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From: iayork@panix.com (Ian A. York)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,rec.audio
Subject: Maximum CD length
Date: 11 Nov 1996 19:02:12 -0500

[In article <568d9g$9el@nntp1.best.com>, snopes <snopes@best.com> wrote that one cited reason for the 74-minute CD was Herbert von Karajan's wish to fit Beethoven's 9th Symphony on one CD]

I have a recording of Wilhelm Furtwangler conducting the Berlin Philharmonic for the 9th; year would have been about 1943/44, and the choir for the Ode to Joy was a Nazi Youth choir. Quite apart from these bizarre aspects, it has the slowiest and draggiest Ode I've heard. I don't have the album handy - it's been years since I've seen my vinyl - but it's the longest 9th I've heard and may well run 74 minutes.

Let's see. Aha. <http://taesan.kaist.ac.kr/~jwj/conductor/furt-mel.html> mentions what must be the same album; recorded 1942. (I refrain from editing my incorrect guess above.) It says:

1. Allegro ma no troppo, un poco maestoso (17'15)
2. Molto Vivace (11'18)
3. Adagio molto e cantabile (20'04)
4. Presto - Allegro assai - Allegro assai vivace - alla marcia - Andante maestoso - allegro energico - prestissimo (24'18)

Total Timing : 73'04

Grinding through more Alta Vista, since I'm on a roll, I find that Furtwangler also made a 1951 recording that topped out at 74'40, according to <http://taesan.kaist.ac.kr/~jwj/conductor/furt-EMI.html>.

These are the cover times, and may not be accurate; but perhaps it's worth timing these performances. It's possible, I suppose, that von Karajan took his precursor's performance as the standard and believed that 74 minutes was the 'right' length for the performance, although that seems out of character for von Karajan.

Ian "spot the straight line above" York

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From: angusj@mindspring.com (Angus Johnston)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,rec.audio
Subject: Re: Maximum CD length
Date: 12 Nov 1996 00:47:26 GMT

[snopes <snopes@best.com> writes that he believes Beethoven's 9th was not necessarily Sony's primary motivation for the 74-minute CD, and concludes that the von Karajan story isn't factual, or at least documented]

Excellent digging, but I think it may actually lend credence to Sony's version of the story.

Let's assume that Sony didn't pluck the 12 cm diameter out of the air---that they were going to make a disc that was some multiple of .5 cm in diameter. Let's also assume, to make things simple, that the basic specs of the disc (size of the hole in the middle, density of the medium, width of the lip at the edge) were set, and the diameter was the only variable they were playing with.

A standard CD has, by my reckoning, something like 73.75 square cm of space available to record on. If you shrunk it by half a centimeter (to 11.5 cm), you'd lose more than 8 square cm, which would leave you a maximum recording length of something like 65 minutes---two minutes too short for von Karajan's recording.

Looks to me like 12 cm could well have been chosen because it was the smallest round number that would fit the symphony. The extra few minutes may just be gravy.