Compact Disc player

A Compact Disc player (often written as compact disc player), or CD player, is an

electronic device that plays audio Compact Discs. CD players are often installed
into home stereo systems, car audio systems, and personal computers. They are also
manufactured as portable devices. Modern units support other formats in addition
to CDs, such as DVDs, CD-ROMs with audio files and video CDs. DJs often use
players with an adjustable playback sampling rate to alter the pitch of the music
programme. Many modern CD players also play MP3 CDs. CD playback functionality is
available on all modern CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive equipped computers as well as on DVD
players and CD-ROM/DVD-ROM based game consoles.

History
The compact disc is a spin-off of the Laserdisc technology. Philips publicly
demonstrated a prototype of an optical digital audio disc at a press conference
called "Philips Introduce Compact Disc" in Eindhoven, The Netherlands on March 8,
1979. Three years earlier, Sony first publicly demonstrated an optical digital
audio disc in September 1976. In September 1978, they demonstrated an optical
digital audio disc with a 150 minute playing time, and with specifications of
44,056 Hz sampling rate, 16-bit linear resolution, cross-interleaved error
correction code, that were similar to those of the Compact Disc introduced in
1982. Technical details of Sony's digital audio disc were presented during the
62nd AES Convention, held on March 13-16, 1979 in Brussels.
Later that year, Sony and Philips Consumer Electronics (Philips) set up a joint
task force of engineers to design a new digital audio disc. The task force, led by
prominent members Kees Schouhamer Immink and Toshitada Doi, progressed the
research into laser technology and optical discs that had been started
independently by Philips and Sony in 1977 and 1975, respectively. After a year of
experimentation and discussion, the taskforce produced the Red Book, the Compact
Disc standard. Philips contributed the general manufacturing process, based on
video Laserdisc technology. Philips also contributed Eight-to-Fourteen Modulation
(EFM), which offers both a long playing time and a high resilience against disc
defects such as scratches and fingerprints, while Sony contributed the error-
correction method, CIRC. The Compact Disc Story, told by a former member of the
taskforce, gives background information on the many technical decisions made,
including the choice of the sampling frequency, playing time, and disc diameter.
The taskforce consisted of around four to eight persons, though according to
Philips, the compact disc was thus "invented collectively by a large group of
people working as a team."[8]
The first test CD was pressed in Hannover, Germany by the Polydor Pressing
Operations plant in 1981. The disc contained a recording of Richard Strauss's Eine
Alpensinfonie, played by the Berlin Philharmonic and conducted by Herbert von
Karajan.[9] The first public demonstration was on the BBC TV show Tomorrow's World
when The Bee Gees' 1981 album Living Eyes was played. In August 1982 the real
pressing was ready to begin in the new factory, not far from the place where Emil
Berliner had produced his first gramophone record 93 years earlier. By now,
Deutsche Grammophon, Berliner's company and the publisher of the Strauss
recording, had become a part of PolyGram. The first CD to be manufactured at the
new factory was The Visitors by ABBA. The first album to be released on CD was
Billy Joel's 52nd Street, that reached the market alongside Sony's CD player CDP-
101 on October 1, 1982 in Japan. Early the following year on March 2, 1983 CD
players and discs (16 titles from CBS Records) were released in the United States
and other markets. This event is often seen as the "Big Bang" of the digital audio
revolution. The new audio disc was enthusiastically received, especially in the
early-adopting classical music and audiophile communities and its handling quality
received particular praise. As the price of players sank rapidly, the CD began to
gain popularity in the larger popular and rock music markets. The first artist to
sell a million copies on CD was Dire Straits, with its 1985 album Brothers in
Arms. The first major artist to have his entire catalogue converted to CD was
David Bowie, whose 15 studio albums were made available by RCA in February 1985,
along with four Greatest Hits albums. In 1988, 400 million CDs were manufactured
by 50 pressing plants around the world. To date, the biggest selling CD (as
opposed to the biggest selling title) is Beatles "1", released in November 2000,
with worldwide sales of 30 million discs.

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