[HN Gopher] The CD's Rise in the Music Business: An Oral History
___________________________________________________________________
The CD's Rise in the Music Business: An Oral History
Author : wallflower
Score : 41 points
Date : 2022-10-05 13:05 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.billboard.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.billboard.com)
| keepquestioning wrote:
| Learning how CDs work in Physics class blew my fucking mind. If
| there was only a way to communicate to the normies how amazing
| they actually are.
| Minor49er wrote:
| You can play music by shooting a laser at a spinning metallic
| circle. If someone doesn't find that amazing, then sadly there
| is no help for them
| csdvrx wrote:
| It's more like a collector item now :)
|
| But I like going to second-hand stores and buying CDs for a
| dollar: if you like the first song, it's like getting a non-
| curated Spotify experience that can expand your tastes.
|
| Also, the presence in the store means 1) someone though it was
| interesting enough to buy it in the first place 2) someone
| thought it was interesting enough to try to resell it, so it's
| non-curated in the sense it's not specially tailored to your
| specific tastes, but still good enough to have been deemed worth
| selling twice.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| I used to do that all the time, it introduced me to some
| great/weird stuff. Always found something interesting to listen
| to while driving. Unfortunately I switched to a car that only
| has a tape player, and while you used to be able to do the same
| with cassettes it's getting much harder to find them.
| tombert wrote:
| I haven't done this in quite awhile, but I used to do what you
| were describing at a local Goodwill; I'd find a CD for a band I
| had never heard of (or had only a passing knowledge of), give
| it a listen in my car for a few days. The CD would only be a
| buck or two, so I figured that if I like even two of the songs
| then I'm ahead of the iTunes price. This is why I'm big Pink
| Floyd fan now; I had passively heard of Dark Side of the Moon,
| and when I saw the CD going for a buck at Goodwill I figured it
| was worth a listen.
|
| Sadly, I more or less stopped doing this the second that I got
| a Spotify account.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > I'd find a CD for a band I had never heard of (or had only
| a passing knowledge of),
|
| I do that, but also for genres: it's a bit like buying games
| on Stream: I build up a stack, then I consume it piece by
| piece until I can start appreciating its unique contributions
| compared to other genres.
|
| Then once I find an artist I really like, I dig deeper into
| their earlier work and their feats.
|
| Right now, after exploring Reggaeton then french Pop-Urbaine,
| I'm digging deeper into meditative music and 2000s EDM (well,
| separately, not both at the same time :)
|
| > give it a listen in my car for a few days
|
| Oh yes, the car trick is great! Old cars have CD players! And
| that's how I've become a fan of Pop-Urbaine: buying CDs
| during travel.
|
| > The CD would only be a buck or two, so I figured that if I
| like even two of the songs then I'm ahead of the iTunes price
|
| It's not just a question of price: for me, it's more about
| curation.
|
| Besides the entire genres, there are some artists I would
| _never_ have discovered without this "one weird trick".
|
| Then once digging deeper, even for well-known artists, there
| are some obscure songs that I end up really liking!
| creeble wrote:
| I do this frequently when vacationing. A lot of thrift store CD
| stocks have been picked over in recent years, but with enough
| flipping I can frequently find something that maybe has a gold
| nugget on it. Then I rip it to my collection (currently about
| 1300 CDs worth).
|
| But I'm a bit surprised how the inventory has shrunk over the
| last 5 or 6 years. Cmon people, unload your old CDs at thrift
| stores! :)
| criddell wrote:
| A few years ago, my daughter got a turntable for Christmas and I
| started taking her to record stores. While I was there I realized
| that I too liked physical media, but vinyl just wasn't my thing.
| I did have a hundred or so CDs in the attic. Maybe it was time to
| see if they were still any good?
|
| Turns out, CDs are pretty durable. Even though my attic gets
| crazy hot in the Texas summer, none of the CDs (some 35 years
| old!) failed. Next thing I needed was to buy a CD player (again).
| I was somewhat surprised by how few companies are still making
| players, but I got an Onkyo unit that I'm happy with.
|
| Now I have a pretty great sounding setup and I have little
| booklets to examine while I listen. Browsing the collection for
| something to play is fun.
|
| I'm back to buying CDs and it's actually a great time to be
| buying this stuff. New and used is cheaper than ever (lots of
| stuff is the same price it was 30 years ago) and so much stuff is
| available online and off. I love going to Waterloo Records in
| Austin and flipping through the stacks to buy a couple titles
| from my list and probably another title or too because I liked
| the artwork on the case or the guy at the counter recommended
| something.
|
| I also bought a small bookshelf system for my desk because
| popping in a disk then having some music for maybe an hour then
| having to get up to change it works well for me. If I'm streaming
| from Spotify I end up working for too long, often unproductively.
| Taking a break every hour or so and shifting my attention (take
| the dog outside, make some tea, change the CD, then back to
| work!) seems to help my problem solving skills. I look at it as a
| healthier version of a cigarette break.
|
| The only problem I've had with my disks is that a couple of them
| seem to not be balanced perfectly and they make a bit of
| mechanical noise in the player as they spin.
| beefok wrote:
| This is a testament to how well Reed-Solomon encoding/decoding
| [1] can detect and correct errors! I remember even heavily
| scratched cd's would work if you cleaned them with toothpaste
| of all things (?) [2]
|
| This is unlike blowing an NES cartridge, which actually had a
| detrimental effect due to blowing spit on the pin contacts and
| oxidizing them.. [3] I do remember Babbages/KB Toys/etc did
| actually sell NES/SNES/Gameboy cartridge cleaning kits though
| [4].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-
| interleaved_Reed%E2%80%9...
|
| [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=clean+cd+rom+toothpaste
|
| [3] https://www.denofgeek.com/games/nes-cartridge-blowing-air-
| ur...
|
| [4] https://www.thevintagegamers.com/2012/11/vintage-gaming-
| clea...
| Sharlin wrote:
| You can indeed polish all sorts of things (aluminum,
| silverware, car headlights...) with toothpaste. It's an
| abrasive.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| For what it's worth - Sensodyne uses a finer grit abrasive
| than many other brands. Might be a better choice if trying
| to repair cd scratches.
| acuozzo wrote:
| The US Sensodyne (sans Novamin) or the regular Sensodyne
| that every one else gets?
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I am in the USA. Wasn't aware there are different types
| under that name.
| monetus wrote:
| Novamin turns into hydroxyapatite, like in Japanese
| toothpastes. Fluoride and nanohydroxyapatite work better
| together than either alone, for carries at least. The
| approval process is too expensive to get through here,
| even though nanohydroxyapatite is used regularly in many
| countries.
| Lammy wrote:
| > I remember even heavily scratched cd's would work if you
| cleaned them with toothpaste of all things (?)
|
| I've had even better results with this three-step stuff
| that's actually meant for plastics, with most scratches not
| needing more than step 2: https://novuspolish.com/
|
| That works great for bottom-side scratches, but sadly it's
| not usually possible to repair any damage done to the label-
| side of a Compact Disc due to proximity between the label and
| the reflective data layer underneath. It's really common for
| well-intentioned people to remove discs from a drive and (in
| absence of the case) set them upside-down to "protect" them
| not realizing it's the worst possible thing they could do.
| All-over-print labels add an extra margin of protection over
| discs that leave the label's negative space as bare disc
| silver: https://cdn.hswstatic.com/gif/cd-crosssection.gif
| bombcar wrote:
| The enforced break is one of the nicer things about old-time
| music (beyond consuming an album at a time).
| criddell wrote:
| > beyond consuming an album at a time
|
| That's the other thing I realized - I love finding great
| albums of music rather than individual tracks. Concept albums
| are especially great.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > I love going to Waterloo Records in Austin
|
| Adding this to my list. I've definitely ramped back up into the
| CD game myself.
|
| I think I have spent $2k between la-la-land and Discogs this
| year already...
|
| The biggest catalyst for this was Spotify removing content from
| their platform, presumably due to licensing issues. I don't
| like the idea that someone could memoryhole a piece of art that
| I had previously experienced.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I used to have a large CD collection. I bought them and I sold
| them. I bought second-hand and new. It was fantastic.
|
| And then one day I moved overseas and one of my CD boxes got
| lost in the mail.
|
| And then, some other day, the bottom box of my CD boxes that
| were temporarily stored in a basement got flooded and
| destroyed.
|
| Now I don't give a shit about CDs. I have unapologetically
| pirated the music from CDs that I used to own but got lost or
| destroyed, and for all my new music I bought it online and back
| up the digital files to the cloud. I'll never lose music I paid
| for again.
|
| CDs are legacy media for a reason. All other legacy digital
| media will follow it, except for the small group of people who
| fetishize it for nostalgic reasons. There is a tiny argument
| that still exists for buying legacy analog media - the "it
| sounds warmer" argument. But honestly, you could just pipe your
| digital files through a filter and get the same effect, so,
| meh.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Were you listening to those CDs or eating them for
| breakfast??
|
| It's a world 7B+ strong, there's room for everyone. Even
| those who like to appreciate holding a music medium in their
| hands.
|
| It's ok. You can move on.
| criddell wrote:
| > There is a tiny argument that still exists for buying
| legacy analog media - the "it sounds warmer" argument.
|
| There are more arguments than that. For some people, it's all
| about collecting and community. For others, they love the
| large format artwork. I'm not playing analog media, but I
| still like the physical interaction part. Many of us also
| like that, for some artists, buying a record is a way of
| supporting them. Then there's the fact that playing a record
| or CD doesn't require an internet connection and that means
| nobody is tracking the records you play today in order to
| better sell things to you tomorrow. There's also the gear
| part - it's an excuse to put together a great audio setup.
| For those of us who still buy physical media, I don't think
| the "it sounds warmer" argument is terribly common.
|
| All of this stuff is fun. There's not a lot of joy in tapping
| "dylan blonde" into a search box and pressing play.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I completely understand the hobbyist appeal - it's the same
| reason why people still buy hard copy books and comics -
| but from the average consumer perspective there's no real
| reason to do it since you can easily buy the same or better
| quality tunes direct from digital distributors.
|
| Nowadays I most only buy music on Bandcamp, and if I want
| to throw more cash to the artist there are other venues
| like Patreon or even just a Paypal account where I can do
| that. Paying for physical media or merch is of course
| another indirect way to funnel money to the creators, but
| if getting money to the creator is the main goal, there are
| often more efficient ways to do it too.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| > the same or better quality [...] direct from digital
| distributors
|
| Not wanting to object fundamentally, as enough of my
| recent music purchases have indeed been digital
| downloads, however I'm still glad that at least for now
| CDs still exist and provide an alternative option:
|
| - Some digital releases have been somewhat mangled in a
| very minor (the mouse squeak at the end of 3:47 EST is
| missing) or somewhat more major (several live
| albums/albums with live content of Bob Dylan's Bootleg
| Series are missing the pre-gap material between the
| individual tracks) fashion. Okay, in the former case I've
| simply grabbed the squeak off a Youtube recording and
| edited it back on, but in the latter case just getting
| the CDs is the most sensible option.
|
| - Cover art beyond the front cover and liner notes are
| mostly missing. Okay, sometimes they're forgettable
| anyway and after all the music _is_ the main thing, but
| sometimes it 's still a bit of a shame to miss out on
| those things. In principle at least Apple/iTunes does
| have facilities for including a PDF booklet together with
| an album download, but in practice at least for the kind
| of music I'm interested in, encountering such a thing
| seems to be the exception rather than the norm. The
| Bootleg Series again is being a culprit here - personally
| I find the liner notes definitively interesting to read,
| but online you're getting none of that. (On the other
| hand kudos to whoever made sure to include the booklet
| for the Traveling Wilburys Collection on iTunes!)
|
| - Occasionally (not often, but definitively sometimes),
| the (new, not used!) CD turns out to cost _noticeably_
| less than the digital download.
|
| - Remasters are par for the course (though in some
| circles even those can provoke heated discussions about
| whether a certain remaster is really better or not), but
| with remixes the difference is more immediately
| noticeable even to someone like me. Sometimes remixes are
| being offered as an alternative version, and you can
| still buy the original version if you prefer that, but
| sometimes the remixed version is _replacing_ the original
| albums. Online that means that subsequently piracy is
| your only choice of still obtaining the older mixes,
| whereas with CDs you 've still got a chance on the second
| hand market.
|
| - Where live albums are mastered with a pre-gap between
| tracks, it turns out I sometimes (e.g. especially when
| there's some stage banter related to the upcoming song)
| prefer the pre-gap to be tacked onto the beginning of the
| next track instead of the end of the previous track as
| seems to be the usual standard. When ripping a CD myself
| I can easily adjust that, when buying a download less so.
| (Having the pre-gap at the start of a track does have the
| trade-off that the music doesn't start playing
| immediately, but on the other hand during shuffling it
| means that any preceding stage banter remains together
| with the track it belongs to, and personally I find the
| latter more important.)
|
| Though I guess you can classify some of those objections
| as somewhat "hobbyist", too... :-)
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I generally agree on all of your points. Trust me, some
| of the CDs I lost in that flood were extremely rare and
| don't exist anywhere to purchase or download. They were
| tragic losses. For years I had a discogs.com account that
| I meticulously updated with everything in my collection.
|
| I get that there are differences between what is legally
| available as the "best" remastered version of the album
| and the original version as it was released on record or
| tape or CD back in the day. But if your goal is not to
| give money to the artist and instead just find the best
| version of the song, you can usually better do that
| through piracy. The artist doesn't get any money either
| way - whether you bought a second-hand album from your
| local record store or downloaded a version online - who
| cares?
|
| The one case where original media is interesting is if
| nobody made a version available online via piracy. And
| that's a sad state of affairs. As I mentioned earlier - I
| have lost dozens of CDs that never got released online,
| because they were small runs on indie labels or just
| independently released back in the day before the
| internet was a thing... Well now every time one of those
| sorts of CDs gets destroyed in a flood, it's one less
| copy of that song in the wider world. If anything, people
| should be uploading the fuck out of all they got, because
| otherwise all those great indie artists of the 90s (never
| mind the decades prior) will disappear into obscurity and
| what's the point of their music then?
|
| Digitize everything is my opinion. Digitize it, upload
| it, share it. It's the best way to preserve the culture
| of past years/decades/eras.
| neverartful wrote:
| It's great that your CDs in the attic weren't damaged. However,
| please don't store your CDs there.
|
| Since you're in the Austin area you might also want to check
| out Astro Records in Bastrop (30 minutes east). Very friendly
| and knowledgeable owner. Vinyl is the bulk of his inventory,
| but he also has a decent collection of CDs for sale.
| criddell wrote:
| I've been there! The wooden bar in there is amazing.
|
| The attached bookstore is pretty nice too if you like a
| certain type of book.
| rr808 wrote:
| I was a tape boy, I couldn't believe how great CD music sounded
| in comparison. When I saw CD players in cars it blew my mind, the
| future had arrived.
| bombcar wrote:
| CD-players in cars always blew my mind, especially since I got
| my first one around the time I got my first CD-ROM drive; the
| computer CD-ROM would throw an absolute shit fit if the case
| was brushed by a slight breeze, the car player wouldn't skip
| even over massive potholes.
| hey2022 wrote:
| My dad had a large vinyl collection. I collected tapes, then
| CDs, then mp3/lossless. Out of all these media types CDs were
| my least favorite. They didn't offer much convenience over
| tapes, didn't look as nice as records, were far less portable
| and shareable than mp3. Also I really disliked how fragile
| those plastic cases were.
|
| I miss tapes the most. They were so physical (being able to
| rewind using a pencil)! Also the ease of recording music from
| the radio, CDs never really matched that.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| CDs are the only uncompressed digital medium with no DRM, and
| they are ubiquitous! We will never see the like of it again.
| pkulak wrote:
| I just recently dragged my bin of 100s of CDs from the garage and
| ripped them all on to a server on my network. I think I may stick
| with it. It's gotten me buying a lot of physical CDs again, plus
| a little portable CD rom drive, since I no longer even own
| anything that can play them.
|
| I honestly am not 100% sure why I like this so much more. Spotify
| can do the same thing. You can "heart" albums and then they show
| up in your "library", but there's just something that makes that
| so clunky to deal with. When you open the app, you get radio
| stations and podcasts. I love opening an app and just seeing
| album covers. I dunno, maybe I'm crazy.
| meltyness wrote:
| If I know one thing about tech, it's that whatever it is that
| ignites a return to physical media is going to be really, really
| impressive.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| My physical media collection is large and awaiting the day...
| because I have a sense that movie studios and music companies
| really don't want a resurgence... mainly because that would
| damage the all-important subscriber numbers, and cause more
| people to have the DRM-cracked-on-all-of-them copies which can
| be resold _...
|
| _ Movie studios must hate reselling. Buy a movie on iTunes?
| $15, strong DRM, never able to be resold. Buy it at Goodwill?
| $3, weak DRM, no new profit whatsoever. Also the iTunes version
| can be edited in the future to remove anything inconvenient,
| but the disc can't.
| meltyness wrote:
| I was thinking more along the lines of VR experiences that
| are sufficiently advanced and detailed as to necessitate
| multiple large hybrid ML models and asset banks, consider
| what a Dall-E might look like in such a use case in the next
| 10-15 years.
|
| It's still the Pong days for these things, and no one knows
| if their realistic usage will involve on-device compute
| resources for such a deployment.
| nicholasjarnold wrote:
| I'm old enough to have purchased cassette tapes in the early MTV
| days...and found compact discs to be amazing little pieces of
| technology when they started to become mainstream.
|
| Fast forward to a time when I actually had the resources to
| purchase my own audio hardware, including a nice low-THD
| amplifier and decent quality floor-standing speakers in a 5.1
| configuration.
|
| Enter disappointment when I realized that while it was possible
| for my amplifier to split the input signal across all 5 channels
| plus the LFE channel, the music source was only encoded in
| 2-channel stereo. Then I went down the SACD, DVDA, etc route for
| a bit, only to end somewhat frustrated that it required hoop-
| jumping to get good quality multi-channel source material.
|
| I haven't endeavored in this realm for some time now. Mostly,
| while coding I just use my Schiit Modi with some KRKs in my
| office for 2-channel stereo listening via a mix of Spotify and
| local FLAC files. However, I do wonder if anyone here has any
| recommendations for finding multi-channel digital music that I
| could enjoy in my home theater where a true decent quality multi-
| channel setup exists?
| hey2022 wrote:
| Aren't most Blue-Ray audio disks multi channel 5.1? It looks
| like a pretty mature industry with many albums available even
| at major retailers like Amazon.
|
| Or do you mean digital in the sense of available to download?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I think the only regret that the labels have (to our benefit) was
| the failure to include DRM because... it was 1982. Other than a
| single optional "pls don't copy me thanks" bit.
|
| Since then, we've had multiple attempts to replace CDs with
| higher-fidelity, DRM-damaged replacements like the SACD, DVD
| Audio, SDMI/DataPlay, and even Blu-ray Pure Audio formats - and
| later with all iTunes purchases before 2009 despite the CD
| existing. All failures. Digital music is DRM-free and not going
| back, thanks to the CD.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| What HASN'T failed as a post-CD development, though, is the
| advent of all-you-can-eat streaming services like Apple Music
| and Spotify.
|
| The music you get under these deals is never yours, but the
| price is so low that it's a reasonable trade for many people,
| myself included -- even though I was for decades (I'm 52) a
| serious collector of CD and eventually vinyl.
| criddell wrote:
| I still buy CDs but Apple Music's spatial audio is the first
| new gimmick that I'm impressed by. If the rest of my family
| didn't prefer Spotify, I'd switch to it.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| As far as I know, Apple's Spatial Audio is actually rebranded
| Dolby Atmos tracks with Atmos playback enabled. I don't
| really blame Apple because what the heck is an "Atmos?"
| "Spatial audio" is more self explanatory than that even if
| still a bit obtuse.
|
| You can also get it on PC, for example, by paying $15 for the
| "Dolby Access" app and playing an Atmos track.
| criddell wrote:
| Who sells Atmos music? I've only seen it from Apple Music.
| creeble wrote:
| Tidal also has Atmos playback.
| criddell wrote:
| It seems weird that nobody sells Atmos tracks.
| aliqot wrote:
| I remember there being a CD that when ripped would
| intentionally damage the speakers with some type of noise
| randomness.
|
| Also the sony rootkit
|
| And madonna's "what are you doing"
| SllX wrote:
| > I remember there being a CD that when ripped would
| intentionally damage/destroy the speakers with some type of
| frequency sweep or noise.
|
| I don't remember this one. I tried to find it but Google is
| littered with CD recommendations to "break in" speakers
| because "break" is a synonym for "destroy".
|
| Do you happen to recall which CD this was?
| aliqot wrote:
| There were quite a few actually, most of this was sony's
| doing.
|
| The most destructive was XCP around the time of MediaMax,
| which used randomness in what tones they produced, which
| would damage speakers unpredictably.
|
| "MediaMax introduces a large amount of random jitter,
| making the disc sound like it has been badly scratched or
| damaged; XCP replaces the audio with random noise."
|
| Key2Audio was the first tech that comes to mind that did
| this, originally employed on Celinne Dione's "A New Day Has
| Come" album. It would cause all types of issues, but one
| being random audio blips that sounded like when you turn on
| a bitcrusher and press the overdrive, it's easy to see how
| this can damage a speaker.
|
| https://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2017/cmsc818O/papers/les
| s...
|
| https://www.xboxaddict.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-10494
| ....
|
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2127-copy-
| protected-d...
|
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/dion-disc-
| co...
| SllX wrote:
| That's insane. I remember the Sony Rootkit scandal from
| 2005 and Sony's reputation started to tank around then
| but I didn't know it was the successor to another piss
| poor attempt to copy protect CDs.
|
| TIL. Thanks!
| ubermonkey wrote:
| >I remember there being a CD that when ripped would
| intentionally damage/destroy the speakers with some type of
| frequency sweep or noise.
|
| That sounds like the home audio equivalent of the
| "poisoned/drug laced Halloween candy" story, which is to say
| "something that did not happen."
| aliqot wrote:
| I posted links. No need to act like I'm just making it up,
| these were events I was present for and remember clearly.
| jeffbee wrote:
| None of your links support the claim that these discs
| could damage your loudspeakers. That's the mythical part.
|
| The final stage in digital-to-analog conversion is a
| reconstruction filter that removes the non-sonic contents
| of the output. There's nothing you can put on a CD that
| will destroy your loudspeakers.
| [deleted]
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| They tried very hard after the PC became capable of making
| clones... but Phillips prohibited them from using the CD
| trademark proper because they were never as compatible as
| they needed to be. And there were embarrassing lawsuits. The
| law speaks louder than complaining users or a stubborn
| executive.
| bsenftner wrote:
| I was at Philips during an R&D period experimenting with
| alternative data formats for CD ROMs.
|
| A capability I liked that never went public was removing the
| error correction portion of sectors of data, transforming the 2K
| per sector into something slighter bigger 2356 bytes. Anything to
| get more bits off the disk back when it was limited to 128K per
| second. This was interesting because it allowed the developer to
| selectively say "this data can survive some data loss, and it's
| fine".
|
| Another feature that never went public was "real time files" -
| multiple files interleaved sector by sector on the disc such that
| at a given time after a "real time file play" has begun you're
| guaranteed the data from the interleaved files are in memory,
| with per-file-sector callbacks if requested. (And if you wanted,
| the different files could have full error correction or not, 2K
| or bigger sectors selectively.) Never used for, but would have
| been great for loading game levels where multiple files land all
| over memory, but streamed all at once.
| interroboink wrote:
| Games definitely had custom "put this data on this sector"
| software, for authoring their gold masters. Generally, data
| that was needed fast was on the outer tracks, since they spin
| faster and can have lower seek times. Something less time-
| critical like background music would be on a slower part of the
| disk, streamed incrementally.
|
| If I'm remembering right -- has been some years.
| spicyjpeg wrote:
| Well, Philips did actually define these capabilities in a
| standard known as "Extended Architecture" (XA). CD-XA
| introduced Mode 2 sectors, which could hold 2048 bytes of data
| with ECC, 2324 bytes of custom data without ECC or even a chunk
| of ADPCM compressed audio to be played directly by the drive
| without intervention of the host CPU. ADPCM sectors could be
| "spread out" throughout custom data, so the drive would play
| them while the host would only receive the non-audio data (such
| as video frames). Multiple ADPCM tracks could also be
| interleaved, allowing playback of compressed audio at the same
| drive speed as regular CD audio with no need for buffering.
|
| Now, CD-XA unfortunately didn't take off... or did it? It was
| initially only supported by the failed Philips CD-i, but it
| turns out that a few years later Sony would reuse most of the
| technology for their upcoming game console. That's right, the
| PlayStation 1 made heavy use of XA and of its audio
| capabilities; the system's native video format was in fact a
| custom container format interleaved with XA ADPCM audio, and
| many games took advantage of the ability to interleave multiple
| audio tracks as well.
|
| Video CDs also used 2324-byte Mode 2 sectors without ECC by the
| way, but I'd say their popularity was far below that of the
| PlayStation 1.
| grimgrin wrote:
| The Quietus did a piece[1] celebrating the anniversary, remarking
| on the pregap[2] and how various artists would leverage it:
|
| > On their third album, 1999's Guerrilla, Super Furry Animals
| slipped one of their best songs, 'Citizens Band', into the pre-
| gap, that is, the neverzone before the album proper. Autechre
| pulled the same trick, in the same year, on EP7, hiding an eerie
| six minutes of intricate sound design which seems years ahead of
| its time, and then three minutes of silence, before 'Rpeg'. They
| did it again, including the untitled track in the pre-gap to the
| fourth disc of EPs 1991-2002.
|
| > Pre-gap tracks are a CD-specific phenomenon, paralleled only by
| DVD Easter Eggs, or hidden levels in a computer game. On the one
| hand, they're only possible digitally, on the other, they seem to
| be an attempt to add some mystique to a circle of plastic. They
| are a defense of the physical medium because it is impossible to
| rip them to your computer. Finding them meas having a bit of
| extra knowledge about the artist, uncovering a hidden layer of
| depth others hadn't noticed.
|
| > Earlier, experimental artists took even greater strides into
| the CDs unique sequencing possibilities. Otomo Yoshihide's 1993
| release The Night Before the Death of the Sampling Virus is a
| fluctuating voice collage designed specifically for the medium.
| Its 77 tracks are tiny, most less than a minute, few going above
| two. The listener is encouraged to hit the random option on their
| hi-fi. "To play this release in random mode is to allow the
| SAMPLING VIRUS to regenerate, to mutate with near infinite
| possibilities."
|
| > Eccles, UK-based experimentalists Stock, Hausen, & Walkman
| encouraged listeners to do something similar with their debut
| album, Giving Up. From the release notes: "The Original CD had 60
| ID points deliberately inserted in the middle of a lot of the
| tracks so that random play would cut the music up and present the
| listener with a new and unique 'remix' version if desired." There
| were things you could do with a CD, that you definitely couldn't
| do with a tape or LP.
|
| 1. https://thequietus.com/articles/32116-cd-40th-anniversary
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregap
| jrootabega wrote:
| I bet a lot of people here fondly remember They Might Be
| Giants' Apollo 18 album, which had about 20 short tracks meant
| to be shuffled. But we listened to the album in order enough
| times to be able to sing the random tracks from memory anyway.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| > because it is impossible to rip them to your computer
|
| Which luckily isn't actually true. They might or might not have
| been problematic with certain software and/or disc drives, but
| in principle - especially these days - they can normally be
| ripped without any difficulties.
|
| (Nevertheless, Columbia/Sony still managed to lose all the pre-
| gap material from a number of live Bob Dylan Bootleg Series
| albums while uploading them for digital distribution, so all
| streaming services and download stores currently only have
| faulty versions of those albums. Maybe they really ripped the
| physical discs in order to upload them and somehow chose the
| wrong settings?
|
| As silly as that theory sounds, in another coincidence on
| iTunes, _none_ of volumes 1 to 10 - the actual releases
| affected are 4, 6, 7 and 10 - inclusive bears the "Apple
| Digital Master" logo, so Columbia/Sony actually uploading
| mangled CD rips remains a distinct possibility...)
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Audiophile colleague of mine bought one of the first Sony HiFi
| systems with a CD player (it had rather distinctive speakers) and
| he put on "Brothers In Arms" for us - was amazing not to fiddle
| with the tone arm or hear the record scratches.
|
| Could not afford one but later splurged out on a Sony Discman -
| my first CD was Kate Bush "Hounds Of Love".
| chiph wrote:
| I will still occasionally buy CDs (I bought my first player in
| 1984 - the Sony CDP-101), but I'm a lot more critical about what
| I buy now. For the past 10-ish years, the studios have been
| eliminating dynamic range and cranking the knob on their
| compression software to "11". As a result, music has become
| painful to listen to.
|
| The name for this is the Loudness War, and with the exception of
| titles like Daft Punk's _Random Access Memories_ , we are losing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
|
| And here's an audio sample demonstrating what it sounds like:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ
| sebazzz wrote:
| I still have a few blank CDs. I never touch them. I have two DVD-
| RW drives inherited from my dad, which no longer has space for a
| 3,5" in his new computer a few years ago. I never use them. I
| never bothered to upgrade to Blu-Ray either.
| kderbyma wrote:
| I keep seeing more and more references to the physical media
| lately. I have myself gotten urges the past couple years and
| rapidly built up physical media collections for things which I
| had always wanted. I sense we are going retro again and it will
| come back with a vengeance. I have noticed it's a market which is
| getting hotter lately.
| analog31 wrote:
| I still buy CD's. The reason is that my family enjoys going out
| and seeing non mainstream, indie bands. After each performance,
| the band always has some CDs to sell, of their own and often for
| their friends as well.
|
| I have asked some musicians bluntly: What's the best way to buy
| your music, so that you get the biggest cut of the money? The
| answer is always: "Buy the CD right here."
|
| The CD's go home, get ripped onto a network drive, and converted
| to MP3's that fit onto a flash drive that gets plugged into the
| car stereo.
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