Zahlen, bitte! 74 minutes – The crooked playing time of the audio CD
Stories abound about the CD's 74-minute playing time: officially, the real reason for playing Beethoven's 9th Symphony in its entirety is probably more mundane.
The Compact Disc (CD) or Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) – as the official but little-used name – was launched on August 17, 1982: from then on, up to 74 minutes of music could be stored on a sound carrier measuring just 12 centimetres in a quality never heard before – even if some audio enthusiasts found it difficult to get excited about the CD sound. It was the cooperation between Philips and Sony that made the CD as we know it today possible. Despite all the cooperation, however, it was also a duel, right up to the definition of the playback length.
In 1972, Lou Ottens, inventor of the music cassette, started a project called Audio Long Play (ALP) as head of the NatLab (Natuurkundig Laboratorium) –, the scientific research laboratory of the Eindhoven-based Philips group –, which began development as an audio add-on to a video disc called Video Long Play (VLP).
Video player as a technical flop
The video disc player appeared in 1975, but was a huge flop: Kees A. Schouhamer Immink, who was involved in the projects as a developer at Philips, described in an anniversary text [PDF] that the first attempt was a huge flop, and half of around 400 players were returned because buyers were under the misapprehension that it could also record programs.
Although the system flopped, even more so when the first video recorders came onto the market, the engineers also gained some experience in CD technology. In November 1977, Ottens was given the green light for ALP to become an in-house product development, which was no longer created in the shadow of the VLP.
A disk no larger than the diagonal of a compact cassette was to store music in high quality and be robust at the same time. The idea of analog storage was rejected because it offered hardly any advantages over conventional long-playing records. Philips had difficulties with error correction: microscopic errors caused noise such as crackling, which sounded similar to that of a long-playing record. They wanted to avoid this at all costs.
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Search for a cooperation partner
As it was clear to Philips that a new format had to become the world standard in order to be successful in the face of many competing formats, the company looked for cooperation partners. With a demonstration device called "Pinkeltje" (named after a Dutch fairytale character), Philips went in search of a partner.
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Konosuke Matsushita, founder and senior director of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co (MEI), which was itself developing CD technology under the JVC label, was a guest at a demonstration and Ottens was amazed at the very emotional reaction for a Japanese: "He took the green cloth from the little machine and took out the disk, and old Matsushita said: 'Tssssss ssssssss!!!! '. For a Japanese man, that's the absolute maximum {...] emotion there is... I can still see him doing it in front of me. I've never seen a Japanese person do that before.... They were completely speechless!"
Sony as a new cooperation partner
A cooperation did not materialize, but Ottens suspected that they were on the right track with their concept. They realized that they would give up their exclusivity with a partner, but would have a better chance against the competition. So Norio ĹŚga, then Vice President of Sony, received a telex from Ottens: "If you come to Europe, please visit us."
The meeting led to a renewed partnership with Sony from 1979. Both companies knew each other from the joint marketing of the compact cassette, which they had made a global success. Sony and Philips wanted to do the same again with the CD. The specifications were jointly agreed in several meetings in Tokyo and Eindhoven. In addition to other parameters such as coding and sampling rate, the diameter of the CD was an important issue, with the size influencing the playback time.
Philips wanted 11.5 centimeters and 60 minutes of playback time. After all, this was the diagonal of the compact cassette, as well as one of its standard playing times, and it would also be DIN-compliant. But Sony wanted more: they wanted 12 centimeters and thus 74 minutes of playback time.
A. The polycarbonate disk layer contains the data, which is encoded using lands and pits.
B. The reflective layer reflects the laser.
C. The lacquer layer protects against oxidation.
D. The artwork of the CD is screen printed on the top of the disk.
E. A laser beam scans the polycarbonate disk, is reflected back and read by the player.
(Image:Â CC BY-SA 3.0, Pbroks13)
According to Sony, Norio Ōga, as a trained musician, is said to have made the argument: "Just as a curtain is never lowered halfway through an opera, a disk should be large enough to contain the entire ninth symphony of Beethoven." The benchmark chosen was a slower version of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, recorded in 1951 during the Bayreuth Festival and conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler.
However, the real reason why Sony so vehemently extended the playing time to 74 minutes was probably of a more practical nature. Sony and Philips were not only partners, but also competitors. While PolyGram, a Philips subsidiary in Langenhagen near Hanover, already had ultra-modern production facilities for CDs, which could have started production immediately for the 115 mm diameter discs. Sony would first have had to build the production facilities to enter the market.
This musically justified, but probably more market-oriented decision finally gave Sony time to build up its own capacities. It was not until August 17, 1982 that production of the ABBA CD "The Visitors" began in Langenhagen. This was the beginning of the triumphant advance of the compact disc, which would only come to an end some 30 years later with the advent of online streaming and music downloads.
(mawi)
