# A man's love for classical music, set a strict standard for a new technological era.



## PavelC (Oct 6, 2012)

I myself, have found this fascinating.

"Have you ever wondered, why is it that the music CD that you listen to day in and day out, runs for a maximum of approximately 74 minutes? Even if you did; you would probably put it down to some kind of technical aspect, which you would not understand, no matter how hard you tried. 

The answer lies in Beethoven. Yes, good old Beethoven! Beethoven aficionados would tell you very quickly that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony runs for approximately 74 minutes. Sony was the company that invented the music CD. The founder of Sony, Akio Morita was a huge fan of Beethoven. When the length of the CD was to be decided, Morita simply made it long enough so that he could listen to an uninterrupted performance of the music maestro."


The fragment above is part from a full article on Mr. Morita:
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/5-20-2004-54398.asp"


----------



## Gilberto (Sep 12, 2013)

It will be interesting to see replies on the technical aspect of this. My opinion is it was a bit short sighted to just pull a number out of the hat. So, if this is to be believed, many double LP classic albums omitted a few selections when they were issued on CD just because some guy from a family of sake brewers liked Beethoven.


----------



## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Good thing he wasn't a fan of Wagner.


----------



## Guest (Dec 12, 2013)

The story about the length of a CD was being told in the early 1980's, right after the CD came out.

Then it was Herbert von Karajan who was said to have said that the disc should run long enough to accomodate Beethoven's ninth.

And any Beethoven aficionado will tell you that the ninth runs for around an hour. Sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on who's playing it. 

A 74 minute ninth would seem to most of us to be an extremely slow performance.


----------



## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Personally, I find it much more amazing that the size of the Space Shuttle's rocket boosters were determined by the width of a horse's ***.
Link.


----------



## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

PavelC said:


> I myself, have found this fascinating.
> 
> "Have you ever wondered, why is it that the music CD that you listen to day in and day out, runs for a maximum of approximately 74 minutes? Even if you did; you would probably put it down to some kind of technical aspect, which you would not understand, no matter how hard you tried.
> 
> ...


Looked a bit further on the web. Snopes calls this and similar explanations "undetermined" (link).


----------



## StevenOBrien (Jun 27, 2011)

Vesteralen said:


> Good thing he wasn't a fan of Wagner.


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

StevenOBrien said:


>


That looks like a forerunner of the CD. Maybe why CD stands for Compact Disc. BTW that 74 minute limit didn't last long.


----------



## Guest (Dec 12, 2013)

Yeah, I was just gonna say. I have several 80 minute CDs.


----------



## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

Ukko said:


> That looks like a forerunner of the CD. Maybe why CD stands for Compact Disc. BTW that 74 minute limit didn't last long.


I had a Laser Disc player about 25 years ago. And you thought Vinyls took up valuable space.


----------



## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

There is probably some truth to the story -- that at minimum the CD should encompass a complete Ninth Symphony. The Ninth is a sort of national symphony in Japan. People there go to Ninth sing-alongs the way we do with "Messiah." In fact at the Winter Olympics there some years ago, when the opening ceremonies ended with Seiji Ozawa conducting the vocal portion of the Ninth as a grand finale (which CBS cut away from for ads and a puff piece about Michelle Kwan -- "O freunde, nicht dise tone!"), if you watched the few scenes of people in the stadium CBS cared to show, you could see most of the Japanese in the audience were singing along -- in the original German. Just going to show that American media think we're all cretins.


----------



## StevenOBrien (Jun 27, 2011)

scratchgolf said:


> I had a Laser Disc player about 25 years ago. And you thought Vinyls took up valuable space.


And ironically, a single laser disc could only hold 30 minutes of per side.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Certainly this story is out there with certain variations. I have heard it was the guy's wife who liked Beethoven and insisted that the ninth be carried on one CD. But note that early CDs did not carry that much music. They probably only carried as much as the LP did in the early days. But they were so much more expensive, of course, that people wanted their money's worth!


----------



## Guest (Dec 13, 2013)

I thought that a CD could now be packed with many more minutes of music if a different format was used - an mp3 disc, rather than a standard 'audio CD'?


----------



## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> I thought that a CD could now be packed with many more minutes of music if a different format was used - and mp3 disc, rather than a standard 'audio CD'?


This is true. I'm not familiar with the minute count but if a burned cd holds typically 20-25 songs, using mp3 format can hold upwards of 200. The problem is finding a cd player which plays that format. I haven't tried it in years for this reason. Many vehicle CD players would not recognize the disc and it's rather irrelevant now with syncing mp3 players. Both my current vehicles sync directly to my phone and iPods with direct control on the dashboard and steering wheel.


----------



## Gilberto (Sep 12, 2013)

scratchgolf said:


> This is true. I'm not familiar with the minute count but if a burned cd holds typically 20-25 songs, using mp3 format can hold upwards of 200. The problem is finding a cd player which plays that format. I haven't tried it in years for this reason. Many vehicle CD players would not recognize the disc and it's rather irrelevant now with syncing mp3 players. Both my current vehicles sync directly to my phone and iPods with direct control on the dashboard and steering wheel.


I have a CD player at home that reads wav & mp3 and find it very convenient when I want to play a 6 hour mix without fussing over making selections. The number of "songs" doesn't really matter as much as bit rate; most blanks today top out at 700 MB. Most of my mp3 discs hold from 6-10 albums depending on the bit rate. It is a nice alternative to having a bunch of synching gadgets.


----------



## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

PavelC said:


> I myself, have found this fascinating.
> 
> "Have you ever wondered, why is it that the music CD that you listen to day in and day out, runs for a maximum of approximately 74 minutes? Even if you did; you would probably put it down to some kind of technical aspect, which you would not understand, no matter how hard you tried.
> 
> ...


The CD is now designed to hold 80m ie. 700mb but it's earliest incarnation was designed to hold 650mb ie. 74m.

The CD was actually co-invented by Philips and Sony and the 'Compact Disc' logo a requirement of Philips as had been the case with an earlier tape format they'd invented.

I smell urban myth alert but a nice one so did a quick hunt and found http://superbon.net/?p=364

I prefer the myth tho


----------



## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

scratchgolf said:


> This is true. I'm not familiar with the minute count but if a burned cd holds typically 20-25 songs, using mp3 format can hold upwards of 200. The problem is finding a cd player which plays that format. I haven't tried it in years for this reason. Many vehicle CD players would not recognize the disc and it's rather irrelevant now with syncing mp3 players. Both my current vehicles sync directly to my phone and iPods with direct control on the dashboard and steering wheel.


Using the horrid _de facto_ 128kbs "original standard" for MP3s that'd b 1mb/min ie. 700 mins but u can encode as low as 8kbs or as high as 320kbs and in VBR or the less compact CBR. As compressed audio can never be truly "lossless" but at best "pretty much indistinguishable to the average punter" I only encode at 320kbs and CBR for anyone but don't have a multi-disc thingy in the car boot anymore as my engine is in it whilst my lid is in the bonnet when it's sunny so I mainly use my IPhone bluetoothed and please don't press me on iTunes as I hate Apple 4 that but love my 5s.


----------



## mikey (Nov 26, 2013)

ruaskin said:


> The CD is now designed to hold 80m ie. 700mb but it's earliest incarnation was designed to hold 650mb ie. 74m.
> 
> The CD was actually co-invented by Philips and Sony and the 'Compact Disc' logo a requirement of Philips as had been the case with an earlier tape format they'd invented.
> 
> ...


I would agree with this although I do have some discs that hold just over 80 minutes so I'm not sure why they haven't increased the length on the others which run the same time but split on to 2 discs.

The problem with mp3 is the compression which effects the sound quality. Although some prefer vinyl to digital so who's to say...


----------



## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

Gilberto said:


> I have a CD player at home that reads wav & mp3 and find it very convenient when I want to play a 6 hour mix without fussing over making selections. The number of "songs" doesn't really matter as much as bit rate; most blanks today top out at 700 MB. Most of my mp3 discs hold from 6-10 albums depending on the bit rate. It is a nice alternative to having a bunch of synching gadgets.


A music server is the key. I'd love to explain but have 2 scoot tho u can find loads about such elsewhere.

My laptop is no slouch as it's an i7-4702 processor with 12Gb of RAM onboard and 4Gb nVidia plus Dolby Home Theatre 4 with HDMI and a couple of USB 3.0s for i/o. The i7 processor is a quad-core 2.2 GHz which turbo-boosts to 3.2GHz and has a 6Mb cache whilst the HD is 1Tb with plenty spare to avoid that slowing stuff down. This can link by Bluetooth or wifi to all the classical stuff on dad's server which is a WIP 4him taking hours and hours.

Gawd help him if he decides 2convert his records as he "cues" discs on his record player then lowers an arm on2them and after about 20 mins they go bump bump bumpety bump until he lifts the arm and moves it back on2 a support. To hear the other side he has to take a black weight off the spindle then turn the disc over and replace the weight then "cue" all over again. Oh I missed his brushing it's surface clean with some velvet pad thingie that has hairs of some sort on the sides to capture dust.

I hate iTunes even if using the WAV option but mostly for stuff in so called "lossless" compressed formats on my phone as it's a rubbish idea that I can't bluetooth music to anyone using an HTC or xPeria or Samsung etc tho can Bluetooth it thru my car stereo. I could say I hate Apple but my 5s is perfect4me as it is small and smart and does all I want really.


----------



## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

mikey said:


> I would agree with this although I do have some discs that hold just over 80 minutes so I'm not sure why they haven't increased the length on the others which run the same time but split on to 2 discs.
> 
> The problem with mp3 is the compression which effects the sound quality. Although some prefer vinyl to digital so who's to say...


The 80 minutes thing is to do with "raw" imaging as all CDs will "overburn" and so a 700mb is really something like 743Mb I think if memory serves me well but certainly capable of 85m tho the more u push it 2 it's limits the greater the likely risk of errors creeping in etc


----------



## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

There's a suspiciously similar story about the invention of the LP record:



> In the fall of 1945, [Paul Carl Goldmark] and his wife were being entertained at a friend's home. After dinner, the host played a 78-rpm record of Vladimir Horowitz playing Brahms' "Second Piano Concerto." Bothered by the thinness of sound, scratches, and clicks, Goldmark was especially annoyed at the short playing time. To complete the concerto took six records, which meant consistent interruptions of the music. Intent on lengthening the playing time and improving the overall quality of the recording, Goldmark set out on a quest that resulted in the development of the long playing record, which became universally known as the LP [...] Playing time was increased to approximately 20 minutes-long enough to complete an average classical music movement.


Source.


----------



## echmain (Jan 18, 2013)

StevenOBrien said:


> And ironically, a single laser disc could only hold 30 minutes of per side.


That was true of CAV discs, but CLV discs could hold 60 minutes per side.

I still have my Star Wars "definitive" collection. 9 discs (CAV) for all three movies.


----------

