Re: [ARSCLIST] Preservation media WAS: Cataloguing still :-)

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I remember my first contact with Compact discs was late 1982, a demo at a Tech Hifi store in White 
Plains NY. It was about as impressive as most digital-recorded LPs released up to that point, in 
other words not very. Plus the players cost a grand or more and there were a few dozen titles, to be 
a couple hundred by Christmas. I decided, not yet. Also, the demo guy took a CD, scuffed it but good 
on the dusty floor and put it back in the player. Of course it didn't play and he was very redfaced.

Two years later, senior year in high school, players were down to $400 or so and there were hundreds 
of titles available for just a couple bucks more than an LP. By that time, pre-recorded cassette 
sales had passed LPs, showing that the future was not a grooved disk. A couple of my friends had CD 
players and had good-sounding systems. There were beginning to be a few decent-sounding titles out 
there but most rock stuff was done from who-knows-what-generation masters sitting in cassette duping 
plants in Japan and Germany -- or at least they sounded that way. One notable exception was some of 
the Verve jazz stuff to come out of Polygram Japan. They had master tapes over there already because 
they reissued a bunch of LPs (excellent reissues by the way) in the late 70's and early 80's. Their 
CD's were not bad at all. I figured, I have a good cassette deck to make tapes, I have hundreds of 
LPs and I'm headed off to college and need to save money, so still too early.

Finally, in 1986, I found a suprisingly good-sounding Teac CD player (Teac was one of the few 
Japanese manufacturers to use the Philips playback circuits instead of Sony's designs) for $150. 
Sold! I slowly started building up a CD library. Around that time, CBS and Polygram finally got mass 
production online in the USA and already were going back and trying to make better-sounding 
reissues, at least from USA safety copies instead of what were used in Germany and Japan. But, 
stories abound of interns in hallways with misaligned reel machines cranking out CD masters to feed 
the marketing beast. What I found was that some new issue albums sounded excellent on CD's, they had 
been recorded to take advantage of the better fidelity and dynamic range in some cases and sounded 
quite good. Still refreshing to hear a little tape hiss (most folks were still using Dolby A at that 
point and some mastering guys were ditching NR and mastering at high nanowebers at 30IPS on 1/2" 
2-track).

It wasn't until the 1990's that the majority of labels got serious about doing decent remasters, 
going back to original tapes and in some cases using original playback equipment. Some of the best 
CD's were made in that decade. As Big Music conglomerated and stripped budgets and personnel to 
"rationalize" the bankers fees paid to conglomerate, reissue quality went down. Then the "make it 
clipping loud" thing came in, plus the idea of professional recording methods went "out of fashion" 
in too many cases. But, at least it was still a CD-oriented market. Then came Napster and iTunes and 
we're back to quality about akin to a good 78.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Lennick" <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2006 6:26 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Preservation media WAS: Cataloguing still :-)


> Mike Richter wrote:
>
> > Per Wikipedia (consistent with my faulty memory):
> >
> > "The Compact Disc reached the market in late 1982 in Asia and early the
> > following year in other markets."
>
> By late 1982 (October 20th, to be specific) I had moved from Toronto to
> Edmonton, but a live-to-air demonstration of compact discs on the CBC Stereo
> Network had occurred in my presence in Toronto prior to that date. Definitely
> before the first week in September.
>
> dl
>
> > The same source reports:
> >
> > "The first hard disk drive was the IBM 350 Disk File, invented by
> > Reynold Johnson and introduced in 1955 with the IBM 305 computer."
> >
> > Here, I can attest that as of Summer 1957, the state of the art in
> > practice was the 4K drum memory of the IBM 650.
> >
> > I did not have a CD pressed until 1996, but at that time the broker
> > still handled Exabyte tape - the format he reported to have been used
> > frequently before CD-R and Jaz came into use.
> >
> > Mike
> > --
> > mrichter@xxxxxxx
> > http://www.mrichter.com/