When this phonograph initially entered the market in 1904, it and the phonographs that came before it was part of a small miracle, forever altering the way people amuse themselves. We'll let you know that it's now nothing more than a priceless relic. For the first time, folks who couldn't afford a private orchestra had access to music whenever they wanted in the home.
The very first sound recorded was "To Mary went the man who cured it all." That happened in 1887. Thomas Edison himself spoke during the event. Thereafter, numerous other recordings of music and poetry appeared, along with Florence Nightingale's account of the Battle of Balaclava. Around 1890, Tennyson reading passages from Maude became immensely popular, but cylinders were eventually superseded by flat recordings. This is the 1889 Edison diamond disc.
Shellac and Bakelite were exceedingly thick, heavy, and delicate materials. As the 78s developed, the players also shed some weight because the records altered at the same time. This is the ram's horn player, as its name would imply. Here, the sound is mechanically carried downward before moving acoustically up the tube and out the horn. Electronics and amplifiers are not present.
By the 1950s, when the gramophone and the radio shared a cabinet to create the radiogram, the microgroove long-playing record started to dominate the market and has been with us ever since, with minor improvements. It had metal needles—literally, very sharp needles—and a very heavy head. It also needed to be wound mechanically.
But isn't there anything better, what you just heard is the pinnacle of recorded sound; it will make all current disc and cassette systems obsolete; it is dustproof, scratchproof, digitally recorded, and read by a laser; it is simply known as the compact disc, and that is all there is to it?
Since the development of the long-playing gramophone record, this is the largest transformation the recording industry has seen. However, this is no ordinary disc.
How the Compact Disc's Surface Appears
When the thin plastic sheet is watched or read off by another laser in the playback machine, you can see the thousands of tiny pits and grooves that the laser has carved into it. Contrary to a traditional gramophone disc, this is totally proof against fingerprints and dust because the information is stored beneath a plastic film, so it doesn't really matter. The length of the grooves and the distances between them produce varying light patterns that are then picked up by a tiny diode.
The record player that plays it is also unexpectedly small and compact; that information is read by a laser from the underside of the one-sided disc, which just has the record's label on the other side.
There are issues in introducing new technology into an established market. Consider the conflict between cassettes and cartridges. It took around ten years for cassettes to establish a clear lead because the customer was severely confused. The large manufacturers have taken note of that laser audio disc experience. A half-world away from Holland in Tokyo, two of the biggest corporations, Philips and Sony, have teamed up to create interoperable hardware. Finlay discovered that the discs were identical despite the fact that their players had different appearances. Simply pause it for a second.
When you watch on a regular TV or record on a typical tape recorder, we can't really explain to you in sound words what this item can do, but it revolves around five things. There is almost no background noise; there is no wow or flutter distortion, nor is there any hiss or similar noise. The key feature to remark about the frequency response is that it is perfectly flat; there are no pits or heights at all. The frequency response is generally comparable to present hi-fi sets between 20 and 20 000 hertz.
Hi-fi enthusiasts will agree that the dynamic range is amazing at 90 dB, which is the most crucial factor. The player itself is a significant improvement over traditional record players since it offers the same controls as a tape recorder, including rapid forward and fast reverse scanning, pause and stop buttons, and the ability to immediately select any track you desire.
It also contains a tiny programmable memory, so you may choose your own sequence beforehand so that the tracks play in any order you choose, the display tells you, rather than having them play in the correct order, one, two, three, four, five, and so on.
What song you're listening to and how long has it's been playing, in minutes and seconds
Additionally, the entire thing—all of that tiny computerized marble—is contained in a unit that you can pick up, move around, and even shake without anything happening. This incredible feat indicates that the unit has enormous potential in the future, once it is possibly made slightly more compact for the automotive audio industry.
The players, which are expected to cost between six and eight hundred dollars, will go on sale in Japan, the US, Australia, and Europe at some point in 1983. The cost of the discs is expected to be no higher than it is for records at the moment. It all seems a little bit too nice to be true. After all, previous systems have fallen short of the pre-release promises they made to alter the way we listen to quadrophonic music.
The fact that seven major record labels have already committed to producing on the system, with hardware and software prepared for compact discs, gives us confidence that there will be a never-ending supply of content.
