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Story of CDs

Author: robert | Posted: 26.11.2008 | Views: 28

A typical CD will have a diameter of just 12 cm and about 80 minutes audio data can be saved on it. Smaller CDs are also manufactured for storing just one songs (called CD singles). They are 8 cm in diameter and can save 24 minutes of audio data.

The major research and enhancement work was done by Phillips and Sony. One of the first CDs came in bazaar way back in the year 1982 and till date, remains one of the most widespread mode of audio recordings.

In 1979, Phillips and Sony started off a joint functional group in order to design a successful digital audio disc. After a year`s work and lot of experiments and discussions, the compact disc was invented. No solitary person can be said to have invented it, a large group collectively invented the compact disc.

In August, 1982, the earliest CD for commercial intention was manufactured in a Phillips factory in Germany. The first music track that was released on a CD was `The Visitors (1981) by ABBA`. Soon after, in October of the same year, the CD players from Sony also reached the markets. The event is often called as `the Big Bang` in the field of digital audio.

The new idea was an instant hit in the bazaar. Customers were fervent about the quality of the audio on the CDs. The value of CD players dropped really fast, as a outcome of which, the popularity increased even more.

A Compact Disc is a 1.2 mm thick polycarbonate plastic disc weighing around 16 grams. To make the plane reflective, a very thin layer of aluminum is spread on one side of the disc. A film of lacquer is also spread to act as a protective shield. The label is printed on the other side using normal printing means like offset or screen printing. The data is saved on a CD in shape of an array of tiny serrations called pits that are encoded in a spiral track. A pit is just 500 nm wide and 100 nm deep and the length varies from 850 to 3500 nm.

The CDs are much more long-lasting than the previous formats of audio storage. However, they can be damaged a little from the environment factors and daily usage. The data is a lot nearer to the label side, so more harm occurs if cuts are made of the label. The logical format to store audio data on a CD is a 2-channel 16-bit PCM encoded data at a sampling rate frequency of 44.1 KHz. The sampling rate was chosen directly as a result of the sampling rate theorem of double frequency needed in recordings. With some more calculations, the exact sampling rate of 44.1 KHz was decided.


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