Instead of music for human ears, Ms Pinky's vinyl records contain special signals meant for the "ears" of a computer. As the needle traces the groove, Ms Pinky's software listens to the sound coming from the record player and calculates instantly the velocity, direction, and physical position of the needle on the surface of the record. A few raw facts about Ms Pinky's vinyl:

1) There are approximately 155 totally unique physical position stamps per rotation of the record. These physical position stamps can be read by the software whether the record is spinning in the forward direction, or in reverse.

2) The duration of record playback at 33-1/3 rpm is 12 minutes 40 seconds per side, and each side of the record has unique position stamps.

3) Ms Pinky's software reads a new physical position stamp every 11.6 milliseconds when the record is played at 33-1/3 rpm.

4) Ms Pinky's software reads new velocity and direction information every 0.725 milliseconds.

As opposed to other commercially available "timecode" vinyl systems, Ms Pinky's vinyl can function as a generalized controller in the digital dimension. With Ms Pinky's vinyl, users can cue up and scratch digital audio files as if they were tracks recorded on a vinyl record. And many more exciting possibilities exist thanks to the fact that all digital control data derived from Ms Pinky's vinyl is available to other software clients to use in almost any way they wish. For example, you can use Ms Pinky inside the Max/MSP/Jitter graphical programming environment to scratch audio, video, and just about anything. C/C++ developers on Mac, PC, and Linux platforms also have access to all Ms Pinky control data through our SDK.

The software which decodes the signals on Ms Pinky's records can be operated in two modes:

1) Relative Mode: In this mode, the software only calculates the record's speed and direction of rotation. If you are using Ms Pinky to control the playback of an audio track in relative mode, you don't have to worry about needle skipping. If the needle moves, the sound simply picks up again where it left off before.

2) Absolute Mode: This provides the most realistic “virtual vinyl” experience. In this case, if you are using MsPinky to control the playback of an audio track, then when you pick up the needle and move it (or it skips), the audio track you are playing will cue appropriately to the new position.

For a thorough discussion of the way Ms Pinky's vinyl control system works, and how to solve common user problems, please read this.