Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
1712QCM Info‐Tech Arts
Research Title:
A brief study of audio record format’s evolution from analogue
to digital with references to the influence from the music
business development since the beginning of the digital age.
Student Number: S2702707
Name: Hao‐Che (Jerry) Jin
Word count: 1176
1
Introduction
It might seem to be a long time ago when people went into music stores to buy the current
hot song on tape. However, it is not till towards the end of the eighties that music CD
became more and more popular and common style of purchasing. Studying the current
trend of music business’ operation, it might not be long for us to reach the stage when the
hard copy format of music record will evaporate from daily life and all the purchase will be
made online.
Hardware format: CD
Tape > CD > CDR recorder
Analogue > Digital = Tape > CD
When Bell Labs invented the ‘Pulse‐code modulation’ technology for telecommunications,
back in 1930’s1, it initiated the future of digitalised broadcasting and recording techniques.
Nonetheless, audio digitalising process includes not just the pulse‐code modulation. The
sound reproduction which involves the analogue‐to‐digital conversion (ADC) and
digital‐to‐analogue conversion (DAC) technologies is also a crucial part of this digitalising
transition. The mature in these areas allow the sound to be modulated into a digital form
which enables the information to be record and be stored on compact discs (CDs). Parallel
movements of digitalising also can be found in daily life around the same time, not just in
audio records. It is an innovation in general that profoundly changes our lifestyle in every
aspect.
1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio
2
In 1980, two major music labels Philips and Sony came to an agreement of the logical
format of an audio CD. This document is known to be the ‘red book’2, in which describes
the standard format is “two‐channel, 16 bit PCM encoding at a 44.1 kHz sampling rate per
channel”3. Later when personal computers also become a popular media for sound
reproduction apart from the audio player, two major type of PCM emerged. These days
they are known as ‘.wav’ for Windows operation system and ‘.aiff’ for Mac operation
system.
CDROM > CDR recorder
Prior to In June 1985, the computer readable CD‐ROM (read‐only memory) been developed,
the devices of data record were majority based on 1’44 soft disc or computer hard drive.
A few years later in 1990, techniques of CD‐Recordable were introduced by Sony and Philips.
Unlike the soft disc, a CD‐ROM can hold up to 700 MB of data, hence extends the memory
capacity of personal computers when the average family hard drive was around 500 MB.
This allows a relatively large among of data to become mobilised, which helps the
information to be spread out easier than ever. As well, it offers a different and more
efficient method of data backups and duplicates.4
CD protection methods
As one can image, this development of technique also opens the Pandora’s box for illegal
copying and duplicating, which created massive impact to music business. It is also
2
Red Book is the standard for audio CDs (Compact Disc Digital Audio system, or CD‐DA)
3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_%28audio_CD_standard%29
4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc
3
expected that a controlling technique to counter balance this movement soon followed.
These techniques, namely the CD‐checks, the Dummy Files, the illegal tables of contents,
the utilised of over‐sizing or over‐burning the capacity, the physical errors and the bad
sectors, are based on the aspect of a protection can be applied to a medium during the
manufacturing process.5
Software format: music files on PC
Virtual CD
Nonetheless, it is only the matter of time when the hard disk’s capacity reaches multiple
capacity of a CD‐ROM. This allows the whole data information on a CD to be copied to the
local hard drive which created a ‘virtual CD’ on PC. When the technique first developed, it
is to enhance the speed of data reading, however, this technique also provided the means
to crack down the manufactory protection stated above. Those creating virtual CD
softwares including: Virtual CD, CD image, CD Ripper, Alcohol 120%, Daemon tools,
CloneCD, Roxio toast, and Isobuster etc..6
Whilst the capacity of the hard disk continuing to increase, in 2000, the common usage of
the hard disk was only about 10 GB7, one CD’s usage is 700MB roughly equal to 0.7 GB
(below figure shows the growth throughout the years). Base on the average of one album
contains fourteen songs, even a 10GB hard drive can only hold up to the equivalent of
thirteen sound disks, roughly about one hundred and eighty‐two songs. It always has
5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_and_DVD_copy_protection
6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ISO_image_software
7
http://www.pcworld.com/article/127105/timeline_50_years_of_hard_drives.html
4
been and will be a constant hunting for techniques that will allow even more capacity
within even smaller device.
8
MP3 and DRM
A company was approved in 1991 called Moving Picture Experts Group, this group brought
up the first noticeable break through technology of a specific audio format that was
designed to meet their ‘MPEG‐1’ standard. This format later became the well known MP3
technology. The idea is to compress audio files by reducing accuracy of a certain parts of
sound that are deemed beyond the auditory resolution ability of most people. The
filename extension .mp3 was chosen by the Fraunhofer team on July 14, 1995. With the
first real‐time software MP3 player Winplay3 (released September 9, 1995) people were
8
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hard_drive_capacity_over_time.svg
5
able to encode and play back MP3 files on their PCs. This landmark breaking through
enhances the ultimate seeking of more capacity within smaller device.9
In responding to this technology, is the bursting development of a diversity of music playing
platforms. This movement eventually took over the existence of walkman. On the other
hand, together with the development of internet, the reduced size of musical files means it
is even easier and faster to transfer not only on virtual memory devices, also through the
internet connections. Since the First half of 1994 to the late 1990s, MP3 file began to
spread on the Internet vigorously with helps from Nullsoft’s audio player Winamp, released
in 1997. In 1999, the first large peer‐to‐peer file sharing network, Napster, was launched,
MP3 files were spread through the internet even more rapidly.
However, similar to the previous situation, this technology allows the musical files to be
copied, duplicated and spread out even faster and easier, a controlling practice to counter
balance this development will follow. This technology, known as the digital rights
generic term for access control technologies that can be used by hardware manufacturers,
publishers, copyright holders and individuals to impose limitations on the usage of digital
content and device. Most online music stores currently employ DRM to restrict the access
9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3
10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management
11
In 2002, Bertelsmann (comprising BMG, Arista and RCA) was the first corporation to use Digital
rights Management (DRM) on audio CDs.
6
of music files purchased and downloaded online using majority ‘.wmv’ file format,
developed by Microsoft; or ‘.aac’ majority utilised by iTunes.
Conclusion
Studying the progressive development of audio record since the beginning of the digital age,
a battle between finding a faster, easier, smaller transferring method, and protecting as
well as managing the copyright issues has never stopped. Current trend of utilising DRM
might not even last for another couple of years. As Moore's law state “a long‐term trend
in the history of computing hardware, in which the number of transistors that can be
placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years”.
Based on the boundless development of technology, the future of audio record format can
be anticipated to be unpredictable from now onwards.
7
References
Gordon, S. (2005) The Future of The Music Business. San Francisco, CA: Backbeat Books
Kusek, D. (2005) The Future of Music. Bostan, MA: Berklee Press
Gerdsen, Trevor,J. (2003) Copyright A User’s Guide (2nd ed.). Melbourne, Victoria: RMIT
University Press
Simpson, S. (2002) Music Business. London: Omnibus Press
Peer‐to peer. Retrieved March 25, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer‐to‐peer
Streaming media history. Retrieved March 25, 2010, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_media#History
Online music store. Retrieved April 10, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sharing
Maurer, W. The Dynamics of Music Distribution. Retrieved April 21, 1998, from
http://www.chime.com/about/press/iris_online‐9501.shtml
Amazon flows into digital music sales. Retrieved April 20, 2010, from
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/26/amazon_digital_music/
Table of DRM Technologies and Associated Devices. Retrieved April 10, 2010, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management#Table_of_DRM_technologies_an
d_associated_devices
Red Book (audio Compact Disc standard). Retrieved April 10, 2010, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_%28audio_CD_standard%29
Digital audio. Retrieved May 3, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio
Pulse‐code modulation. Retrieved May 2, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCM
8
History of hard disk drives. Retrieved April 26, 2010, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hard_disk_drives
Compact Disc. Retrieved May 2, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc
Comparison of ISO image software. Retrieved April 30, 2010, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ISO_image_software
MPEG‐1 Audio Layer 3. Retrieved April 29, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3
Digital rights management. Retrieved May 3, 2010, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management
Vitrual drive. Retrieved May 1, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_drive
Nero Burning ROM. Retrieved April 21, 2010, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero_Burning_ROM
CD ripper. Retrieved March 31, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_ripper
LaserLock. Retrieved April 12, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laserlock
Data position measurement. Retrieved April 12, 2010, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Position_Measurement
Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal. Retrieved April 21, 2010, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_CD_copy_protection_scandal
Extended Copy Protection. Retrieved April 23, 2010, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Copy_Protection
SlySoft. Retrieved April 24, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slysoft
9
Daemon tools. Retrieved April 17, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_tools
CloneCD. Retrieved January 14, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CloneCD
Alcohol 120%. Retrieved April 3, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_120%25