Your CDs and records (remember them?) will all have track listings, but some CDs have a hidden extra piece of information. Somewhere on the back of the case, on the insert, or even on the disc itself, there may be three small square boxes each with either 'A' or 'D' inside. Finding them can be quite difficult, and not all manufacturers use them anyway. These three letters comprise the disc's SPARS coding, so called from the initial letters of the Society of Professional Audio Recording Services, and they were introduced to try and provide the purchaser with some information on the production process used to produce the CD.

An 'A' indicates an analogue part of the recording process, whilst a 'D' indicates a digital part. The letter on the left indicates the status of the original recording, the middle letter indicates the format that it was mixed to, and the letter on the right details the mastering format. So an 'AAD' SPARS code shows that the music in question was originally an analogue recording, and that it was then mixed down to an analogue format, and finally digitally mastered. If the middle letter had been 'D', as in ADD, then the mixing and editing would have been to digital instead. The 'DDD' coding has generally been the one to look out for, since it implies a commitment to digital from the start of the recording process. Notice that for a CD, the final letter has to be D, since you can't master a CD in analogue (cue for letter from a company manufacturing analogue CDs).

SPARS have now decided that the code will be discontinued. This is not a retrograde step; in fact, it is quite the opposite. Advances in technology mean that it is no longer true to say that digital is automatically better than analogue (if it ever was - it is different, certainly), and also that it may be just as valid to distinguish between different digital standards as between analogue and digital. For example, Dolby SR processing now offers outstanding performance from the analogue tape recorders that some digital enthusiasts would have thrown away. Even the digital tag has lost its simplicity through diversification: we should consider whether the recording is 16, 18, or even 20-bit, whether sample rate conversions are required, the accumulator word lengths in effects unit... The days of wording like: "This CD has been produced from an analogue master and defects in this master may be revealed by the reproduction from this digital recording" are fast receding. So the perceived stigma that 'ADD' once had is now probably illusory.

"Do we, in fact, need to present the listener with any information about the way that the music was produced? Is the music itself such a complete statement that no other details are needed?"

So where does this leave the creator of the music, and the end purchaser? The audio processing chain is now probably too complex to reduce to a neat three letter code, and so the SPARS coding is probably inappropriate. This leaves the problem of how to indicate what happened to the audio signal in sufficient depth for it to be meaningful, but without being too technical. Do we want wording such as: "Recorded entirely on digital equipment - the AES/EBU digital output from a customised Yamaha SY99 was connected directly to the mastering system for the final CD transcription — except for portions of track 3, where an analogue desk was used to add in extra chorus from a digital effects unit (20-bit, oversampled, 56-bit wide accumulator). Some of the wave samples used by the SY99 will also have been originally generated by analogue sources."

Do we, in fact, need to present the listener with any information about the way that the music was produced? There is already a wide variation in the amount of detail provided, ranging from something like "Synthesizers by Michael Boddicker", for an entire album, to track descriptions that go as far as "Sequenced using Steinberg Cubase V1.8, using the Steinberg Synthworks M1 Editor, and the Lexicon MRC controller to control the Lexicon PCM70 Effects Processor system. Motorbike provided by Yamaha. Sample of 'Olive hitting Pizza Base' kindly provided by Pizza Hut (Oak Ridge, California Branch)." I have some CDs which, apart from the artist's name, give track lists only - not even timings. Some CDs do not even have any information about the tracks printed on the CD itself.

Is the music itself such a complete statement that no other details are needed? Where do technology and equipment listings figure in a musical performance? Readers of this magazine should be in an ideal position to answer just these type of questions. Can you?