Pieter Kramer was a leading engineer on the team that developed the CD, which was launched 25 years ago todayIt was August 17, 1982, and row upon row of palm-sized plates with a rainbow sheen began rolling off an assembly line near Hanover, Germany.An engineering marvel at the time, today they are instantly recognisable as Compact Discs, a product that turns 25 years old on Friday - and whose future is increasingly in doubt in an age of iPods and digital downloads. Those first CDs contained Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony and would sound equally sharp if played today, says Holland's Royal Philips Electronics, which jointly developed the CD with Sony of Japan.The recording industry thrived in the 1990s as music fans replaced their ageing cassettes and vinyl LPs with compact discs, eventually making CDs the most popular album format. The CD still accounts for the majority of the music industry's recording revenues, but its sales have been in a freefall since peaking early this decade, in part due to the rise of online file-sharing, but also as consumers spend more of their leisure US dollars on other entertainment purchases, such as DVDs and video games.As the music labels slash wholesale prices and experiment with extras to revive the now-ageing format, it's hard to imagine there was ever a day without CDs. Yet it had been a risky technical endeavour to attempt to bring digital audio to the masses, said Pieter Kramer, the head of the optical research group at Philips' labs in the Netherlands in the 1970s. "When we started there was nothing in place," he told The Associated Press at Philips' corporate museum in Eindhoven.The proposed semiconductor chips needed for CD players were to be the most advanced ever used in a consumer product. And the lasers were still on the drawing board when the companies teamed up in 1979. In 1980, researchers published what became known as the "Red Book" containing the original CD standards, as well as specifying which patents were held by Philips and which by Sony.Philips had developed the bulk of the disc and laser technology, while Sony contributed the digital encoding that allowed for smooth, error-free playback. Philips still licenses out the Red Book and its later incarnations, notably for the CD-ROM for storing computer software and other data. The CD's design drew inspiration from vinyl records: Like the grooves on a record, CDs are engraved with a spiral of tiny pits that are scanned by a laser - the equivalent of a record player's needle. The reflected light is encoded into millions of 0s and 1s: a digital file. Because the pits are covered with plastic and the laser's light doesn't wear them down, the CD never loses sound quality. Legends abound about how the size of the CD was chosen: Some said it matched a Dutch beer coaster; others believe a famous conductor or Sony executive wanted it just long enough for Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Kramer said the decision evolved from "long conversations around the table" about which play length made the most sense.The jump into mass production in Germany was a milestone for the CD, and by 1982 the companies announced their product was ready for market. Both began selling players that fall, though the machines only hit US markets the following spring. Sony sold the first player in Japan on October 1, with the CBS label supplying Billy Joel's 52nd Street as its first album.The CD was a massive hit. Sony sold more players, especially once its "Discman" series was introduced in 1984. But Philips benefited from CD sales, too, thanks to its ownership of Polygram, now part of Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group. The CD player helped Philips maintain its position as Europe's largest maker of consumer electronics until it was eclipsed by Nokia in the late 1990s. Licensing royalties sustained the company through bad times."The CD was in itself an easy product to market," said Philips' current marketing chief for consumer electronics, Lucas Covers. It wasn't just the sound quality - discs looked like jewelry in comparison to LPs. By 1986, CD players were outselling record players, and by 1988 CDs outsold records. "It was a massive turnaround for the whole market," Covers said.Now, the CD may be seeing the end of its days. CD sales have fallen sharply to 553 million sold in the United States last year, a 22 per cent drop from its 2001 peak of 712 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Napster and later Kazaa and BitTorrent allowed music fans to easily share songs over the internet, often illegally.More recently, Apple and other companies began selling legal music downloads, turning the MP3 and other digital audio formats into the medium of choice for many owners of Apple's iPods and other digital players. "The MP3 and all the little things that the boys and girls have in their pockets ... can replace it, absolutely," said Kramer, the retired engineer. CDs won't disappear overnight, but its years may be numbered.Kramer said it has been satisfying to witness the CD's long run at the top and know he had a small hand in its creation. "You never know how long a standard will last," he said. "But it was a solid, good standard and still is."AP
hugh_lucero
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It was a new format, and while it had taken a few years to hit its stride, it did it. I still think it is a great format, and had the DVD-A format been successful, people would be praising that a bit more than MP3's. But MP3's are the 7-Eleven of music formats: it's convenient, it's there, you may not need it, but since you have access to it I'll hang out there. Oh look, a Big Bite.
The sad thing is, in terms of audio quality, a lot of classic music has not seen the light of digital day. In a way, the benefit of MP3's is that any of us can find the original records and often do a better job than the labels, it doesn't take too much to do that. But as far as the unreleased/untapped music in the vaults, does that mean fans will have to reply on MP3's as "optimum", or is that not an issue when you can download full discographies in an hour or two?
The CD will still be around for awhile, and I'll still support it when no one else is. But there's also lossless files, so if the CD does meet its demise, then I thank the format for waking up an industry when it may have needed it the most.
I give a r.i.p. to "artist integrity" and "artist longetivity" more than any format, if things keep up the way they are.
On a somewhat related note, I was reading Scratch today and JR Rotem was talking about that Sean Kingston "beautiful girls" song and he said something like "Sean heard Stand By Me on the radio on the way to the studio, so we downloaded it from itunes right there and then we got working on the track." Maybe I'm just a grumpy old dude, but music is just going to get thinner and thinner. I guess you can beef up a track in the studio, but sampling from a compressed mp3 seems so
sorry for the tired rant.
if they want have another successful physical music format they better come out with something more durable. put something in a case like minidiscs, or i even remember old CD-ROMs that had to be placed in a cartridge to work, putting a disc in a cartridge means less handling of the optical surfaces.
does anyone have a CD they bought before 1990 that still plays properly?
Most of mine are from around 91 or later, but yes, all of them. I guess people just take cds for granted and treat them however, but it's the same exact thing as vinyl. If you leave it out of it's case/jacket it's going to get scratched. If it goes right from the case into the player it should be fine. I bought the De La Soul Is Dead cd around my 14th birthday and I just looked at it right now and it's completely flawless. I've always been really protective about my cds/records though. I never let anyone borrow anything because I would always get stuff back scratched or I would see them leave their cds lying around everywhere. Out of the case.
I sound like a dork.
The few that I have left still play very well, although after seeing the "CD rot" on a few of them, I decided to rip them, convert to a lossless file, and save.
I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I had read a post elsewhere which said that if your original CD does not play well on any of the players you use, be it a stand-alone, FM radio, or car, rip the CD (either cloning it or ripping it with EAC, or foobar) and burn a copy. I guess some people take issue to how redbook discs were done back then, and claim that a few of those older discs are faulty compared to how they've been done in the last 15 years. I have no idea about that or CD jitter, but I know in a few instances it has worked. Of course, if I have the CD digitized I technically don't have to worry about burning it to a CD, but since I do like to take CD's on trips (and that the player in my car doesn't play DVD-R's), I burn CD's all the time.
Last year I went to Hastings to cash in my CD's, because I was too lazy to put them on eBay. Anyway, the lady who scanned my CD's says to me "wow, your CD's are so nice, every time my daughter has her friends cashing in their discs, we can't take them because they are completely scratched, as if they were scratched on the road." I'm sure I gave a sarcastic "like I really care" smirk.
Or look at thrift stores with some of the discs that are up in the racks. The ones that are heavily scratched are usually the video games and the boy band stuff. Speaking of which, I didn't realize Aaron Carter released that many albums and singles.
There really was no point in this reply, I realized just now.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=330149998198&ssPageName=STRK:MESO:IT&ih=014
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=330149998267&ssPageName=STRK:MESO:IT&ih=014
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=330149998253&ssPageName=STRK:MESO:IT&ih=014
I normally do well with selling certain CD's. That Rhino Handmade one you had is out of print, and I still want to pick that up. I didn't realize the Nirvana one was up there in value, I may have to put that one up there. I have a heap of stuff I need to get rid of, and maybe this CD will push me to put them up there today.