Cool Tech from 1982: The Compact Disc Pt2.

I think it's natural to be interested in the state of technological progress, the state of the world even, at the time of one's birth. Despite such developments happening on a continuum - a curious effect can appear: We develop a bias towards "our" year as the most inventive, the birth of a modern world, the year the world went from monochrome to colour.

I won't be challenging that bias - I think it's fairly benign as biases go - and well, it's my series of articles, so I'll be writing about all the cool stuff that changed our musical lives in 1982. Let's talk about the Compact Disc.

Colouring Books

Last time, we talked about Sony & Philips' uneasy alliance and the early, overconfident reporting on the CD's durability. This time, we have a little look at the versatility of the format. Now, CD error correction whilst absolutely ingenious (with all sorts of interleaving and interpolation), is a fairly dry topic. All we need to know for the scope of this article is that this error detection was so good, that the format could store a variety of data types; audio, documents, images, etc. Each data type might, for efficiency's sake, utilise the available storage in a different way, a different format - so the specifics of each format needed to be set in stone.

Red Book was the first, and concerns 16-bit, 44100Hz CD audio. Many digital formats have appeared since, some (like DVDA or HFPA) are even 24 bit - but funnily enough, the CD still seems to have a place in our hearts; perhaps even experiencing a renaissance amongst younger music fans (I'll talk about this in a later article - I'm sure). 

Yellow Book (or CD-ROM) has had a profound effect on computing. Initially a read-only format (unless one owned a CD-pressing facility), the physical size to storage ratio was incredible for the time. Bernoulli or Syquest drives might have stored somewhere in the region of 20 to 40MB of data, and streaming tape drives about 150MB (good luck seeking for a single file!) - in comparison, these new 650MB compact discs truly captured the imaginations of software developers.

Thoughtfully, Yellow Book allowed for 2 different data modes; Mode 1 & Mode 2, chosen at time of authoring, which pertain to the amount of error correction required:

"The Yellow Book specification defines two data structures: Mode 1 and Mode 2. The mode byte, which is included in the header field of a CD-ROM sector, describes the type of data contained in the data field. Mode 1 denotes CD-ROM data with Error Correction Code (ECC), which provides room for 2,048 bytes of user data and is the mode used to store data that is unforgiving of error, like computer programs or databases. Mode 2 denotes a sector with data stored without ECC, which provides more room (2,336bytes) for user data, but which is typically used for data that is more tolerant of error, like audio, video, or graphics."

https://ccssinc.net/index.php?main_page=cd_color_books

So what of the software? The first CD-ROM that (Japanese) consumers could realistically get their hands on was 1988's No-Ri-Ko for the PC Engine CD. This interactive disc allows you to go on a date with 80's pop singer, Noriko Ogawa and then listen to her songs whilst slideshows of images play. It's a fairly early example of digital, parasocial enablement - and certainly foreshadows the kind of relationships that some fans now have with musicians.

Many of these early multimedia experiences might feel a little "slight" by todays standards - but at the time? Groundbreaking. My own first experience of CD-ROM came a few years after this, and I can't wait to tell you about it. Next time, we continue to look at the different coloured books of the magnificent CD.

• Broke Beats pt1 - A £37 Interface & Multi FX 16-Sep-26
• Ed O'Brien's Must-Listen Albums 16-Sep-26
• Mic Your Kick Drum Like a Legend 16-Sep-26
• The Pete Doherty Show 15-Sep-26
• Sequential Circuits Studio 440 14-Sep-26