This is something I read in a forum today:

"Philips has developed and manufactured SA-CD players since 1991 and
these were sold at various fairs through out the world for a very hefty
price I might add, and with these player came various sampler discs
(these were full albums though), the diamonds and pearls disc being 1 of
them (these were fully authorised discs), these discs were also offered
and sold at various retail outlets all over the world, the free record
shop indeed being one of them. The 1999 year is the year the SA-CD was
produced on a commercial scale, just like 1982 was the year the normal
CD was produced on a commercial scale (1978 being the year that cd
players were sold on fairs like the old SA-CD players were sold early in
the 90s)."

Can anybody confirm this? I wouldn't have been surprised to read that
prototypes were already available in 1997-98, but 1991? If "prototypes"
really existed in 1991, are they compatible with today's SACD players?

Same question for the CD. According to this site, the Compact Disc
standard was proposed in 1980:

http://www.oneoffcd.com/info/historycd.cfm

I can't believe CDs were already made in 1978 (at least CDs that can be
read in today's CD players).

Olivier

The folks at Philips research labs, at least in times gone past, were
pretty advanced so I wouldn't discount this note. I would further
venture that the folks at Philips even had prototype flat panel TV
monitors in the labs in the 1980's (if not before) as well. There's
usually more than a few years between inventing a technology (and its
component parts) and getting it into a form were it is
manufacture-able, distributable, and supportable on a large scale with
a form and price factor attractive to the targeted market. And
clearly, Philips would want to time the introduction of new technology
with the expiration of their older CD patents so that they could
maximize payback timeframes and minimize competition amongst their
intellectual properties.

My 2 cents.

Terry

Olivier Bruchez wrote:

This is something I read in a forum today:

"Philips has developed and manufactured SA-CD players since 1991 and
these were sold at various fairs through out the world for a very hefty
price I might add, and with these player came various sampler discs
(these were full albums though), the diamonds and pearls disc being 1 of
them (these were fully authorised discs), these discs were also offered
and sold at various retail outlets all over the world, the free record
shop indeed being one of them. The 1999 year is the year the SA-CD was
produced on a commercial scale, just like 1982 was the year the normal
CD was produced on a commercial scale (1978 being the year that cd
players were sold on fairs like the old SA-CD players were sold early in
the 90s)."

Can anybody confirm this? I wouldn't have been surprised to read that
prototypes were already available in 1997-98, but 1991? If "prototypes"
really existed in 1991, are they compatible with today's SACD players?

Same question for the CD. According to this site, the Compact Disc
standard was proposed in 1980:

http://www.oneoffcd.com/info/historycd.cfm

I can't believe CDs were already made in 1978 (at least CDs that can be
read in today's CD players).

Olivier

I can't believe CDs were already made in 1978 (at least CDs that can be
read in today's CD players).

Pioneer's Laserdisc was around in the mid-late 70's. While not "digital", it
was a laser-optical pickup system. 16-bit microprocessors were around even
before that. What *I* cannot believe is that we are still listening to regular
CD's! And most of the later releases I've heard are getting worse. It's almost
as if (and this is probably a trend I know) the engineers/producers simply
"crank up" the recording levels of all of the tracks, losing much of the
distinction of the tiny little spec called "dynamic range" (to my ears anyway).
This is confirmed visually by the digital recording level meters as I "burn" a
CD to my home audio CD recorder. Oh well, I do not like most of todays music
anyway and the current ****ty engineering "style" makes it completely
unlistenable to me - Rush's last album anyone? Kind of makes you wonder if
record labels are doing this purposely to "phase out" CD's...

My memory could be a little clouded on this, but I remember seeing a "compact
disc" back in the very early 80's that was the same size as the common ones of
today, but did not have its molded plastic shell. It was just a bare naked
aluminum disc... can anyone confirm this??

Also, going back to the history of digital, I do know that NEC had an optical
disc with a storage capacity up there with todays DVD back in the late
80's/very early 90's (I am not talking about MPEG1). It was used for computer
information storage though, not music or video AFAIK - so it's easy to believe
that some of these technologies go through the wringer before they are
commercially released.

-Frank

"Olivier Bruchez" skrev i melding
...
This is something I read in a forum today:

"Philips has developed and manufactured SA-CD players since 1991 and
these were sold at various fairs through out the world for a very hefty
price I might add, and with these player came various sampler discs
(these were full albums though), the diamonds and pearls disc being 1 of
them (these were fully authorised discs), these discs were also offered
and sold at various retail outlets all over the world, the free record
shop indeed being one of them. The 1999 year is the year the SA-CD was
produced on a commercial scale, just like 1982 was the year the normal
CD was produced on a commercial scale (1978 being the year that cd
players were sold on fairs like the old SA-CD players were sold early in
the 90s)."

Before CD there was many optical DAD (Digital Audio Disc) prototypes shown,
however I seriously doubt that they were available to the generall public.

Can anybody confirm this? I wouldn't have been surprised to read that
prototypes were already available in 1997-98, but 1991? If "prototypes"
really existed in 1991, are they compatible with today's SACD players?

This is simply not correct. A SACD disc is essentially a DVD-ROM disc with
DSD audio data (and some additional copy protection features). The physical
specifications for DVD-ROM was established in december 1995. Thus, it was
simply impossible to manufacture any disc to this spec before 1996.

Espen Braathen

For the CD timelime, see:

http://www.ieee.org/organizations/hi.../timeline.html

According to this, CD prototypes were demonstrated in 1977, and the
international CD standards group kicked off in 1978, and Philips was
pushing an 11.5 cm format disk from the start. Once Sony concurred
with Philips, there was no one left to argue. This gives a data point
of 5 years prior to 1982 (which means Philips had CD prototypes in the
lab prior to 1977 - maybe not exact replicas of the eventual CD, but
surely at least 80% of the way there).

As to SACD, take a look at the following AES newsletter from July 1997:

http://www.aessf.org/newsletters/july97.pdf

It indicates that Sony and Philips were initially positioning the
'SACD' format for archival storage (which they announced as a product
in 1996) rather than consumer use. In 1997, they made the decision to
reposition to this for consumer audio use. If, as in the CD example
above, one assumes the initial prototypes were available 5 year prior
to 1996, the year 1991 doesn't look so far fetched. As to whether a
disk from 1991 could play on today's SACD players, that may be
doubtful, since the gist of this newsletter article is that they were
trying to achieve compatibility with CD and DVD players, so the
media's physical construction is likely different.

Terry

Olivier Bruchez wrote:

Terry Zagar wrote in message news:0VFTa.116433$OZ2.23118@rwcrnsc54...
The folks at Philips research labs, at least in times gone past, were
pretty advanced so I wouldn't discount this note. I would further
venture that the folks at Philips even had prototype flat panel TV
monitors in the labs in the 1980's (if not before) as well. There's
usually more than a few years between inventing a technology (and its
component parts) and getting it into a form were it is
manufacture-able, distributable, and supportable on a large scale with
a form and price factor attractive to the targeted market. And
clearly, Philips would want to time the introduction of new technology
with the expiration of their older CD patents so that they could
maximize payback timeframes and minimize competition amongst their
intellectual properties.

Ok. But I think there's a difference between having SACD *prototypes*
a few years before 1999 and actually *selling* SACD players and SACDs
*eight* years before they were officially commercialized. That's what
I find hard to believe.

Olivier

Terry Zagar wrote:

For the CD timelime, see:

http://www.ieee.org/organizations/hi.../timeline.html

A nice compilation. However, I miss computer based digital recording in
the mid 70s by Denon. I have a couple of vinyl records made from
digital recordings - 54 kHz sampling rate was used for that.

According to this, CD prototypes were demonstrated in 1977, and the
international CD standards group kicked off in 1978, and Philips was
pushing an 11.5 cm format disk from the start.

Yes, but it was a two sided CD, 2x60 minutes play time - if I remember
the discussion in the press at that time.

About SACD. At the end of the 80s the single bit converters appeared
on the market, both D/A and A/D. So in 1991 a company could have all
what is needed to record the raw signal coming off a single bit A/D
converter. I think, just the name was missing.

Norbert