The History of the CD-ROM

Gammu writes "The inventor of the compact disc, the most popular medium in the world for playing back and storing music, is often disputed as one individual did not invent every part of the compact disc. The most attributed inventor is James Russell, who in 1965 was inspired with a revolutionary idea as he sketched on paper a more ideal music recording system to replace vinyl records; Russell envisioned a system which could record and replay sounds without any physical contact between parts."

Comments

mini-discs

[jadin]

whatever-happened-to-mini-discs Summary: mini-discs don't support mp3

Commentor's Cut: I hated hauling around a 50-100 cd carrier back in the day to hold all of my music. Ipods didn't exist yet, the only mp3 players (with a HDD) were horrible - fragile and with about 2 hours of battery life. So when I noticed the mini-disc played mp3s I was intrigued. I could hold all of my 50-100 CDs worth of music on (i was hoping) 10-15 mini discs. Even if they were 1:1, a mini-disc is much smaller than a CD. So I bought one.

Turns out it _didn't_ play mp3s. It "supported" mp3s by converting them to a proprietary Sony format. Which still could've been okay but the compression ratio wasn't very good for "better quality". I returned my space saving mini-disc player a day or two later, as soon as I realized it wasn't the answer I was looking for.

The mini-disc was cool in my eyes. Very compact and writable, it could reduce my carry-around music collection to something manageable. But it didn't support mp3s. This was back in the napster days. This single change could've made it a great format even today. I wouldn't be surprised to see a graph with the CD-R market booming, and the mini-disc market failing.

Original CD Players

[GizmoToy]

I remember my father bought one of the original Sony audio CD players. It was a CDP-102, the second version released in 1984. It looked quite a bit like the one in the article, but it was shorter and longer... the typical stereo component profile. That thing weighs a ton, and when you inserted the CD it had a clear window so you could watch the tray lower itself and the CD onto the motor. I thought that was the coolest thing.

Built like a tank, too. It was still in regular use until just recently, and still worked flawlessly without so much as a cleaning over 20 years later. They don't make them like that, anymore. Maybe it was better components, or simply nostalgia, but I thought it had a better sound quality that most CD players these days.

Re:Original CD Players

[PenguSven]

how was it both shorter AND longer at the same time?

Re:Original CD Players

[imboboage0]

He's only claiming it's longer. With the reality being shorter, it is both shorter and longer at the same time.

Are you new here?

Re:Original CD Players

[bdjacobson]

I remember my father bought one of the original Sony audio CD players. It was a CDP-102, the second version released in 1984. It looked quite a bit like the one in the article, but it was shorter and longer... the typical stereo component profile. That thing weighs a ton, and when you inserted the CD it had a clear window so you could watch the tray lower itself and the CD onto the motor. I thought that was the coolest thing.

Built like a tank, too. It was still in regular use until just recently, and still worked flawlessly without so much as a cleaning over 20 years later. They don't make them like that, anymore. Maybe it was better components, or simply nostalgia, but I thought it had a better sound quality that most CD players these days. Actually, I think they _do_. I've had extensive experience with two Sony products that has changed my view from "evil corporation" to "misguided CEOs with a bunch of hardcore do-good engineers".

First is the Discman 2 CD player-- 15 hours on two batteries (10 years ago when I got it this was pretty respectable), rugged case/buttons/flip-up-top, etc; and my favorite part, the MegaBass boost that does what no equalizer I've come across can. It simply produces the richest, deepest, cleanest bass that I've ever heard anywhere. A real treat.

Second is a Sony T637 cell phone. I didn't know at the time I got it, but it came completely unlocked, had a wonderfully useful function that let you write all the phone numbers/names in the Cell Phone to the SIM card, battery life was at least 4 hours talk time even after years of use, was also pretty rugged (dropped more times than I can count and still works like a charm). On top of that it's one of the sexiest looking phones I've seen in a long time, and is still my favorite by far. It has white LEDs beneath the keypad that light up a bright cool white blue whenever pressed, and the way the keys are designed, you see the numbers and letters with no problem, as well as a cool white grid where the LED light shines through.

So, it's kinda hard to describe all the best parts of each, but basically the taste left in my mouth is that the Sony engineers really know what they're doing and do their best when they're allowed. The times when they're not (PS2 launch etc where stuff breaks all the time) isn't their fault; it's the CEO's and Executives looking out for next quarter's results.

Sony CDP-101

[Trogre]

Bah, this must be just another proprietary Sony format that will never catch on, like the 3.5" floppy disk. When will they ever learn?

Re:CD isn't obsolete

[jadin]

People came up with formats like DVD-Audio, but what is the point of that? 5.1 channel vs 2 channel.

4-8GB of mp3 space vs 800MB for a CD-R.

Inventor

[Anonymous Coward]

This article ignores the significant previous work by David Paul Gregg which led to the Laserdisc and the derivative CD tehcnology. I therefore dispute the validity of James Russell, because Gregg was the first one to put music digitally on a reflective disc to be read by laser. I attended a Laserdisc demonstration Gregg gave to Mensa members in Los Angeles sometime in the early 1970s at his home. Russell may have conceived of a technology, but Gregg was the first to actually implement a working means to digitally handle audio and music on a disc for mass consumption. He did a lot of work and should get proper credit. CDs came after his efforts.

Re:Inventor

[AKAImBatman]

Russell may have conceived of a technology, but Gregg was the first to actually implement a working means to digitally handle audio and music on a disc for mass consumption.

Just to pick at a nit here, Gregg's work was an analog recording, not digital. If you look at the direct derivitive of Gregg's work - the LaserDisc - you'll find that the data is encoded in a Pulse Width Modulation format. This allowed for NTSC signals to be directly recorded to discs long before the invention of digital encoding technologies like MPEG.

In fact, the microprocessor technology necessary to decode a digital datastream into television quality video cost millions of dollars back when the LaserDisc was introduced to the market. During development of the format, the necessary framebuffer devices were still in development and wouldn't reach truecolor capabilties until the New York Institute of Technology experiment in 1977. (They took three 8-bit, grayscale framebuffers manufactured by Evans & Sutherland and wired them together to create a 24-bit display.)

So as you can imagine, an analog design was far superior to a digital video format back when Laserdiscs were introduced. :-)

An interesting guy...

[yroJJory]

I had the honor of meeting Mr. Russell in NYC during the Audio Engineering Society's conference in 2003. He was an interesting person to speak with and was very understated. He sat next to my fiancee on the shuttle bus returning from the conference to Times Square and it was only after chatting with him for 10 minutes or so that he revealed (after much prodding) that he was at the conference as part of the AES Historical section and that he felt like it was a waste of effort to be present. He said that nobody was interested in meeting him.

At that, my fiancee turned to me and my other friends, sitting behind them, and introduced us.

We chatted for the remainder of the bus ride and he told us a little of what the invention process was like and how he hadn't even made a dime from something that we noted had changed the world. (He wasn't bitter, BTW.)

I got his autograph (as did several others) and a short line formed. I still have the CD I had him sign.

It's nice to see him getting some recognition.

Re:CD isn't obsolete

[fractoid]

No, what killed DVD-Audio was some top-brass exec being asked by his 12-year-old daughter why the kids at school were laughing at her. Apparently they'd found out her daddy "made DVDA albums".

Bill Gates advocated CD-ROM very early

[ynotds]

Bill was in Sydney on the day he became a billionaire* and was surprised to find a bunch of locals wanting to hear more of his recently published thoughts on the then still prospective new medium, but was happy enough to participate in a breakfast discussion quickly arranged by his then Australian representative Linda Graham.

CD-ROM was arguably his last time Bill was close enough to the leading edge that others who made a living at that edge sought his opinion.

*M$ had listed overnight Australian time.

Re:Now if we could only go back in time...

[AKAImBatman]

go back in time and give him the designs for the bluRay.

It wouldn't help anything. Today's optical discs are based on the continual refinement of manufacturing processes. You could go back in time and explain how to make a BluRay disc and player, but no one would be able to manufacture discs with tight enough tolerances or microchips of sufficient speed and power to play back the data stream. And that's leaving out the issue of finding an HDTV set to make full use of the format. (HDTV was invented in 1969, but wasn't commercially viable until the 90's.)

Most people don't think about it, but inventions are driven as much by infrastructure as they are by smart people. If you lack the necessary industrial base, having all the technical knowledge in the world won't help you. (Witness a lot of third-world countries. The knowledge for a lot of technology is available, but they can't manufacture it.) To close the gap you still need to build tools which you refine and/or use to build better tools which you refine and/or use to build better tools, so on and so forth.

Missing items

[MavEtJu]

Honestly, the Wikipedia article gives a better background and has more information about related technologies (laserdisc for example).

Also, the famous Why has the compact disc 74 minutes of playtime is explained there:

According to a Sunday Tribune interview [1] the story is slightly more involved. At that time (1979) Philips owned Polygram, one of the world's largest distributors of music. Polygram had set up a large experimental CD plant in Hanover, Germany, which could produce huge amounts of CDs having, of course, a diameter of 115 mm. Sony did not yet have such a facility. If Sony had agreed on the 115 mm disc, Philips would have had a significant competitive edge in the market. Sony was aware of that, did not like it, and something had to be done. The long-playing time of Beethoven's Ninth imposed by Ohga was used to push Philips to accept 120 mm, so that Philips' Polygram lost its edge on disc fabrication.

Size Change

[Kenshin]

FTFA: Many other decisions were made that year, such as the disc diameter (115m)...
The disc diameter was changed from 115m to 120mm to allow for 74 minutes of playback with the sampling rate and quality chosen.

Thank god. I'd hate to imagine the storage rack I'd need to keep those 115m discs.

I find this the most interesing

[qzulla]

Beethovens 9th is very popular in Japan on new years.

However, Sony vice-president Norio Ohga, who was responsible for the project, did not agree. "Let us take the music as the basis," he said. He hadn't studied at the Conservatory in Berlin for nothing. Ohga had fond memories of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony ('Alle Menschen werden Brüder'). That had to fit on the CD. There was room for those few extra minutes, the Philips engineers agreed. The performance by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, lasted for 66 minutes. Just to be quite sure, a check was made with Philips' subsidiary, PolyGram, to ascertain what other recordings there were. The longest known performance lasted 74 minutes. This was a mono recording made during the Bayreuther Festspiele in 1951 and conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler. This therefore became the playing time of a CD. A diameter of 12 centimeters was required for this playing time.

In this way the specifications of the CD were determined by means of intensive contact between Philips and Sony.

http://www.research.philips.com/newscenter/dossier /optrec/beethoven.html

Just thought you'ld like to know

qz

A Dutchman improved the production process

[cheros]

If I recall correctly it was Ron Kok, a Dutch entrepreneur, who came up with a *MUCH* more efficient production method to make them cheaper. He put the separate components inline and improved the sequence, thus taking away a lot of the media handling which caused quality issues. Quality went up, volume went up, price came down.

Did the guy get rich off it? No, because in those days he was naive and thus had it stolen and copied from right underneath his nose. He's fared better since, but he's the guy that's responsible for CDs being so dirt cheap (AFAIK, been a while since I heard this).

Re:An open question...why 44.1?

[ShakaZ]

For a more scientifically sound reason about why 44.1 kHz was chosen look here : http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/audio/44.1.html

The CD sampling rate has to be larger than about 40 kHz to fulfill the Nyquist criterion that requires sampling at twice the maximum analog frequency, which is about 20 kHz for audio. The sampling frequency is chosen somewhat higher than the Nyquist rate since practical filters neede to prevent aliasing have a finite slope. Digital audio tapes (DATs) use a sampling rate of 48 kHz. It has been claimed that thier sampling rate differs from that of CDs to make digital copying from one to the other more difficult. 48 kHz is, in principle, a better rate since it is a multiple of the other standard sampling rates, namely 8 and 16 kHz for telephone-quality audio. Sampling rate conversion is simplified if rates are integer multiples of each other.

Re:Could it be more obvious...

[Hal_Porter]

Sampling rate of 16-bit @ 44.1khz vs. 24-bit @ 192khz.

For 74 minutes of audio to the latter spec, you're talking about 2.5GB.

Look at what you're saying. Improving the sample rate from 44.1kHz to 192kHz moves the Nyqvist frequency from 22.05kHz to 96kHz. Increasing the sample size takes the SNR from 96dB to 144dB.

Now I'm pretty sure I don't care about frequencies between 22.05kHz and 96kHz. Double blind tests make it unlikely most people can even hear them. In fact I suspect the ones thay say they can would fail the test, and so they are actually kidding themselves.

And are all those signals below 96dB are vital to my enjoyment of music? I don't remember be annoyed by vinyl or tape in terms of quality and both of them are a lot worse than 16bit at 44.1kHz. Come to think of it MP3 will cut off at a lower frequency than 22.05kHz, and discard low amplitude components at lot more ruthlessly than even 16bit@44.1kHz and it sounds the same as CD to me.

Hell most of the music I really like I first heard in very low fidelity environments, much worse than even an MP3.

Re:a ton would be about right.

[Hal_Porter]

He's probably a audiophile. A single bit error in their music causes them to haywire and then explode. This is the same effect applied to text.

Re:How much longer will we be using CD's

[Anonymous Coward]

about 74 minutes.

Re:An open question...why 44.1?

[iluvcapra]

The CD sampling rate has to be larger than about 40 kHz to fulfill the Nyquist criterion that requires sampling at twice the maximum analog frequency, which is about 20 kHz for audio.

As many audiophiles will tell you, though humans cannot generally perceive tones above 20kHz, they are able to use high-frequency information for things like localization, and an entire high-resolution sound recording market, based on 96 and 192 kHz recording formats is built around it. The quote from the website above sort of tries to reason the 44.1 issue backwards: why didn't they just do 44.0 or (44.2 even?) if they were trying to find a sample rate that didn't convert so well? Particularly when the best analogue formats, like 30 ips 2 inch tape, can record up to 30 kHz?

Here's the story my recording engineering teachers passed down to me, accept it if you wish:

A long time ago the only way you could make a digital recording (without building a cleanroom or spending $10 grand on a 1 Gig hard drive) was to take your digital bit-stream and record it on some kind of helical video tape. Sony was the first company to sell these devices, which were basically black boxes with audio in on one side, and video out on the other; you would then take this video signal (which looks like "checkerboard" noise on a TV) and send it to a VCR to record. The best commonly-available video recording format at the time was 3/4" U-Matic.

U-Matic can record the full 525 lines of an NTSC image at (nominally) 30 frames/sec. In tests, the Sony engineers found they could squeeze about 47,040 bits into a frame. (There's some way this worked out into an integer number of bits per an integer number of lines, but I can't remember the math right now. It averages about 90 bits per line.)

So, if you have 47,040 bits per frame, you have 1,411,200 bits per second, which is 176,400 bytes/sec, which is the data rate of 44.1 kHz stereo PCM. The system also works for PAL, which only runs at 25 video frames per second, but has 625 line to record on, making up the difference.

Earlier light tech

[yusing]

CD was not the first technology to read discs without physical contact. RCA had a turntable capable of "reading" vinyl records with a light-beam in the late 1930s.

The RCA Magic Brain Victrola/Radio "was advertised as being able to play both sides of a record without turning it over and used a jewel-lite scanner that eliminated the needle and you could stack up to 15 records at a time."

Sometimes seen advertised on RCA 78rpm record labels of the period.
http://www.phonoland.com/archives/mboards/18100/ms g_0000018187.shtml

The diameter was reduced from the original design

[Poingggg]

From TFA: The disc diameter was changed from 115m to 120mm to allow for 74 minutes of playback...

Maybe they thought it might be hard to get consumers to put a 115 meter playback device in their room. And of course they would get complaints from record stores who should have to get bigger doors to get the disks through, not to mention storage space.

Re:HD-DVD is dead

[superslacker87]

I have to say I'm honestly shocked. The way fickle America is, I would figure they would go "BluRay? What's that?" and then go "HD-DVD? Well, it has DVD in it, and I know HD has a better quality picture, and it is a DVD after all." I personally wasn't going to buy either until a. A good quality cheap BluRay/HD-DVD/DVD/VCD/CD player came out or b. Someone in this worthless battle of the new "awesome" formats actually won. I'm still going to hold out, but it looks like I'm going to eventually be getting a BluRay player for my home this Christmas, or next Christmas if it's still not solved.

French had high-definition in 1948- sort of....

[Dogtanian]

And that's leaving out the issue of finding an HDTV set to make full use of the format. (HDTV was invented in 1969, but wasn't commercially viable until the 90's.) The original French TV standard (before they changed to 625-line SECAM) was 819-line. Whether or not that was high-definition is open to debate (according to Wikipedia, the equipment of the time wasn't capable of exploiting that much resolution).