Re: Alternative digital

["Daniel S. Riley" <dsr@lns598.TN.CORNELL.EDU>]

MTARR@EAGLE.WESLEYAN.EDU writes:
>Hi!

Hi Meredith!

>The winner of the 1992 Discover Award for Technological
>Innovation, Sound Division, is Katsuaki Tsuruchima of Sony for
>the recordable compact disc.  (Tod Machover of the MIT Media Lab
>got honorable mention for his work with "Hyperinstruments" such
>as the percussion systems tested by Peter Gabriel.) The discs
>(MDs) look like 3.5'' computer diskettes, except they're thicker.
>To make them recordable some output fidelity had to be
>sacrificed, but they say only someone with a *very* finicky ear
>could pick it up.

There are also CDR write-once systems which record onto compact discs
which are directly compatible with current CD players.  Since they use
the standard (uncompressed) CD format, there are no fidelity compromises
(and uncorrected error rates are reported to be lower than standard
CDs).  These systems are still fairly expensive (several $1Ks), but
should come down some.  These may never make it into the consumer price
range, but should be a treat for musicians making demos, and CDROM
developers.  There was a fairly lengthy article in a recent (last months
or this, I forget) Electronic Musician.

>They compressed the data stored on the disc by
>getting rid of all unnecessary sound components, i.e. when a tuba
>and a triangle play at the same time you can only hear the tuba,
>so they omit the triangle and you never miss it.

Which is ok for consumer gear, but makes them unacceptable for most pro
or semi-pro uses.  This is why I hate DCC--it reduces the pressure to
develop lower cost DAT drives, and DCC isn't good enough for the stuff
I want digital tape for.

Further discussion probably belongs somewhere else...

--
Dan Riley                          Internet:   dsr@lns598.tn.cornell.edu
Wilson Lab, Cornell University     HEPNET/SPAN: lns598::dsr (44630::dsr)
	 "Maybe, leastways is the best way of all" -Caterwaul