| From Grube I
am coming to Australia for a 3 year stay. Should I bring
my CD's to play on Aussie equipment?
From Adrian Rose
You will need an American to Australian converter
device. This is usually hard wired into the CD player by
a reputable Australian tech. They are all familiar with
the device. Just pop into any CD store and request the
phone # of the nearest CD converter tech. Its usually
only around $30 and you will not even know it had been
done. You will be able to play not only US cds, and
Australian, but as a bonus, European ones too!
Caution-do not try to play bootled CDs after the
conversion,you will ruin the cd player.
From Adrian Rose
Sorry about that last post-to play your US cds in
Australia,they merely need to be passed thru a strong
magnetic or x-ray field,such as you get at Customs.Be
sure to pass each one thru separately,as bulk passage may
leave the ones in the middle unplayable in Oz.
From Mark A. Gray
Well...this may gave worked for you, but I found that
the only way the get 'em playing was to smear the shiny
side with a very thin layer of vegemite. 'Course this
makes the inside of your CD player rather sticky, so make
sure you have lots of tissues.
From Hans Andersen
Don't listen to them. To play American CDs in
Australian CD players, you will need to regroove them.
This is because Australian CDs have a different track-width
(i.e. 10 ums instead of 5 ums). To do this you will need
to buy some fine-grade sandpaper. Try to find some with a
grain size of between 8 and 12 ums (micrometers for non-technical
people). Put a piece of the sandpaper on a table with the
rough side up. Now put your CD on the sandpaper and turn
it slowly in a clockwise direction, pushing down hard.
Oiua la (spit) - now you have Australian standard CDs.
Good luck and I hope you enjoy Australia.
From Michael Jennings
No. That is completely wrong. Australian CDs are
exactly the same as American ones except for the fact
that the 'groove' goes in the opposite direction. That is
whereas an American groove goes inwards as you go
clockwise an Australian groove goes inwards as you go
anti-clockwise. This is because Australian cars drive on
the left and American cars drive on the right. If the
groove direction was not reversed there would be parity
problems with car CD players. Unfortunately, this means
that you cannot play an American CD on Australian
equipment.
From Stephen P. Guthrie
You smartarse. Obviously this is nothing to do with
the side of the road cars drive on. Do you seriously
expect anyone to swallow that? Anyone with a brain knows
that it's related to which direction water goes down the
plughole in the Southern hemisphere. In other words in
the US the cd rotates in a clockwise direction. In
Australia it rotates anticlockwise. Of course this is
also true if you play your cds in South America for
example. This is actually quite neat because if you play
your beatles cds in the Southern hemisphere you hear all
this neat 'backwards masking' stuff about Paul being dead
and taking marijuana. Also I heard that you hear all
sorts of satanic stuff in other rock albums, but I'm not
a fan myself. My question: has anyone done any experimets
about playing cds at the equator or at the notrh pole? At
the equator do your cds stop playing altogether. What
about in a reduced gravity environment, like in a free
faling elevator?
Next Column
|
From
Mark A. Gray I can't speak for a reduced
gravity environment, but I can speak for the equator. It
is interesting that you should bring it up, since many
CD's simply do not spin at the equator (or near it
actually). In Singapore (for instance) they had to ban a
whole bunch of CDs or have them altered so that they
would play correctly ('corse if they had a bit of
vegemite their problems would be solved). Video tapes and
books(!) seem to suffer the same fate their.
Why don't books work properly at the equator? And I
have another question: Short of smearing every page with
vegemite, how do you get a northern hemisphere book to
work properly in the southern hemisphere? (I'll be
bringing some books home with me when I leave here, so I
need to know).
Thanks in advance.
From Joe Chew
Since the Earth rotates in the opposite direction in
the Southern Hemisphere, the AC power there is supplied
180 degrees out of phase with ours. Thus your CD should
work just fine, although some audio purists insist on a
motor- generator set to supply "American"
electricity and then determine the phasing themselves.
From Orion Auld
At the equator, the cd's stop rotating, so the cd
players there must rotate the laser about the stationary
cd. The units are very expensive.
By contrast, at the north pole, cd players are very
cheap. This is because neither the laser or the cd
require a motor to provide rotational energy; the cd is
placed precisely on the north pole, tied to the firmament
so that it doesn't spin , while the laser is fixed to the
earth, slightly off-center, and the earth provides the
rotation.
>What about in a reduced gravity environment,
>like in a free faling elevator?
The cd's are virtually weightless, so they can be very
massive and yet consumers will have little difficulty
operating them. I hope that answers your question.
From Jim Gunson
I'm glad you brought this up. The variation of the
Coriolis force with latitude (zero at equator, max at
north pole, min at south pole), gives rise to the so-called
beta effect. Basically what happens is that when a
clockwise-spinning object, in the northern hemisphere,
moves north it speeds up, when it moves southe it slows
down. I've conducted experiments whilst driving my car
here in Boston: if I head north on route 93 at 75 mph
with Kylie's "Locomotion" on the CD player, the
pitch of her voice goes higher, but you have to be going
pretty fast to notice this. Heading west or east this
doesn't happen. To the original poster, if you do find
you're having trouble with the Coriolis force adversely
affecting your US cd's in australia, try turning the cd
player upside-down.
From Adrian Rose
No, no, no...................please dont confuse the
Coriols effect with the Doppler effect-the two are quite
unrelated, and the Doppler effect is ALMOST unnoticeable,
when playing out-of-area CDs,or even records.
The effect was most noticeable on 78's,but that's now
academic.
BTW,I am able to offer the conversion at only 75cents
(us),if done in bulk. E-mail for quotes.
From PHolman1
No if regrooved in the N Hemisphere the must be spun
counterclockwise, remember Aussie turntables etc spin the
opposite way, ps Marmite works as well as Vegimite.
From Armadillo
No, American compact discs will only work if you drive
on the right-hand side of the road. But I wouldn't expect
an aol.com user to know these things.
|
