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"Spotlight"
- People and Stories - The GEPA background: "Presenting a
perspective" for the Indian Optical Disk Market: "Spotlight" - Dan Daley's article in "Tape Disc Business" (USA, 2000) : The
education of Gerhard Papst reads like a modern version of Renaissance academics,
in which the arts and sciences are intertwined. Born in Graz, in the
Slovenia-Hungary region of central Europe south-east Austria in 1954, Papst's
formal education followed a parallel path comprised of electronics engineering
studies and music studies. By 15, he was both singing in a professional large
chorale group and doing its remote recordings using some Studer equipment that
was his first investment in a long career, one which has had profound and
significant impact on the media industry. Papst's
early career after school -- he stopped just short of his doctorate -- followed
a similar pattern. On the purely technical side, it included work at as a
service engineer for Philips, computer programming and software code-writing for
a number of high-tech ventures, as well as work for the Austrian manned space
program, and a stint in the military working in a mobile RADAR unit for forward
air traffic control. His
music studies, on the other hand, sparked an interest in music production, and
he also worked on film scores and location recordings. The two paths first
converged in 1976, when he started his own recording studio and later his own
record label, even as he worked as a teacher at a technical college. "I had
a love for the content of music as well as the technical process of recording it
and mixing it and mastering it," Papst recalls. Franz
Koch had a similar professional journey, at around the same time. Koch was at
one time Austria's youngest bank director, even as he ran his own recording
studio in his basement and developed his own record label, and later a
duplication and replication operation which would grow substantially. In 1985,
Koch bought out Papst's studio and record label, and in the process, Papst
remembers with a smile, "He also bought me." Papst
came on board with Koch, working at the company's Koch Digital Group division,
later KDG, at a critical point in the development of the CD business in Europe,
where KDG was only the fourth company to install CD lines on the continent. Led
as much by his love of music as his technical inclinations, Papst quickly
recognized the need for consistent, reliable, affordable and user-friendly
quality testing of the Red Book standard. "At the time, all you really had
were these laboratory-type systems from Philips, which were expansive and
difficult to use," Papst says. "So one day I went to an electronics
shop in Munich and bought some parts and some chips and over two weekends I had
built my first tester. I had a good understanding of what was necessary: it had
to be high-tech but also have easy operation for those who were working in the
industry on a day-to-day basis. Not everyone in replication was an engineer
anymore." The
first tester, intended for use at Koch's own plant, was based on Pascal
programming language and used a Studer CD drive as a hardware platform. In 1987,
Koch began plans to develop an entire new business around the testers, and by
1992 Papst had developed a modular platform and the company began selling the
equipment on a global basis. In 1997, Franz Koch sold a majority interest in KDG
-- which had expanded as a replicator by acquiring plants in France and Holland
-- and the Datarius marque was created for the testing equipment, with Papst as
COO of KDG. Papst's
focus on disc quality remains strong, and his interest in maintaining the
integrity of both the technical and intangible components of content is
paramount. "I'm not just interested in the manufacturing of prerecorded
media and pieces of hardware," Papst says. "Today, especially with the
Internet, low-cost CD-R, MP3 and so on, I personally feel that technology has to
support and honor and protect those who provide the content. Without content,
the value of a media is nothing. Therefore, piracy, copy protection and public
support for all kind of measures to protect the rights of content now has become
one of my major personal concerns and interests." Citing
the problems that CD-R has posed for the viability of the music industry's
profitability, and the price erosion of the format which he says further
exacerbates that, Papst notes that there is a danger that the incentive to
capitalize a system that develops new music talent will diminish or disappear
completely. "If there is no money to develop talent, then the content will
suffer," he says. "And that will lead to the hardware industry
suffering. DVD-Audio production, for instance, is quite a costly thing, and who
is going to support the format if there is no money to make quality productions
for it? It's an illusion that you can make a format completely hacker-proof. But
there are things that can be done to ensure that copy-protection systems remain
flexible and can adapt to changing times, as it has with CD-ROM." Papst
is also concerned about consumer confusion generated by new formats, DVD-Audio
in particular, as well as SACD. But the bottom line remains a commitment to the
quality of both the disc and its content, a commitment that he concedes is not
consistent throughout the world, particularly as pricing pressures and increased
capacity make the margins on discs thinner, and as replicators have to allocate
more and more of their focus on tangential aspects of the business and away from
what Papst calls "the core product of the industry -- the disc." "The
complaints are not coming about the disc itself anymore as much as about issues
surrounding the disc, such as printing, ink, packaging, et cetera," he
continues. "There is also quite a spread in the quality of the DVD disc.
But fortunately that is being helped by the robustness of the players, which has
surprised even me." Papst cites an unbalanced disc that he put into his
portable DVD player, and which ran for 15 minutes before tracking problems
developed. "The tolerances built into the players are helping hide some of
the problems with the discs," he says. "All of the problems that
developed around the CD over the first ten years are now developing around the
DVD disc, as well. But they are developing at a much faster rate than they did
with the CD because the disc industry itself is more mature and moves much
faster. There are also more issues with DVD because the authoring process of the
content is much more complex." Nonetheless,
Papst is convinced that the need and viability of physical media will remain
strong, and that the optical disc industry, with proper attention to quality
issues, will remain resilient even in the face of the proliferation of broadband
Internet as an alternative distribution medium for content. "In fact,"
he adds, "I think that the Internet will serve as a very good promotional
format for physical media of all types. I buy many more paperback books now than
I used to because of Amazon.com." Papst
remains committed to keeping the quality of the industry's standards as high as
possible, and says that starts at at the manufacturing facilities he supervises
himself. But he manages to take some time off, developing his skills as a
trained rescue diver and his interest in Asian culture and cuisine, as well as
riding his Yamaha TT600 motorcycle on Tyrolean mountain passes when he can find
the time. "You always need to give yourself a break when you can," he
says.
"Presenting a perspective" for the Indian
Optical Disk Market (India, 1999): in: "STUDIO
SYSTEMS" & "Optical Disc Systems", India, 1999 Read the full
article and the interview, published in February 1999.
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