wood adds a natural quality, elevating the disc to a subject d'art.

Because cutting into wood, despite a advanced laser cutter, is less precise than cutting into vinyl - at the very least with the technology employed by the engineer - the ridges of the wooden album are about two times as large as those on a regular vinyl album.

Ghassaei originally used a 3D printer to test out other ways to play music, but ultimately realized that many people don't have access to expensive 3D printers. In contrast, CNC laser cutters tend to be more accessible. Ghassaei started by ripping audio data from the WAV file and then processing it with a script she developed for the purpose.

Whilst the laser-cut wooden record plays music exactly like its vinyl siblings, the sound quality is poor. A movie posted on Vimeo shows the record doing his thing, enabling you to see and hear it in all of its glory. The large ridges are considered to result in the distorted sound. However despite awful sound quality, pressing your own personal wooden records has its charm. Not merely is this idea unique and fun, it requires music out from the airwaves and brings it back down to Earth. If you're enthusiastic about cutting your own personal wooden albums with a laser cutter, Ghassaei has posted her instructions online.

If you wish to produce a wooden record with a laser cutter, you can use Ghassaei's script, which is available on her website as a downloadable PDF vector file, as a guide. The script can be edited to accommodate different laser cutters, materials, sizes, and turntable speeds. Once you've downloaded and edited the script along with sourced your materials and laser cutter, the laser cutter uses the vector file as a sample and cuts the grooves.

Though impractical and low-fi, Ghassaei's wooden albums certainly are a throwback to a less complicated time. A time when friends would gather together to listen to an album. A time when hearing music also had a tactile element that may impact the music for better or for worse. People who took extraordinary care of the albums enjoyed a pristine listening experience while those who didn't experienced scratches and skips. By pulling music out from the airwaves and 4G networks and physically cutting it onto a wooden disc, Ghassaei has made music tangible, and perhaps sociable, once again. By sharing her process and script, she's made it easy for anybody who longs for a less complicated time to generate their own wooden albums. While you could or might not recapture your lost youth, you'll definitely get a discussion starter.

Mark Williams, mcdougal of this informative article, is a research and technology nerd who has interned at Coherent, a laser solution supplier. During his internship, he learned all about the various uses of laser cutting machines and laser cladding applications laser engraver.