I can’t believe it plays until i hear it play

I can belive it because i know the tech is very simple. What could be a concern are durability and quality. That its a softer material could also affect the sound in a quirky way

Not sure wood is a softer material than vinyl (depending on species).

My concern would be the difficulty of engraving without the grain interfering with the groove.

Yeah, if you’ve ever tried to polish up wood (without any sort of coating), you know it’s almost impossible to make it completely smooth, it always has a certain texture to the touch. And here, where you have to pretty much cut it once and can’t polish it at all, it’s probably going to retain a lot of that texture in the groove. So I guess it is possible that it might “”“play”“”, but it would probably be mostly noise with some music coming through at times.

Might work a little better (for a little while) since it’s ‘cut’ via a laser, not friction or gouging - the surface would be relatively smooth in comparison since it’s burning the material.