From Jeremy A.Smith Sent Wed, Jan 27th 1999, 14:58
From Jeremy A.Smith Sent Wed, Jan 27th 1999, 14:58
> > > Ae's "Incunabula" has a total running time > > > of 77 minutes and 58 seconds. Isn't there > > > a limited time span of 74 minutes on a (normal) > > > cd? > > > > I think an old Redbook standard stated that, but it seems that nowadays, > > you can go as high as 80 minutes. > > Perhaps it's an urban myth, but I seem to recall hearing/reading somewhere > that the reason the 74 minute limit came about was because it was the > length of the president of Phillips' favorite recording of a certain > symphony (something by Beethoven or Mozart, I think). Not quite. It was the length of the longest symphony - remember CDs' first biggest market was orchestral classical music (because unlike rock music, there are a lot of quiet bits, and a lot of high frequencies too), so it was important that the longest symphony fitted on there. Not an urban myth, more of a design decision. > So while it was technically feasible to cram more onto the disc, they chose 74 minutes as > a standard, but 80 minutes seems to be the "real" limit - I have yet to > see a disc longer than 79:58 or so. Here's how you get 6 more minutes (from the CD-recordable FAQ): ____________________________________ Since CDs are written in a spiral, the amount of data you can get on a disc is affected by how tightly spaced the "groove" is. A standard Red Book audio CD or Yellow Book CD-ROM is designed to allow at most 74 minutes of data. By using a tighter track pitch on the spiral "groove" on the glass master, manufacturers can get more data onto the disc. In theory this could make it harder for some CD readers to use the discs. ________________________ In other words, a CD of more than 74:16 (the maximum length), has been created to prevent pirating/bootlegging (ie, not CD-R pirating, but wholesale, glass-master, 500-pressed ripping-off). In the recent Autechre album on CD, wasn't there a whole chunk of silence in one track near the end? Could it be that they made a 74-minute CD, and then when it came to pressing it, the record label/mastering people padded it out with several minutes of silence near the end, to deter bootleggers by making them think it was an 80-minute CD? Jeremy.