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  1. #1
    Senior Member Ducatista47's Avatar
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    The audio miracle of 1982

    If ever there has been an audio advancement that lived up to the hype, including their forecast of the future of the technology, this is it. Here is an early report forty years ago. Sony did the software and since then no working CD player has ever played a note of music incorrectly. About 2/3 of the data on a Disc is devoted to error correction.

    Worth saying now that the dust-up about the early discs sounding poor because the technology was flawed was complete BS. I purchased some early Nimbus CDs from the UK and they were perfect. It was the work of stubborn or lazy recording that took forever to simply do it right. There were no esoteric secrets or magic yet to be discovered. The technology was released fully capable, as recordings were being properly mastered for the the new recording technology in Japan and the UK before the complaints started.

    https://youtu.be/_Tx6TYnPat8
    Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom
    Too many audiophiles listen with their eyes instead of their ears


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    Administrator Mr. Widget's Avatar
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    CDs RIP

    Quote Originally Posted by Ducatista47 View Post
    If ever there has been an audio advancement that lived up to the hype, including their forecast of the future of the technology, this is it.
    Thanks Clark... interesting as always.

    From the video:

    "...and what you have just been listening to is the ultimate in recorded sound. It will make all conventional disc and cassette systems obsolete. It's dust proof, scratch proof, digitally recorded read by a laser and it's called the Compact Disc."

    "And unlike a conventional gramophone disc, this is totally proof against finger prints and dust because the information is underneath a plastic film. It doesn't matter how much I manhandle that particular disc, it will still continue to give very good audio quality."

    "In addition the whole thing, all of that, the little computerized marvel, is packed in something that you can pick up, and move around like that, even shake and nothing happens..."

    "The players are due for release at the end of '82 in Japan and the United States... And the discs should be no more expensive than records now. In a way it all sounds too good to be true. Other systems, have heaven knows, have failed to live up to their prerelease promises to change the way we listen."


    Actually in many ways it turned out to be too good to be true. During the decades we have had with the technology we've been able to see how it really worked out. I'm sure we have all experienced scratched and broken CDs that skipped, produced bizarre digital noise, or failed to play at all. I don't recommend shaking your CD player, and the record companies discovered that they could over charge us for CDs throughout the entire lifespan of CDs relevance.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ducatista47 View Post
    Worth saying now that the dust-up about the early discs sounding poor because the technology was flawed was complete BS. I purchased some early Nimbus CDs from the UK and they were perfect. It was the work of stubborn or lazy recording that took forever to simply do it right. There were no esoteric secrets or magic yet to be discovered. The technology was released fully capable, as recordings were being properly mastered for the the new recording technology in Japan and the UK before the complaints started.
    Hmmm... I will agree with you that the baseline technology and the Redbook Spec was and is solid, but the notion that not all shiny silver discs were created equally is valid. Don't confuse one with the other.


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  3. #3
    Senior Member Ducatista47's Avatar
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    Widget, I imagine these polite Australian journalists could not picture discs being "stored" underfoot on the floor after the hash pipe did its work. Or the crunchy peanut butter making its way into the disc tray and leaving circular scratches. But it seems in retrospect that the appearance of those little frisbees were sometimes seen as a challenge to think up new ways to abuse them. Mistreatment of the media was never intended to be survivable in all circumstances and there was no shortage of idiots; an unfortunate combination.

    As for shaking the player, the industry had to figure that out when the portable players like the Discman were developed. As I recall the main strategy was to read the disc ahead of playback and use that record of the data instead of the parts that could not be read accurately because of the jostling. I remember salesmen touting players on how much memory they carried or how many seconds - a minute became the standard in some markets - they cached.

    My point about the recording/mastering was that not many were created equally. Most were, for years, done pretty badly. The media was certainly standardized, so I blame the way the technicians treated the process, certainly not Sony. I remain mystified how some outfits got it right from the start while others took many years to stop producing nearly unlistenable garbage. Everyone had the same tools. The remastering for CD had it as bad or worse.
    Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom
    Too many audiophiles listen with their eyes instead of their ears


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    Administrator Mr. Widget's Avatar
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    Hash pipes notwithstanding, I have had some CDs deteriorate without any visible abuse, though I see your point.

    FWIW: I have copied all of my CDs to hard drives and virtually never play silver discs anymore.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ducatista47 View Post
    My point about the recording/mastering was that not many were created equally. Most were, for years, done pretty badly. The media was certainly standardized, so I blame the way the technicians treated the process, certainly not Sony. I remain mystified how some outfits got it right from the start while others took many years to stop producing nearly unlistenable garbage. Everyone had the same tools. The remastering for CD had it as bad or worse.
    Craft is craft... anyone can buy a set of chisels, but not everyone can sculpt the David.

    The chisels did get better with time and the music sculptors also got better at their craft.

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    Senior Member Ducatista47's Avatar
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    The reason I have not gone to music servers is my personal circumstances. It could be my time is not worth enough to me to make the calculus of the convenience factor work out here. Another factor is I tend to be patient with machines and processes.

    I haven't noticed any self destructive CDs here but some old ones might bear investigation. I do remember the first one I bought, I could check it out. Suzanne Vega's Solitude Standing. It's ironic that one of her songs was used to develop the mp3. I think it was Tom's Diner, but I'll have to verify that. It's all in Greg Milner's book. (Edit: Yes, it was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom's_Diner ) It ends up few pop songs have had this interesting a history.

    Sonic-ally, the worst job of remastering to CD was Love, Devotion, Surrender by John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana. They recently personally remastered it to their satisfaction, but only for vinyl! Oh well, the market makes all the decisions and a monkey in silk is still a monkey.
    Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom
    Too many audiophiles listen with their eyes instead of their ears


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    Quote Originally Posted by Ducatista47 View Post
    The reason I have not gone to music servers is my personal circumstances. It could be my time is not worth enough to me to make the calculus of the convenience factor work out here. Another factor is I tend to be patient with machines and processes.

    I haven't noticed any self destructive CDs here but some old ones might bear investigation. I do remember the first one I bought, I could check it out. Suzanne Vega's Solitude Standing. It's ironic that one of her songs was used to develop the mp3. I think it was Tom's Diner, but I'll have to verify that. It's all in Greg Milner's book. (Edit: Yes, it was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom's_Diner ) It ends up few pop songs have had this interesting a history.

    Sonic-ally, the blow job of remastering to CD was Love, Devotion, Surrender by John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana. They recently personally remastered it to their satisfaction, but only for vinyl! Oh well, the market makes all the decisions and a monkey in silk is still a monkey.

    Who is taking the Micky out of the Monkey here?

    Some think the same of MQA.

    The interesting thing is the original mastering EQs were way superior to modern equipment.

    https://www.uaudio.com/uad-plugins/e...ollection.html

    The mastering engineer is also the Merovingian. He can just tell the artist your recording is not suitable for commercial duplicate so your not going any further.

    The jbl 4 ways were used for mastering btw.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Widget View Post

    Craft is craft... anyone can buy a set of chisels, but not everyone can sculpt the David.

    The chisels did get better with time and the music sculptors also got better at their craft.

    Widget
    Zactly

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