Music Recording Technology

Upon their introduction in the early 1980s, the only purpose for CDs was to store music in digital format. Before understanding how digital recording and playback work, we need to look at the difference between analog and digital technologies. Thomas Edison’s original phonograph worked by using a mechanical diaphragm controlled by a needle. The needle would scratch an analog wave representing the vibrations of sounds. While the cylinder rotated, a needle scratched (recorded) sound onto the tin. When the diaphragm vibrated so did the needle connected to it and marks were etched on the tin. When you wanted to hear the recorded sounds, you merely moved the needle over the

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music, so this equates to the following amount of data that must be stored on a typical CD: 44,100 samples/channel/second x 2 bytes/sample x 2 channels x 74 minutes x 60 seconds/minute = 783,216,000 bytes. (Brian 9) Most CDs are a fairly simple piece of plastic, typically measuring 4/100 of an inch in thickness and consisting of an injection-molded piece of clear polycarbonate plastic (Colvin 57). When CDs are manufactured impressions are made on the plastic. These microscopic indentations are aligned as one lone spiral ring of data. Once the polycarbonate disc is formed, a spray of reflective aluminum is applied over the indentations. A thin acrylic layer is sprayed on top of this for protection. A label is printed onto the acrylic. The data track made by the indentations is only .5 microns wide with a distance of 1.6 microns separating one track from another (Beiser 118). Because of the microscopic nature of the data track, if you unfolded it and laid it out end to end in a straight line it would stretch 3.5 miles in length (Beiser 118). For reading anything as small as the data track on a CD, you need an extremely precise disc-reading device. Today’s modern CD player has the job of finding and reading the data house
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Gallaway Kinnear, According Brian, Emil Berliner, Identification Code, DAC CDs, Thomas Edisons, DVDs MP3s, Compact Disc, MP3s CD, DD CD-R/RW, analog wave, sampling rate, digital music, music files, perfect reproduction, music recording, data track, digital recording, digital music files, recording playback, mp3 files, storing playing music, acquire record store, difference analog digital, recording storage playback,
Approximate Word count = 1793
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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