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Lost in music

Up to 500 MP3 music tracks can be stored on a single CD using a new
technology for making and reading the discs, delegates were told at this week’s
Comdex computer show in Las Vegas, Nevada. TDK of Japan and Calimetrics of
California say a CD made using their technology can hold up to 2 gigabytes of
data. Earlier plans to increase CD storage relied on expensive new optics to
make smaller data “pits”—the tiny slots gouged out of the disc by a laser
to store digital 0s and 1s. Calimetrics’s trick is to cram more data in by
making CDs with pits of eight different depths—which the player sees as
eight shades of grey.