Compact Disc Digital Audio: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:52, 17 February 2025

Revision as of 06:03, 20 February 2025

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According to a ''[[Sunday Tribune]]'' interview,<ref name="ferguscassidy" /> the story is slightly more involved. In 1979, Philips owned [[PolyGram]], one of the world's largest music distributors. PolyGram had set up a large experimental CD plant in [[Hannover]], Germany, which could produce huge numbers of CDs having a diameter of 115&nbsp;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. The long playing time of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony imposed by [[Norio Ohga|Ohga]] was used to push Philips to accept 120&nbsp;mm, so that Philips' PolyGram lost its edge on disc fabrication.<ref name="ferguscassidy" />

The 74:33 playing time of a CD, which is longer than the 22 minutes per side<ref name="Auto45-7" /><ref name="Auto45-8" /> typical of [[long-playing]] (LP) [[vinyl album]]s, was often used to the CD's advantage during the early years when CDs and LPs vied for commercial sales. CDs would often be released with one or more [[bonus track]]s, enticing consumers to buy the CD for the extra material. However, attempts to combine double LPs onto one CD occasionally resulted in the opposite situation in which the CD would instead offer less audio than the LP. One such example was with [[DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince]]'s double album ''[[He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper]]'', in which initial CD releases of the album had multiple tracks edited down for length to fit on a single disc; recent CD reissues package the album across two discs as a result. Furthermore, early CD releases were restricted by the 72-minute limit of 3/4"&nbsp;inch [[U-matic]] tapes used by early PCM adaptors; by 1988, higher-capacity alternatives would arrive on the market, allowing for releases to make use of the full 74:33.<ref name=Immink2 /> This and the emergence of 80-minute CDs allowed for some double albums that were previously edited for length, e.g. ''[[1999 (Prince album)|1999]]'' by [[Prince (musician)|Prince]], or packaged as double CDs, e.g. ''[[Tommy (The Who album)|Tommy]]'' by [[the Who]], to be re-released on a single disc.

Playing times beyond 74:33 are achieved by decreasing track pitch (the distance separating the track as it spirals the disc). However, most players can still accommodate the more closely spaced data if it is still within ''Red Book'' tolerances.<ref name="Auto45-9" /> Manufacturing processes used in the final years of CD technology allowed an audio CD to contain up to 98 minutes (variable from one replication plant to another) without requiring the content creator to sign a waiver releasing the plant owner from responsibility if the CD produced is marginally or entirely unreadable by some playback equipment. In this final practice, maximum CD playing time crept higher by reducing minimum engineering tolerances.