Release/Format

Description

This field describes which medium a Release is distributed on. Normally a release will be distributed on multiple media with different ReleaseCatalogNumbers and BarCodes; each should have a separate release event.

The values may be:

• CD
• DVD
• SACD
• DualDisc
• LaserDisc
• MiniDisc
• Vinyl
• Cassette
• Cartridge (4/8-tracks)
• Reel-to-reel
• DAT
• Digital Media
• Other

Exhaustive list

Here's an attempt at listing some/most/all (?) known/existing audio physical support, and how we map them to our own list:

Purely audio physical supports

Name	Date of creation	Rarity	Details	Picture	Map to
Phonograph cylinder	1877	Very rare	Mechanical analog; "hill-and-dale" grooves, vertical stylus motion		Wax Cylinder
Piano roll	1883	Very rare	Mechanical digital	/180px-WelteHandnuancierung.jpg	Piano Roll
Gramophone record	1895	Common	Mechanical analog; lateral grooves, horizontal stylus motion. The terms LP record (LP, 33, or 33-1/3 rpm record), EP, 16-2/3 rpm record (16), 45 rpm record (45), and 78 rpm record (78) refers to specific types of gramophone records	/300px-Vynil_record.jpg	Vinyl
Wire recording	1898	Rare	Analog; magnetization; no "bias"	/250px-Peirce_wire_recorder.jpg	Other
Reel-to-Reel	1930s	Rare	Analog; magnetization; "bias" dramatically increases linearity/fidelity	/300px-Reel-to-reel_recorder_tc-630.jpg	Reel-to-reel
Vinyl record / Quad Vinyl	1948/1957/1971	Common	Is a simple evolution of gramophone record: Analog, with preemphasis and other equalization techniques (LP, RIAA). Lateral grooves, horizontal stylus motion. Monaural were created in 1948, then stereo vinyl came later in 1957 and Quad in 1971: analog, with preemphasis and other equalization techniques. Combination lateral/vertical stylus motion with each channel encoded 45 degrees to the vertical.	/300px-Vynil_record.jpg	Vinyl
4 tracks cartridge / 8 tracks cartridge / Quad 8 tracks	1962/1965/1970	Rare?	Analog, 1/4 inch wide tape, 3 3/4 inches/sec, endless loop cartridge. Quad: 4 Channel Stereo.	270px-Sexpistols8track	4 Tracks/8 Tracks/Quad 8
Compact cassette	1963	(still) common?	Analog, with bias, preemphasis, 1/8 inch wide tape, 17/8 inches/sec. 1970: introduced Dolby noise reduction.		Audio cassette
Microcassette Minicassette	1969	Rare	Analog, 1/8 inch wide tape, mostly mono, some stereo. 2.4 cm/s or 1.2 cm/s.	/250px-CassetteAndMicrocassette.jpg	Audio cassette
4 tracks/8 tracks/multitracks recording	?	Very rare?	This is not in itself a physical format (may be performed on a variety of equipments, from tape based equipment to digital equipment and hard disks). Likely to be only available in studios, as professional equipments.	/300px-Tascam-16Track.jpg	Other
Elcaset	1976	Rare	A short lived cassette format.	/350px-Elcaset.jpg	Audio cassette
Compact Disc	1982	Widely spread	PCM, Avaialble in 120mm and 80mm formats.	200px-Typical_Compact_Discsvg	CD
DAT	1987	Rare		/250px-Dat_cartridge.jpg	DAT
Mini Disc	1991	Common	ATRAC	/250px-Minidisc_Sony_MZ1.jpg	Minidisc
Digital Compact Cassette	1992	Very rare		/350px-DQ_Mag_DCC_IV.jpg	Other? DAT?
DTS-CD a.k.a. 5.1 Music Disc	1992	Very rare	DTS Audio		CD
DVD-Audio	1999	Rare? Common?			DVD
SACD	1999	Rare? Common?		/200px-CD_autolev_crop.jpg	SACD

Video and mixed physical supports

Name	Date of creation	Rarity	Details	Picture	Map to
Betamax	1975	Common?	'Dolby Stereo' cinema surround sound.	/180px-Beta_Max_Tape.jpg	Other
Laserdisc	1978	Rare?		/250px-LDDVDComparison.jpg	Laserdisc
DVD	1997	Widely spread		/200px-DVD-R_bottom-side.jpg	DVD
DualDisc	2003	Common?	An audio cd on one side (though not redbook), and a dvd on the other side		Dualdisc
HD-DVD	2005	Rare?			?
Blu-Ray	2006	Rare?			?
[[[Image:dvd_vinyl_gr1.jpg]]	Dualdisc?

Partial list of digital audio formats

• 1985 Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF)
• 1985 Sound Designer (by Digidesign)
• 1992 WAVEform (WAV)
• 1992 Dolby Digital surround cinema sound (AC-3)
• 1992 Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC)
• 1993 Digital Theatre System (DTS)
• 1993 Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS)
• 1995 MP3
• 1999 Windows Media Audio (WMA)
• 1999 The True Audio Lossless Codec (TTA)
• 2000 Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)
• 2001 Advanced audio coding (AAC)
• 2002 Ogg Vorbis
• 2004 Apple Lossless (ALE or ALAC)

(*) Rarity is just a rough indication of availability as consumer products - values are: "Very Rare", "Rare", "Common", "Widely spread"

More information

• The original ticket that led to our implementation is 2565
• Mailing list discussion is here
• Wikipedia has a list of Audio Formats
• Discogs has its own list in their Submission Guidelines

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