Fourscore CD-R: what is it good for?

Emedia Professional, Feb, 1998 by Robert A. Starrett

Time was when 63-minute media had a place in the CD-R pantheon. Even though at 580MB the discs lack the necessary capacity to do their 74-minute counterparts' letter-perfect imitation of current-day CD-ROM, 63-minute media once promised greater stability, since manufacturing tolerances gave 74-minute media some instability on the outer portions of the disc. Today's 74-minute media, however, is reliable and plentiful. Since the cost difference is minimal, and users want to take advantage of as much capacity as they can, 63-minute media has lost much of its former market cachet.

Eighteen-and 21-minute media, which are 8cm in diameter, compared to the 12cm of 63-and 74-minute discs, carried a different marketing hook. The discs were created, presumably, for the days when some manufacturer would produce 3.5-inch form-factor readers or recorders for use in laptop computers or for other portable devices designed to accommodate only very compact peripherals. Given the slimming down of CD-ROM drives to a point where they can easily be integrated into a standard laptop, a strong demand for the 8cm discs and drives never emerged. Besides, the data capacity, 165MB and 193MB, respectively, was just too small for most applications that required CD as the delivery medium.

Current CD-ROM drives and recorders are still 18-and 21-minute media-ready. Look at the drive tray of your CD-ROM drive or recorder and you will likely see an 8cm ring in the tray into which you can insert the smaller media. And 63-minute media are still found in some quarters where CD-R drives and accessories are sold. But for all practical purposes, 74-minute discs have established themselves as the only game in town.

WHERE'S THE 80-MINUTE MAN?

So what's all this talk about 80-minute media that's been kicking around of late? The discs aren't widely used as yet, but at least one manufacturer, TDK, is currently spinning out the discs. The 12cm discs are actually 79:57.72 in length, at least in the batch that I got. According to Philips' 1996 overview of compact disc formats, The CD Family, the theoretical maximum playing time of a disc is 79 minutes and 58 seconds. But The CD Family also warns, "To allow for practical limitations and manufacturing tolerances, the maximum playing time is in fact limited to about 74 minutes."

Who, then, would want or need to use 80-minute media? Well, Michael Jackson apparently did on his two-disc career retrospective, HIStory; disc two clocks in at 77:08.23. And it took Elvis Costello 77:07.57 minutes to cram 31 songs onto the CD edition of his 1980 album Get Happy. And to include every precious second of Bob Dylan's 14-plus-minute magnum opus, "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands," on the CD version of his 1966 Blonde on Blonde album, the CD required a running length of 77:42. In fact, when the album was first released on CD in 1985, Columbia Records was apparently less confident about the prospects for cramming 77 minutes of music onto CD, since the company chose--to the shock and horror of many fans--to truncate Dylan's hallowed "Sad-Eyed Lady" at 11:09 to keep the disc at a safe 74.

A recent issue of music industry trade Ice magazine cited the move toward 80-minute music CDs as an emerging trend, now that the technology for pressing longer discs has become more stable. Rykodisc's latest bunch of Elvis Costello reissues, for example, all clock in at 77 to 79 minutes, and the Ice article suggests that more and more record companies may be using the available capacity to provide listeners extra value.

But aside from artists who aim to push the envelope on their new works and need 80-minute media for mastering purposes, few consumers are likely to consider $50--the going rate for 80-minute CD-R--a justifiable expense for home-duping Blonde on Blonde when they can buy a pressed copy with original packaging for a third of the price. And what value--if any--do 80-minute media offer for data applications? One Off CD Shops, a CD-R vendor and service provider, stocks and sells 80-minute TDK media at $49.95 per disc, $48 more than the current price of many 74-minute discs. One Off CD Shops' Scott Bracken says some customers use the 80-minute media out of necessity because their data pushes the limits of the 74-minute platters and they are reluctant to move to a two-disc set. Bracken says that most 80-minute media is used in audio applications and that he heard no reports of incompatibilities between the longer media and the many audio players in which the discs have been used.

FOURSCORE CD-R: SAFE FOR DATA?

There are probably few occasions where 80-minute media need be used for a data application. Because of the media's high cost, and the possibility that some CD-ROM drives may have trouble reading the outer edge of an 80-minute disc, it certainly is appropriate for an in-house application where you have control over the readers that are being used and your data exceeds 74 minutes slightly but is unlikely to grow past 80 minutes.

For those few data applications and for those whose musical creations exceed 74 minutes, 80-minute CD-R media passes muster as an appropriate input source for replication and replicators should have no problem pressing the longer discs. And for those who absolutely have to listen to Michael Jackson's "Bad" in their car stereos--but consider the singer's HIStory retrospective too precious a possession to let out of the house--80-minute media is the only way to dupe that irresistible second disc.