Sound to burn: audio recording tools for CD-R

Emedia Professional, Feb, 1998 by Stephen F. Nathans

Prior to the debut of the PDR-04, Pioneer began shipping the PDR-99 CD recorder as part of its high-end Elite division back in June 1996. Both the PDR-04 and the PDR-99 include a Serial Copy Management System (SCMS) chip, which encodes each disc after a recording so that a digital copy of its content cannot be made. "This way," explains Walker, "you can make a copy for yourself, but you can't make additional copies of it to sell and distribute."

Pioneer's SCMS solution complies with the Home Recording Act of 1992, which states that any recording which cannot be copied qualifies as a personal use item and is therefore completely legal. Yet the logic behind the Home Recording Act is flawed, given that the copyrighted source material can be copied onto as many other discs as the user would like. These could then be sold for profit, permitting small-scale piracy and arguably creating new legal difficulties for the nascent home recording industry.

Philips recently became the second company to release a home CD recorder, the Philips CDR 870. Priced at $649 and currently available at select audio outlets, the CDR 870 will be distributed nationally in early 1998 and also contains the SCMS chip as an anti-piracy precaution. Philips hopes to compete with Pioneer by emphasizing the CDR 870's compatibility not only with CD-Recordable media, but also with CD-Rewritable media, which allows the user to re-record on the same disc. Unfortunately, CD-RW discs cannot be played on currently available audio equipment, so Philips intends to manufacture CD-RW-compatible audio players in 1998. "We've leveraged our consumer electronics strength and leadership into the emerging CD recorder market," says Robert Harris, Vice President and General Manager of Interactive Products at Philips Consumer Electronics Company.

CD-R media for home use are also readily available, and are now designed to meet copyright regulations. TDK manufactures the CD-RXG74 and CD-RXG60 series of recordable discs, which are playable on any CD system and encoded to work with the SCMS chip. TDK has also established royalty arrangements to coincide with the sale of each disc. "A percentage of what the consumer pays for the discs goes to the copyright office of the federal government," says Tim Sullivan, vice president of consumer sales at TDK. "That money is then channeled to organizations, such as the RIAA or BMI/ASCAP to ensure that artists receive their royalties. Anyone buying one of our discs will have a legal right to make a personal copy." With the advent of the CD home recorder, Sullivan anticipates a gradual rise in disc sales. "Home recording technology is slowly gaining some ground," he says, "but it wasn't becoming a huge market until now."

RELATED ARTICLE: Companies Mentioned in This Article

ACS Innovations, Inc. 3171 Jay Street, Santa Clara, CA 95054-3308; 408/566-0900; Fax 408/566-0909; http://www.acscdr.com; CIRCLE NUMBER 400

Adaptec, Inc. 691 South Milpitas Boulevard, Milpitas, CA 95035; 800/934-2766, 408/945-8600; Fax 408/957-7223; http://www.adaptec.com; CIRCLE NUMBER 401