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While preparing for the DAD Conference, the Sony team was also engaged in the commercialization of the first CD system, which Ohga decided to launch in October 1982. Members of the Audio Technology Center, the Audio Business Group, including the Engineering Development Department led by Katsuaki Tsurushima, and the Audio Division led by Nobuyuki Idei, were all involved in commercializing the CD system. However, meeting this deadline was going to be tough. Sony and Philips had worked together diligently for a year to improve their technologies and build a product based on the standards they had established. But the product could not yet be commercialized, partly due to a lack of key components needed to manufacture the hardware. The situation was such that the engineers were always complaining:  We don't have this component part or We don't have that one.
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To exacerbate the shortage of parts, the pickup device used to read the signal on the disc, essentially the heart of the CD system, was inadequate. Important parts for the device are the laser diode, which produces the light beam for reading the disc; the objective lens, which projects light from the laser onto the disc; and the dual-axis device that moves the lens and guides the light in unison over the spinning disc. These parts were not satisfactory. The engineers had to direct the light beam so it could pick up bits 0.5 micrometers wide lined up in a space of 1.6 micrometers wide, the equivalent to one-fortieth or fiftieth the thickness of a strand of hair. On a 12 cm disc there are roughly two billion bits. None of the parts that had been used thus far in the video disc player was adequate for the task. The helium neon gas laser used with the video disc was 20 cm longer and thus far too big to be used with a new 12 cm disc system. The Sony team could have reduced the size of the laser by using semiconductors. However, laser technology using semiconductors was still in the experimental stage.
The lens had to be as minute as a microscope lens meaning that a compound lens consisting of several glass lenses just a few millimeters in diameter stacked together had to be made to move as a single unit. It was a difficult task to position the axis, along which the optical pickup moves, so that the pickup light aligns exactly with the bits it was reading. In addition, the surface of the lens had to be polished so that it was less than 0.2 micrometers thick.
There were also problems with using semiconductors. To carry out advanced digital signal processing, previously done by using 500 ICs, it was necessary to develop an LSI circuit. If one could not be created, the system could not be made into a compact player that could be enjoyed by the average consumer. The AD/DA (Analog-Digital to Digital-Analog) converter, which processes and converts an analog signal to a digital one and vice versa, were plagued with problems. They seriously considered if it was really possible to commercialize the system in just two years?
When the engineers listed the things that still had to be done and the problems they faced, there were over two hundred items. The team visited different laser manufacturers to examine various lasers. They found a high quality laser manufactured by Sharp that fortunately could be mass-produced. They decided for the optical pickup device. A dual-axis device named Tsurusu, after Tsurushima, was developed to ensure that the light of the optical pickup exactly followed the bits on the spinning disc.
The optical pickup device ultimately developed by Sony's Optical Device Division was smaller than comparable devices. The Sony device picked up every microscopic bit on the disc. The efforts of the Semiconductor Group were also outstanding. The DA converter, which until that time had cost nearly 300,000 yen to produce due to parts, was made by using just one IC, cutting the cost to approximately 10,000 yen. This device reduced the size of the player considerably, contributing to cost reduction. In addition, the group successfully miniaturized the 500 ICs used for signal processing, condensing them into three small LSI circuits.
At the 1981 Audio Fair, Sony exhibited a much-improved CD system prototype. Just a few days earlier, a set of three LSI circuits used in place of the 500 ICs had been realized. The prototype held the disc so it appeared to stand sideways, sparkling brightly as it spun on the front face of the player. Standing the disc on its side was technically very difficult. Despite the claims of the engineers that they had succeeded in doing this, the prototype looked a little awkward, thus given the nickname Goronta, which was derived from the Japanese onomatopoetic word goron, meaning bulky and awkward.
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