在MP3和其它形式的数字音乐盛行之前，CD已经出现。在CD出现之前有黑胶唱片,那么在黑胶唱片之前有什么呢?
Most of us are not nearly old enough to remember,but in the early years of the twentieth centurypopular songs such as "By the Light of the SilveryMoon" were recorded on shellac discs and waxcylinders. Many of these early recordings still exist,but with each passing year they grow more fragileand likely to fall apart while being played. Consequently, music archivists are faced with adelicate problem: how to preserve old-time recordings without silencing them forever?
少数的老一辈人可能还记得，在20世纪早期有首流行歌曲“在银色的夜光下”被录制在虫胶唱片和蜡筒里。许多早期的唱片仍然存在，但是年复一年，在播放的时候，这些唱片越来越脆弱，极易破碎。所以唱片保管者们面临着一个微妙的难题：怎样保护好这些古老的唱片，又能让他们播出美妙的音乐?
Enter Carl Haber and Vitaly Fadayev, particle physicists at the University of California, Berkeleywho happened to hear a radio piece on the preservationist's dilemma. These music-lovingphysicists suspected that the techniques they use to make sensors that track subatomicparticles might help the troubled archivists. With the aid of a powerful microscope theymapped out the grooves of an old 78 RPM shellac disk and the grooves on a wax cylinderrecorded in 1909.
加州大学伯克利分校的粒子物理学家卡尔·哈伯和维塔利偶然在电台听到这些唱片保护者的困境。这些酷爱音乐的物理学家认为他们用于制作跟踪离子的传感器工艺可能对正处困境中的档案保护者有帮助。在两架高倍望远镜的协助下，他们绘制出了一张78转虫胶唱片，以及一张1909年录制的蜡筒上的纹道。
After digitally reproducing the mapped grooves on a computer, Haber and Fadayev then createdsoftware to mimic the effect of a needle moving in the mapped grooves in order to re-createthe sounds. Incredibly, the digitized version sounded even better than the original recordings.And as the mapping technique improves, the physicists hope to enable the digitalpreservation of large amounts of endangered music. So even if you don't remember the darkages before CDs, you may soon be able to enjoy down-loadable old-time music, courtesy of thedigital revolution.
在电脑上将这些纹道处理成数字音乐后，哈伯和维塔利接着发明了一种软件来模仿唱针在纹道内旋转而重现音乐。令人难以置信的是数字版本的音效比老版更好。并且随着映射技术的不断改进，物理学家们希望能用数字储存大量频临消失的音乐。因此即使你不记得CD出现之前的黑暗时代，但很快你就能享受到可下载的旧时音乐，这是数字改革的恩惠。
