Ha! Ha!
It's worth wading through all the technical mumbo jumbo to unearth amusing little anecdotes like that! 😀
Somewhere in 1980 or so I heard one of the first demo's of CD on the radio. We were driving at that time, remember asking my father to pull over and turn the engine off so I could listen. Even over a poor car stereo the lack of background noise and low distortion was stunning.
A year later or so I witnessed a demo at the Philips stand at the Firato, a major audio exhibition at the time. The CD was not on the market but expected to launch soon. They played Abba, not the best of all recordings, over Philips speakers which were pretty crap as well at that time. Volume at max, it sounded very clean and dynamic, but not pleasant with booming bass and harsh highs. I blamed the speakers...
In 1985 I bought my first CD player, a Denon dcd 1000 with the PCM53JP-V which was pretty good at that time. It would even play the CD singles that came later, as long as you managed to place the disc exactly in the middle of the tray. The Denon stayed for 15 years until it was replaced by an Arcam 7. Still have that one today, although it is no longer used since Volumio took over.
A year later or so I witnessed a demo at the Philips stand at the Firato, a major audio exhibition at the time. The CD was not on the market but expected to launch soon. They played Abba, not the best of all recordings, over Philips speakers which were pretty crap as well at that time. Volume at max, it sounded very clean and dynamic, but not pleasant with booming bass and harsh highs. I blamed the speakers...
In 1985 I bought my first CD player, a Denon dcd 1000 with the PCM53JP-V which was pretty good at that time. It would even play the CD singles that came later, as long as you managed to place the disc exactly in the middle of the tray. The Denon stayed for 15 years until it was replaced by an Arcam 7. Still have that one today, although it is no longer used since Volumio took over.
Somewhere mid 80's I bought a second hand Philips cd 104. I was mesmerized by these silver discs. But still mostly played vinyl. Somewhere early 90's I bought a Denon DCD S10. Still use that Denon. It's still a great CD player . After the Denon I played vinyl less and less untill I retired my turntable. Nowadays, with streaming to a dac, I use the Denon so little, I sometimes wonder if I should sell the Denon. But I'm too attached to it to let go. Often I'm tempted to give vinyl a go again. I love turntables. Then reality kicks in. I love it but probaly won't use it often enough to justify the costs. With a high possibillity of chance, I realize, sooner or later rationality will draw the short straw.
Oh yah, I repaired enough of them. Still unclear where 44.1 kHz sampling was related to the NTSC analogue standard. In the early 90's Sony used he same head arrangement on the postage stamp size NT-1 operating at 32 kHz 12 bit. Now those were fun.
Well I would also claim that, because I did so much on DAT. And then 48 kHz became the defacto computer rate that we used early on, in ProTools and such. But I did record with Sony PCM on 3/4" video tape before DAT, which I suppose was 44.1 - don't really remember. IIRC, the early Denon digital recorders had a 50 kHz sampling rate. That's before CD was launched.
Himmm... maybe. I went to a lot of record stores, not that I had much money. And we were buying mostly classical on LP. It's possible that I saw CDs at the shops in London, but my memory isn't that good. I do remember those awful long cartons, tho mostly seen in the USA. In France in the 1980s they didn't use them.
Thanx for chiming in Michael. I expected you would have used the Sony. It confirms my recall of when in the really early days pro-analog video recorders where repurposed into digital recorders since there was nothing else.
dave
https://www.sony.net/Products/proaudio/en/story/story02.html
rdf: see attached link Sony history, short expert below
Finally, in 1977, Sony’s PCM-1 processor was released. It was a 2-channel processor with AD/DA converters (the circuit for converting analog to digital, and back again), that when combined with a Betamax video tape recorder, was able to record and play in digital. Although the PCM-1 was for consumers, the professional 2-channel model, the PCM-1600, was released in 1978. Combined with U-matic (U standard) video tape recorders, these were introduced to recording studios as digital mastering recorders.
In the late 70s there was enormous pressure for the audio industry to find digital solutions. Telcos wanted to move away from analogue copper lines leaving the broadcasters stranded and the music industry suddenly discovered that a certain brand of recording tape that held many master recordings was deteriorating in the vaults. Sony were well into the development of the optical disc and came to the party with the above mentioned recorder. I'm no mathematician but it was claimed 44.1Khz as a sampling rate could be used on both PAL and NTSC. When the CD was due for release there was strong debate about adopting the professional sampling rate of 48KHz but as many albums were already 'digitally recorded' on the PCM-1600 and later PCM-2000 it made sense to stick with 44.1Khz. Processors of the day could not handle the conversion to 48KHz and remastering would have delayed the release to market.
Really? The Sony PCM-1600, one of the early PCM recorders needed someplace to store the (at the time)
insane amount of bytes coming from that machine. Disk drives and memory cards were a thing of the future
and the main available tape format was for video. The PCM-1600 simply made a video signal and put the
data where the picture normally is. The first units kept the data block size synchronous with the video framing
meaning you could use a video editor to cut your audio together. The consumer format of that was the PCM-F1.
The main difference was the digital audio blocks are not synchronous with the vertical interval meaning you
can NOT edit the audio with a simple video editor. The only way is to import it to a DAW OR fade to digital
audio '0'. Then you can edit with a simple video editor. In 1984 I built a digital fader for exactly that purpose.
It worked well enough for simple cuts.
Starting at 1:26 you can see PCM-F! video on the monitor in the background.
G²
The 44056 sample rate comes from color vs B/W NTSC. The 48K sample rate is
compatible with NTSC/PAL simultaneously if you use the right sync generator from
NVision or the Tektronix TSG-422. That means when you do TV standards conversions
you can take the AES digital audio, delay it digitally for the standards converter and
route it to the destination machine eithout a sample rate converter. For the past 15
years (12 for sure) the Snell & Wilcox standards converters take care of the audio
and timecode for 50 vs 60 frame rate.
AS far as CDs go, I heard my first one in June of '82 at the Chicago CES in the back end
of the Sony display. It said 'technology of tomorrow and had a CD player with all the cards
unfolded playing a disc. They had a Koss hexagonal headphone tree with headphones to
give a listen. I heard it and said "I want it". 3 months later I bought a Technics SV-P100
VHS based 14 bit EIAJ digital audio recorder for field recording and bought a pair of AKG
C-451 condenser mics and commenced recording.
Here is a sample of the second recording session in October of '82.
I got my first CD player, a Sony CDP-101 sn 151 on April 1, 1983 for $750, list price $900.
Discs were $18.50 and there were 11 titles available. I bought 4, went back and bought 6
more but did not buy the Springsteen disc. That is my only regret about CDs but I was making
$15 an hour an I don't actually care for Springsteen. I still wish I had it just because it's 40
YEARS old now. The other 10 discs still play fine.
I still have my Dual 721 with a Shure V-15 type 5 but while ths diamond stylus is fine, the
rubber parts have hardened up so it's decorative garbage now. I do not miss LPs AT ALL.
G²
I've still got my 101, although not sure it still works. Haven't used it in years. They weigh a ton and are built like tanks. Real metal. Giant heatsink on the back. I paid list in Jan 83.
MY CDP-101 had gone into a failure mode that appeared to be caps leaking acid
onto the PCB and eating off the copper tracks. I ran into that problem in Sony
Broadcast DVW-500 digital Betacam machines. CBS TV city owns a dishwasher for
cleaning the acid from the PCBs to get ready for repairs. Only Sony could build
electronics where the actual PC boards failed.
G²
My first CD purchase was Deep Forest-Deep Forest album, used to listen it on a PC CDROM as CD players were bit expensive. Later on , I purchased Philips DVD/CD palyer (Made by TCL PRC🙄) . Please don't discard ypur good CD albums pressed in 80s - 90s, best DR ever! I stay far away from any re-issues, aniversary/ deluxe versions , very low DR-brick walled $hit
Beautiful recording, I always preferred small diaphragm condensors. Do you recall the microphone setup? ORTF?
I recall the PCM1 but never knew 44.1 was chosen - instead of 44.0, 42.0, etc. - for ease of capture on video storage platforms. Never too old to learn something old. The original question though was whether 44.1 was selected as the first 'pro' standard. It might be more accurate to say it was the only reasonably available standard until 48 kHz was introduced.
https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/pr...are-the-sample-rates-based-around-441k-or-48k
A nice little explanation on the Pro Tools website about how and why sample rates were chosen. Doesn’t give an exact time frame, but explains the math.
A nice little explanation on the Pro Tools website about how and why sample rates were chosen. Doesn’t give an exact time frame, but explains the math.
Mics were on the balcony 10-12 feet apart. No need for ORTF as its not going to
LP or FM. Mics have cardioid capsules aiming up, away from the crowd. Preamp
was a clone of the preamps in a Tapco mixer, VERY similar to ESP project 66.
Mine does not have coupling caps. It does have matched transistors, matched
carbon film resistors (it was '82. I didn't have metal films). No transformers. The
reverb (room) was created in Adobe Audition III. I attached a 30 second 256 Kbit
MP3 file of the unprocessed material. Just remove the ".txt" from the filename.
G²