In 2011, AudioDev celebrates 25 years as a supplier of measurement equipment for optical media. So, how did AudioDev become the leading supplier of electrical test equipment?
The story about optical media begins back in 1986, when one of the pioneers in optical disc manufacturing, CD Plant in Malmö, Sweden, needed test equipment to be able to verify the new fancy product called the Compact Disc. At that time, it was not simply possible to contact a company and purchase such test equipment off the shelf.
The very first tester
AudioDev was contacted to design and develop the tester to somehow measure the quality of the CD's. At this time, AudioDev was a company that was working with professional audio- and video installations. Developers were hired and the result was the AudioDev’s very first tester for optical media, the “SA0” – a digital error counter that was built as a unique product. The two lead developers of the very first CD-tester was Magnus Wikstrand and Peter Falk, both whom are still at AudioDev, working as head of development and managing director, respectively. What is even more impressive is that the very first CD-tester is still working.
The CATS SA2
More companies became interested, and the product had to be streamlined and more functionality had to be added to suit the growing need and increased manufacturing volumes. AudioDev was not satisfied with testing just a few basic parameters, and started to design a tester that were to be able to test all parameters laid out in the Red Book, Philips and Sony’s specification for the CD-Audio format. The result was the CATS SA2 released in 1989 – a product that was using both analog- and digital techniques. A stamper version of the same tester, the CATS SA2 ST1, was released a year later.
The CATS SA3
Increasing production volumes led to yet another new line of products, AudioDev’s multiplayer system – the CATS SA3-system that enabled one host PC to control up to eight separate testers. Today, that is nothing remarkable, but at the time it was really advanced. The CATS SA3-system was released in 1993 and enabled several discs to be tested at the same time by allowing the measurement tasks to be shared by several drives, which reduced the test time dramatically, while maintaining the measurement accuracy. The SA3-testers were built using a custom-made drive and not the Studer player used in the SA2-testers. The next major development was the CATS SA3 Advanced, released in 1994, which measured jitter according to the latest version of the Red Book specification. The same year, AudioDev’s first birefringence tester, the CATS BR1, was released.
Testing CD-R and CD-RW
A major mile stone for AudioDev came 1996, when the CATS SA3 Advanced CD-R was released. The tester measured blank- and recorded CD-R’s according to the Orange Book specifications and was such a success that the turnover of the company doubled. The tester was later followed by a version that was measuring CD-RW’s. On the software side, AudioDev was pioneering a new way to present measurement data – the Surface Presentation, which displayed the result as more of a picture, showing how the signal levels varied across the surface of the disc instead of a simple graph.
The SA300-platform
In 1997, AudioDev launched a new platform, the SA300 system, that enabled testing of new media such as the DVD-format. Testers that supported both the recordable- and re-writable formats were launched, including the world’s first commercial analyzer for DVD+RW. The SA300 platform was a new concept, in that it separated the system into three separate parts that could be manufactured and serviced separately – the drive, the processing unit with the measurement boards and the host PC with the measurement engine and graphical user interface. The platform was very flexible and did support CD-testers as well. In addition to the DVD-testers, the platform was also used for the CATS DVD X, a special tester designed for Microsoft to verify the game discs for the first generation Xbox.
Calibration discs
Over the years, AudioDev have always put a lot of time and effort into designing and verifying calibration discs for the various formats and testers. Calibration discs have always been one of the key elements to for good measurement accuracy, repeatability and a very good correlation to the standards. Over the years, over 30 calibration discs have been carefully designed and produced. Discs like the Philips calibration disc 5b2 were complemented with blank- and recorded discs for the CD-R and CD-RW testers. When no calibration disc was available, AudioDev designed its own reference. AudioDev’s calibration disc for single- and dual layer DVD was later on adopted by the DVD Forum as the official calibration disc for the DVD-ROM format.
The Husky drive
In the year 2000, AudioDev started a cooperation with the German company Toptica Photonics to develop a new drive platform from scratch. Every single part was custom made with reliability and measurement accuracy as the primary goal. The cooperation resulted in a very early version of the Husky drive for the Blu-ray Disc format. The drive was used in AudioDev’s first tester for the BD-format released in 2004, a laboratory set-up, that through control of external instruments could measure the third generation optical media.
CATS HD- and BD-testers
In 2005, AudioDev unveiled the new CATS BD-testers, built on a new platform that moved all the measurements into the digital domain. AudioDev simultaneously launched BD-testers for the ROM- and recordable formats as well as announcing testers for the competing format HD DVD. The CATS HD DVD Pro was released later the same year.
In the six years leading up to the 25th anniversary, AudioDev have released a wide range of testers. Some examples of the testers launched are the CATS X360 that is designed from scratch to verify the Xbox 360 game discs, the Go!-series for production control of DVD- and BD-recordable, the CATS D400 DVD 4x that increased the testing speed of DVD’s to four times reference velocity as well as stamper testers for the BD- and HD DVD-formats.
2009 and beyond
In 2009, AudioDev released a new version of the Husky drive for BD, where the whole drive has gone through a complete overhaul. Also the same year, AudioDev became one of five companies in the world that is acting as an official testing center for BD-ROM Media, with the ability to certify replicators for BD-ROM media production. In 2010, AudioDev released the possibility to verify the ROM Mark, after a close development project with Sony. The same year, AudioDev unveiled the most recent product, the CATS B210 BD Pro 2x, that increased the testing speed to twice the reference velocity without sacrificing any measurement accuracy.
Earlier in 2011, AudioDev took over the manufacturing and development of the Husky drive from Toptica Photonics, which means that all parts of the CATS BD-testers are now fully manufactured and developed in Malmö, Sweden. In 2011, AudioDev also started to work in a completely new area - that of the wireless power standard Qi.
...and we continue to set the Standard.