[Vintage-Audio] Re Birth Of The Compact Disc

[michael salmons]

I didn't leap on board instantly, but I was intrigued by the promise  
of CDs and finally made the plunge around '85 when prices were  
starting to go down. I bought one of the all-metal portable Sony  
Discmen and a Carver Digital Time Lens home player. The Discman was  
crappy. Build quality was great but as the anti-skip technology was  
very new, just carrying it around resulted in bad skipping. It would  
do fairly well when stationary but still skipped for no good reason  
every once in a while. I do remember the available titles had  
increased but tstill was not great at that time. I don' t remember  
how much I paid but it was not cheap. i do remember the carver set my  
back five bills plus tax. It was also built like a tank and  
fortunately sported error-free performance. The sound quality was  
significantly better than the discman- I believe they had some kind  
of circuit that emulated tube sound. I loved it and it alone  
functioned as my stereo (with a pair of good headphones) for a couple  
of years at least. I kinda wish I still had one- I sold it to a guy  
when I needed to move and couldn't afford to. Sad but true.

  My first discs were Pink Floyd- Dark Side of the Moon and the  
Beatles- Abbey Road.  The sound was really pretty good. It was  
amazing enough just to hear Dark Side of the Moon with no clicks and  
pops. Of course nowadays I listen to my pristine 30th anniversary 180  
gram edition on a NAD turntable with an RG noise reducer/dynamic  
processor, and over my Boston A-150s it sounds better than it ever  
has on any CD I've heard. I'm a little biased toward vinyl though!

On Dec 16, 2007, at 7:51 PM, Gerry Steffens wrote:

> On October 1, 1982 Sony introduced the CDP-101, the first compact  
> disc audio
> CD player on the market at a retail price of about $900.
>
>
> The first CD:
>
> In the spring of 1981, Herbert von Karajan, conductor of the Berlin
> Philharmonic orchestra, was one of the first outsiders to be  
> allowed to
> listen to the CD at Philips.
>
> He instantly fell in love with the quality of the new medium. In  
> April of
> that year, during the Salzburger Festspiele, Von Karajan decided to  
> play the
> new sound at a press conference. "This is a technological advance  
> that is
> comparable with the changeover from gas lamps to electric light,"  
> he told
> his audience.
>
> Von Karajan’s enthusiasm was however not sufficient to win over the  
> record
> companies for the new medium. PolyGram, a Philips subsidiary, only  
> changed
> its track when Jan Timmer (later president of Philips) took over  
> the helm.
> He announced a 500-day program to develop CD presses and to take  
> the market
> by storm one and a half years later with half a million CDs.
>
> Very precise equipment is required for the production of a CD. It  
> starts
> with the production of one CD, the master. A powerful laser writes the
> information on a light-sensitive layer. The parts exposed to laser  
> light are
> etched away, thus giving rise to the pit pattern. This positive  
> master is
> used to make a negative die from nickel. This ‘stamper’ has bumps  
> at the
> places where pits are to be made in the CD.
>
> When the stamper is ready, it is installed in the core of the CD  
> press. The
> negative die forms a part of the mould which is used to cast the  
> CD. The CD
> is cast by heating plastic (polycarbonate) and injecting it into  
> the mould.
> When the plastic has cooled, it leaves a disc in the mould which has a
> precise imprint of the pit pattern. This disc then passes to the  
> following
> station in the machine to be given a reflective aluminium layer on  
> the side
> with the pit pattern. This layer causes the laser light to be  
> reflected when
> the CD is played. In the following process step the aluminium layer is
> coated in a protective transparent lacquer. The lacquer prevents the
> aluminium from oxidising and ensures that the CD remains  
> antistatic. In most
> cases a label is then printed on the CD in the same machine.
>
> All of this must be carried out with great precision. A single  
> particle of
> dust can potentially cause irregularities and subsequently lead to  
> hitches
> in the music. In the early days expensive cleanrooms were required  
> to allow
> the equipment to operate unhindered and, because every person  
> carries a lot
> of dust with them, the specialist technologists were dressed like  
> astronauts
> so as to prevent any risk of contamination.
>
> The extremely short development time for a CD factory could only be  
> achieved
> using concurrent engineering, at that time a new way of carrying out
> large-scale production. Various technical aspects of the presses  
> were not
> developed one after the other, but in parallel by separate teams.  
> This meant
> that work was being carried out simultaneously on the processes for  
> the
> presses, the application of a reflective metallic layer, the  
> protective
> transparent coating, the printing of a label and the design of a  
> factory.
>
> This parallel method of working requires that the development teams  
> are
> exceptionally well geared to one another. The manner in which the  
> reflective
> layer had to be applied, for example, was very much dependent on the
> temperature during pressing or on the properties of the protective  
> coating.
> A change in one process had consequences for another.
>
> The PolyGram engineers did not know whether or not the result would be
> favourable until just before they were to commence building the  
> factory.
> Then a prototype CD player became available with an audio output,  
> with which
> the music could be made audible. Until that point in time, the test
> pressings could only be assessed by means of measuring instruments.
>
> In August 1982 the real pressing was ready to begin in the new  
> factory, not
> far from the place where Emil Berliner had produced his first  
> gramophone
> record 93 years earlier. (Deutsche Grammophon, Berliner’s company,  
> had by
> now become a part of PolyGram). The first CD that was pressed in  
> Hanover was
> a recording of Herbert von Karajan conducting the Alpine Symphony  
> by Richard
> Strauß. In January 1983, 500 working days after the start of  
> production,
> half a million CDs had been made. The demand from Japan in  
> particular was
> overwhelming. In North America a handful of titles were released in  
> 1982,
> one of the first was Billy Joel's 52nd street.
>
>
>
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