[opendtv] The CD turns 25

The CD turns 25

http://www.smh.com.au/news/digital-music/the-day-the-cd-was-born/2007/08/17/1186857726971.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

17 August, 2007 - 9:20AM

It 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.

Record labels seeking to revive the format have experimented with hybrid CD-DVD 
combos and packages of traditional CDs with separate DVDs that carry video and 
multimedia offerings playable on computers.

The efforts have been mixed at best, with some attempts, such as the DualDisc 
that debuted in 2004, not finding lasting success in the marketplace.

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

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