Sony Plant Marks 20th Year With Launch Of Sacd Line

Clearly, rumors of physical media's demise are greatly exaggerated. Sony Disc Manufacturing (SDM), the world's largest producer of prerecorded optical media, marked the 20th anniversary of its Terre Haute, Ind., facility May 2 amid rapid, continued growth.

With Sony Music Entertainment chairman/CEO Andrew Lack, Indiana governor Frank O'Bannon, Terre Haute mayor Judy Anderson, and other state and local dignitaries on hand, SDM officially launched a hybrid Super Audio CD (SACD) replication line at the flagship Terre Haute facility, as the forward- and backward-compatible format continues to find a mainstream audience.

Initial plans call for production of 15,000 SACD discs per day.

"We've been expanding virtually every year," SDM president Jim Frische says, "and we have another expansion in motion now. We had the largest expansion in our corporate history, at the optical-disc manufacturing level, last year in DVD capacity. It just keeps rolling on."

Established as the Digital Audio Disc Corp. (DADC) in 1983, the facility was the first CD plant built in the U.S. DADC was purchased by Sony Corp. of America in 1985. As Frische notes, the DADC/SDM entity has been marked by constant expansion; while some formats have come and gone in its 20 years, CD replication for the Sony Music labels—and for many non-Sony content holders as well—remains a pillar of the operation.

CD production began in 1984, expanding from 300,000 discs per month to 1 million per month the following year.

By 1990, production stood at 11 million units per month; in 1997, the 1 billionth CD was produced.

To meet the needs of additional growth areas—the games market and, especially, DVD—SDM began DVD replication at its Shizuoka, Japan, plant in January 1997; the Terre Haute facility adding DVD replication infrastructure six months later.

By September 2002, the Terre Haute facility was producing 30 million DVDs per month.

With the hybrid SACD line operational, DADC/SDM is beginning replication of a format that again pushes the limits of consumer playback quality: the aptly named Super Audio CD.

"[SACD] brings the listener more closely to the intentions of the artist, the engineer, and the producer than any music storage device in history," DADC VP/GM Michael Mitchell remarked at the May 2 celebration.

The SACD production line in Terre Haute will begin by replicating a series of classic Bob Dylan albums, scheduled for mid-summer release.

"To extend the CD's life with the backward compatibility of SACD—that's the expectation," Frische says. "That's a marketing question that we at the manufacturing level never have answers for, but that's the intent."

The future of physical formats is a mystery, but DADC/SDM's history continues: This year, the facility will surpass accumulated production of 3 billion units.