September 5, 2024 • 12 mins
Clairsy & Lisa continued the History of Sound today by finding out about that new fangled shiny disc that was going to revolutionise the way we listened to our favourite songs, the “indestructible” Compact Disc. They spoke to expert Nathan Smith from the National Film & Sound Archive to find out it’s origins and it’s weaknesses.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is a journey will pop up the value of
pleasy releases.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
The history of sound.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Continuing our delve into the history of sound, we've moved
from the phonographic cylinder, to vinyl, to cassette tapes to
arriving today at the compact disc and joining us today.
Assistant Curator at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia,
Nathan Smith, good morning.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Good morning, Hey, how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Thank you so much for joining us?
Speaker 3 (00:30):
No, no, no problem at all.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Who invented the earliest known version of the compact disc?
Speaker 3 (00:36):
A well, the early known version of compact list was
created by a guy named James T. Russell back in
the sixties, and they actually had a bit of a
pattern for it in nineteen seventy. It wasn't until Sony
and Philip actually kind of got a hold of the
pattern and actually really developed it into kind of what
(00:57):
we know it is today. But yeah, it took a
little while for James to kind of get his dues
for creating the city, but he actually did, and he
you know, I think they ended up paying him back
in the eighties. Yeah. Well, I actually think he's still alive.
(01:17):
I think he's like ninety two or ninety three.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, yeah, how does the technology work? Make is these
shiny silver discs? And is the silver part important?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Oh yeah, absolutely. So obviously the disc was kind of created,
so it's basically an evolution of like laser disc technology.
And then obviously, you know, the music is kind of
recorded as a digital kind of file and this kind
of gets mastered and then it kind of essentially gets
etched onto the disc into like ones and zeros, and
(01:51):
then the laser is able to kind of pick up
those ones and zeros and kind of decode it back
into what we kind of know today. But the reason
why kind of became so popular because it was all
about kind of the evolution of technology and you know,
kind of having like the better quality kind of files.
(02:11):
Of course, when James actually originally created the technology in
the sixties and seventies, he was actually a classical music buff.
Yeah yeah, and he was just a little bit sick
and tired of the wear and tear on his CDs,
so he wanted kind of to kind of create something
that would kind of remove that wear and tear. So
(02:32):
we kind of created this like contactless type listening device. Yeah. Yeah,
So so you so you were in theory you would
never have to touch a CD. CDs were kind of
kind of then presented to the public in you know,
the early eighties. I think they kind of first got
released in like nineteen eighty one, nineteen eighty two. There's
a few different kind of theories as to kind of
(02:53):
what the actual first CDs were actually created, But some
of the really big popular ones that really popularized the
content was obviously Brothers in Arms like Distraits. They kind
of got released in nine point eighty two and went
on to have huge success.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
You mentioned Phillips and Sony joining together to get to
get this out. I mean, they were certainly were then
two absolute juggernauts of the audio world. They must have
they must have known they were absolutely one hundred onto
a winner.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Oh totally, absolutely, they were onto a winner. I mean,
obviously it was all about quality and just like the
evolution of kind of formats, which I mean, as you're
kind of previously discussed in the previous episodes, obviously starting
with cylinders and then going to vinyl and then going
to cassettes, and now we kind of found ourselves with
this shiny kind of compact disc which was actually really
(03:52):
cheap to kind of manufacture in only costs. The wholesale
cost of a CD back in the eighties was about
a dollar dollar fifteen, and they were selling. I mean,
I don't know about you guys, but I remember CDs
being relatively expensive.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, they were like to buy a bread.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah, to buy a brand new CD back in the
nineties was twenty thirty dollars, but they only cost about
a dollar maybe two dollars to make at the moment,
wow moment, So they were making the most of it.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Absolutely. I still think that a llure of this, the
shiny silver.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
It was like a shiny thing, something from space nature
yees yeah, yeah, shy discs.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
But it was also too like having you know, like
it was like laser technology. Sounded kind of cool, you know.
So everybody wanted a CD player and they weren't that
cheap either. They were about one thousand dollars back in
the eighties for a really expensive one, I was about
fifteen hundred. Generally speaking, they kind of decreased to about
three to five hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and they.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Kind of did get cheaper as kind of time went on, too.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah, I mean, you think it's not a needles stylist
going into a groove of record vinyl record but they
worked without problems. If something got start cours skating, they
were driving crazy.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
For a while.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yeah, yeah, neither know. They didn't really like scratches, and
they didn't like thinkerprint.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Now that's weird as than I, yeah, and skate around
when you're in the car, that movement. They didn't like
that either, which is.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
A little ironical. I actually sold as reasonably indestructible, like
as in, you would buy a CD and you would
never have to kind of replace it because it was like,
you know, contactless kind of listening kind of technology. But yeah,
you're dead right the scratches and then you know, you
(05:51):
could like you know, lose them quite easily too, because
I was reasonably small as well.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, Nathan, I really feel like they were marketed to
us as just what you had to have, like next
level sound quality, because I slowly worked through my very
healthy record collection replacing everything.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
With a CD. Because I was one of these idiots, it.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Was led to believe, and I wasn't the only one
that you know this, you can't have better than this.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
I feel like we were a little bit wod We
now when you look back, Oh, totally, absolutely. I mean
my format was during the eighties and nineties was obviously
satis and I literally had thousands of years, yeah, quite
so many, and I spent a small fortune on them
as well over the years. And now I'm kind of
(06:38):
going through the phase of actually, you know, replacing my
records with new vinyl copies, repeating my problem yea as consumers. Yeah,
but that's all right, it's kind of fun. And like
you know, CDs are still relevant to this day. People
still release them. Like my daughter, for example, has been
(06:59):
buying you know, Taylor Swift CDs just so she can
kind of you know, have something in her hand that
she could kind of connect with a little bit more
physically to be enjoyed about that.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah, absolutely mate, And like a lot of people didn't
sell their records like a LISTA did back in the day,
but I'm planning now even places like Facebook, Marketplace and
that people selling CDs. And then sometimes it's heartbreaking to
see people selling two hundred for fifty dollars and you
think invested, like you what people invested in those those
discs when they were.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Knew Oh my goodness, Yeah, absolutely they do sell for
kind of pretty cheap these days, which is kind of
a good thing and a bad thing. I mean, at
the end of the day, we kind of pass things on,
and you know, things kind of change and technology changes
and things are kind of happening. But obviously, like the
CDs was like the basis for like other technology as well,
Like they use the CD format for like DVDs and
(07:51):
Blu rays and.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
In the computer.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
And I was yeah, yeah to us.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
And it wasn't just audio as well, like obviously it's
just the idea of kind of storing data as well.
So in nineteen eighty five they created the CD ROM,
which was actually like which was actually a disc that
would kind of be read by your computer with data
on it. And then in nineteen ninety they actually created
the CD R, which is a rewriteable kind of disc
(08:19):
that you could kind of like make mixtapes and burn
CDs and very kind of things. And that changed everything
yet again.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
And I feel like the DVD replacing the VHS tape,
it was probably even a bigger you know, I mean,
there wasn't such a thing about it, but it was
probably an even bigger life changer for oh yeah, absolute media.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, yeah, I think we kind of forget how many
CDs were sold. I think there was estimations at the
fortieth anniversary of CDs in you know, I think it
was like twenty twenty four that two hundred billion CDs
were sold during the life of it runs. That's very, very.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Impressive phenomenal considering how many weren't necessarily just new things,
but things that people were upgrading, like like we all
did from our.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Vinuere that's right, and some of the obviously the big
successes was one of the first big Australian releases to
really benefit from the CD revolution was obviously John Farner
with with spring Jack. That was the really big one
of the first commercially mass driven, locally produced artists, and
obviously other other artists like Midnight Oil, Savage Garden, Kylie
(09:33):
Minogue in excess. They all benefited greatly from the advent
of CDs, and they did sell. Vinyl records are still around,
but not in the same quantity that CDs were in
the eighties and nineties, and.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Of course some benefiting for all the wrong reasons. They
were like the cassette tape, they were of course hugely pirated.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
That was definitely.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, it was too easy to You didn't get that
with albums. You didn't come back from Bali with a
bunch of Partis albums.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
No and you.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
But you'd make mixtapes on CDs as well, mixtapes that
you would record off the radio with your and your
finger currently waiting for the record one until the right
song comes around. You'd kind of do something kind of
similar to CDs and you exchange them, you know, I
remember kind of doing that. You'd make mix mixtapes for
your friends and you'd say, I'm listening to this at
(10:27):
the moment, check this out and go from there. And
it was how we kind of socialized. This is like
what it was before social media.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
And what not, so exactly was very very different social
by a piraty.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Well, Nathan, do you remember what your first CD was?
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Oh, my goodness, I've got memories of buying a CDC's
The Razor Edge when I was about twelve years old,
the album that had Thunderstruck on the But but it's
so like, it's so hard for me to kind of
choose what, like my favorite FED was. I spent so
much effort in listening to them back in the eighties
(11:09):
and nineties, but yeah, all the like Nick Cave Records
as well. And yes, I was very pleased to hear
that you bought Green by.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Rim first one we play play Orange Crush this morning.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I was, what a song?
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Is that? Funny? You got to raise his edge by this.
You probably looked a bit like Angus at the time.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Probably.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Thank you for joining us this morning to take our
History of Sound series into its compact disc phase.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
No worries, yeah, good, good luck with tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yes, yes, yeah, we're going.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Digital world.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
By the way, before before before I dip out, I
just want to say, for people that kind of want
to learn more about it, go to n f s
A dot gov dot au. There's plenty of articles and
information on there and curated coal all kinds of things
you can dig yourself into. Please jump into their dot dot.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Au National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Brilliant. Thank you,
This is a journey will pop up the value of
pleasy releases.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
The history of sound.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Continuing our delve into the history of sound, we've moved
from the phonographic cylinder, to vinyl, to cassette tapes to
arriving today at the compact disc and joining us today.
Assistant Curator at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia,
Nathan Smith, good morning.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Good morning, Hey, how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Thank you so much for joining us?
Speaker 3 (00:30):
No, no, no problem at all.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Who invented the earliest known version of the compact disc?
Speaker 3 (00:36):
A well, the early known version of compact list was
created by a guy named James T. Russell back in
the sixties, and they actually had a bit of a
pattern for it in nineteen seventy. It wasn't until Sony
and Philip actually kind of got a hold of the
pattern and actually really developed it into kind of what
(00:57):
we know it is today. But yeah, it took a
little while for James to kind of get his dues
for creating the city, but he actually did, and he
you know, I think they ended up paying him back
in the eighties. Yeah. Well, I actually think he's still alive.
(01:17):
I think he's like ninety two or ninety three.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, yeah, how does the technology work? Make is these
shiny silver discs? And is the silver part important?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Oh yeah, absolutely. So obviously the disc was kind of created,
so it's basically an evolution of like laser disc technology.
And then obviously, you know, the music is kind of
recorded as a digital kind of file and this kind
of gets mastered and then it kind of essentially gets
etched onto the disc into like ones and zeros, and
(01:51):
then the laser is able to kind of pick up
those ones and zeros and kind of decode it back
into what we kind of know today. But the reason
why kind of became so popular because it was all
about kind of the evolution of technology and you know,
kind of having like the better quality kind of files.
(02:11):
Of course, when James actually originally created the technology in
the sixties and seventies, he was actually a classical music buff.
Yeah yeah, and he was just a little bit sick
and tired of the wear and tear on his CDs,
so he wanted kind of to kind of create something
that would kind of remove that wear and tear. So
(02:32):
we kind of created this like contactless type listening device. Yeah. Yeah,
So so you so you were in theory you would
never have to touch a CD. CDs were kind of
kind of then presented to the public in you know,
the early eighties. I think they kind of first got
released in like nineteen eighty one, nineteen eighty two. There's
a few different kind of theories as to kind of
(02:53):
what the actual first CDs were actually created, But some
of the really big popular ones that really popularized the
content was obviously Brothers in Arms like Distraits. They kind
of got released in nine point eighty two and went
on to have huge success.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
You mentioned Phillips and Sony joining together to get to
get this out. I mean, they were certainly were then
two absolute juggernauts of the audio world. They must have
they must have known they were absolutely one hundred onto
a winner.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Oh totally, absolutely, they were onto a winner. I mean,
obviously it was all about quality and just like the
evolution of kind of formats, which I mean, as you're
kind of previously discussed in the previous episodes, obviously starting
with cylinders and then going to vinyl and then going
to cassettes, and now we kind of found ourselves with
this shiny kind of compact disc which was actually really
(03:52):
cheap to kind of manufacture in only costs. The wholesale
cost of a CD back in the eighties was about
a dollar dollar fifteen, and they were selling. I mean,
I don't know about you guys, but I remember CDs
being relatively expensive.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, they were like to buy a bread.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah, to buy a brand new CD back in the
nineties was twenty thirty dollars, but they only cost about
a dollar maybe two dollars to make at the moment,
wow moment, So they were making the most of it.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Absolutely. I still think that a llure of this, the
shiny silver.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
It was like a shiny thing, something from space nature
yees yeah, yeah, shy discs.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
But it was also too like having you know, like
it was like laser technology. Sounded kind of cool, you know.
So everybody wanted a CD player and they weren't that
cheap either. They were about one thousand dollars back in
the eighties for a really expensive one, I was about
fifteen hundred. Generally speaking, they kind of decreased to about
three to five hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and they.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Kind of did get cheaper as kind of time went on, too.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah, I mean, you think it's not a needles stylist
going into a groove of record vinyl record but they
worked without problems. If something got start cours skating, they
were driving crazy.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
For a while.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yeah, yeah, neither know. They didn't really like scratches, and
they didn't like thinkerprint.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Now that's weird as than I, yeah, and skate around
when you're in the car, that movement. They didn't like
that either, which is.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
A little ironical. I actually sold as reasonably indestructible, like
as in, you would buy a CD and you would
never have to kind of replace it because it was like,
you know, contactless kind of listening kind of technology. But yeah,
you're dead right the scratches and then you know, you
(05:51):
could like you know, lose them quite easily too, because
I was reasonably small as well.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, Nathan, I really feel like they were marketed to
us as just what you had to have, like next
level sound quality, because I slowly worked through my very
healthy record collection replacing everything.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
With a CD. Because I was one of these idiots, it.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Was led to believe, and I wasn't the only one
that you know this, you can't have better than this.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
I feel like we were a little bit wod We
now when you look back, Oh, totally, absolutely. I mean
my format was during the eighties and nineties was obviously
satis and I literally had thousands of years, yeah, quite
so many, and I spent a small fortune on them
as well over the years. And now I'm kind of
(06:38):
going through the phase of actually, you know, replacing my
records with new vinyl copies, repeating my problem yea as consumers. Yeah,
but that's all right, it's kind of fun. And like
you know, CDs are still relevant to this day. People
still release them. Like my daughter, for example, has been
(06:59):
buying you know, Taylor Swift CDs just so she can
kind of you know, have something in her hand that
she could kind of connect with a little bit more
physically to be enjoyed about that.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah, absolutely mate, And like a lot of people didn't
sell their records like a LISTA did back in the day,
but I'm planning now even places like Facebook, Marketplace and
that people selling CDs. And then sometimes it's heartbreaking to
see people selling two hundred for fifty dollars and you
think invested, like you what people invested in those those
discs when they were.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Knew Oh my goodness, Yeah, absolutely they do sell for
kind of pretty cheap these days, which is kind of
a good thing and a bad thing. I mean, at
the end of the day, we kind of pass things on,
and you know, things kind of change and technology changes
and things are kind of happening. But obviously, like the
CDs was like the basis for like other technology as well,
Like they use the CD format for like DVDs and
(07:51):
Blu rays and.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
In the computer.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
And I was yeah, yeah to us.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
And it wasn't just audio as well, like obviously it's
just the idea of kind of storing data as well.
So in nineteen eighty five they created the CD ROM,
which was actually like which was actually a disc that
would kind of be read by your computer with data
on it. And then in nineteen ninety they actually created
the CD R, which is a rewriteable kind of disc
(08:19):
that you could kind of like make mixtapes and burn
CDs and very kind of things. And that changed everything
yet again.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
And I feel like the DVD replacing the VHS tape,
it was probably even a bigger you know, I mean,
there wasn't such a thing about it, but it was
probably an even bigger life changer for oh yeah, absolute media.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, yeah, I think we kind of forget how many
CDs were sold. I think there was estimations at the
fortieth anniversary of CDs in you know, I think it
was like twenty twenty four that two hundred billion CDs
were sold during the life of it runs. That's very, very.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Impressive phenomenal considering how many weren't necessarily just new things,
but things that people were upgrading, like like we all
did from our.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Vinuere that's right, and some of the obviously the big
successes was one of the first big Australian releases to
really benefit from the CD revolution was obviously John Farner
with with spring Jack. That was the really big one
of the first commercially mass driven, locally produced artists, and
obviously other other artists like Midnight Oil, Savage Garden, Kylie
(09:33):
Minogue in excess. They all benefited greatly from the advent
of CDs, and they did sell. Vinyl records are still around,
but not in the same quantity that CDs were in
the eighties and nineties, and.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Of course some benefiting for all the wrong reasons. They
were like the cassette tape, they were of course hugely pirated.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
That was definitely.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, it was too easy to You didn't get that
with albums. You didn't come back from Bali with a
bunch of Partis albums.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
No and you.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
But you'd make mixtapes on CDs as well, mixtapes that
you would record off the radio with your and your
finger currently waiting for the record one until the right
song comes around. You'd kind of do something kind of
similar to CDs and you exchange them, you know, I
remember kind of doing that. You'd make mix mixtapes for
your friends and you'd say, I'm listening to this at
(10:27):
the moment, check this out and go from there. And
it was how we kind of socialized. This is like
what it was before social media.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
And what not, so exactly was very very different social
by a piraty.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Well, Nathan, do you remember what your first CD was?
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Oh, my goodness, I've got memories of buying a CDC's
The Razor Edge when I was about twelve years old,
the album that had Thunderstruck on the But but it's
so like, it's so hard for me to kind of
choose what, like my favorite FED was. I spent so
much effort in listening to them back in the eighties
(11:09):
and nineties, but yeah, all the like Nick Cave Records
as well. And yes, I was very pleased to hear
that you bought Green by.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Rim first one we play play Orange Crush this morning.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I was, what a song?
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Is that? Funny? You got to raise his edge by this.
You probably looked a bit like Angus at the time.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Probably.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Thank you for joining us this morning to take our
History of Sound series into its compact disc phase.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
No worries, yeah, good, good luck with tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yes, yes, yeah, we're going.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Digital world.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
By the way, before before before I dip out, I
just want to say, for people that kind of want
to learn more about it, go to n f s
A dot gov dot au. There's plenty of articles and
information on there and curated coal all kinds of things
you can dig yourself into. Please jump into their dot dot.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Au National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Brilliant. Thank you,
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