IDM Mailing Archive

quoted 6 lines Ae's "Incunabula" has a total running time

> > > 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,

quoted 3 lines you can go as high as 80 minutes.

> > you can go as high as 80 minutes. > > Perhaps it's an urban myth, but I seem to recall hearing/reading

somewhere

quoted 3 lines that the reason the 74 minute limit came about was because it was the

> 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.

quoted 1 line So while it was technically feasible to cram more onto the disc, they

> So while it was technically feasible to cram more onto the disc, they

chose 74 minutes as

quoted 2 lines a standard, but 80 minutes seems to be the "real" limit - I have yet to

> 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.

Hi, On Wed, 27 Jan 1999, Jeremy A.Smith wrote:

quoted 5 lines In the recent Autechre album on CD, wasn't there a whole chunk of silence

> 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?

Yes and no. Yes, there was a gap of some minutes, but no, it surely wasn't meant to prevent bootlegging. It would be stubid and dumb from the mastering people to add some minutes of silence into an album which was designed to be listend. The gap quite surely was a decision made by ae themselfs, and I guess it the usual 'hidden track' thing. Well, in this case more like '(not so) hidden bonus beats' (there are other and 'better' ways to add hidden bonus tracks: I heard of a (to be exact of 2) CDs where you have to rewind *before* the beginning of track1, which most people don't do ('cause normally thats not possible) so they don't know about this hidden track 'til anybody tells them... Bye Sebastian -- Sebastian Herrfurth (seher@cs.tu-berlin.de) pages for Bernd Friedmann / Riz Maslen / Daniel Meier / DJ Krush / ... at http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~seher/music.html

"Jeremy A.Smith" wrote:

quoted 5 lines In the recent Autechre album on CD, wasn't there a whole chunk of silence

> 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?

If that was the case, it'd be the most stupid case of copy protection I've ever heard of; anything it prevents you from is copying all the silence at the end, plus the few bleeps at the very end (that I didn't bother listening to more than once, actually :) ; also, every PC with a CD writer and a bit of audio editing software lets you adjust that silence to your preferred size... ^_^ -- Kurt B. Pruenner kurt.pruenner@jk.uni-linz.ac.at Haendelstrasse 17 http://wildsau.idv.uni-linz.ac.at/~k30a2e7/ A-4020 Linz/AUSTRIA Web-Admin of http://www.hermes-gfx.gup.uni-linz.ac.at/ np: Squarepusher - Coopers World (Hard Normal Daddy) WARP Records http://www.warp-net.com/ BUZZ / BUZZ 2 http://buzz2.com/ Aphex Twin http://aphextwin.org/ Underworld http://dirty.org/ User Friendly http://userfriendly.org/ Segfault http://segfault.org/