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"Spotlight" -  People and Stories - The GEPA background:
Dan Daley in "Tape Disc Business", 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 ...  >>>

"Presenting a perspective"  for the Indian Optical Disk Market:
Anil Chopra in "Studio Systems", 1998:
Gerhard Papst has studied Electronics, Software Engineering and Music. After having run his own recording studio and record label and in parallel working as a Software Systems designer and as Professor at a technical High School, he joined KOCH in 1984, ... >>>

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"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.

                                              

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 "Presenting a perspective" for the Indian Optical Disk Market (India, 1999):
Anil Chopra's interview and presentation in "Studio Systems".

in: "STUDIO SYSTEMS" & "Optical Disc Systems", India, 1999
the leading magazines for the Media and Recording Industry in Asia.

Read the full article and the interview, published in February 1999.
Read the report in Studio Systems about the CD Seminar 98 in Mumbai.  

Gerhard Papst has studied Electronics, Software Engineering and Music. After having run his own recording studio and record label and in parallel working as a Software Systems designer and as Professor at a technical High School, he joined KOCH in 1984, starting as a studio manager. When KOCH started its CD-Plant in Austria, he at first was responsible for Quality Assurance, and later for the entire CD plant operation. In 1990 he designed the overall concept for the KOCH quality control systems. Today  Papst is the COO of kdg (a merge of Koch Digitaldisc with the DURECO CD - and DVD factories in France and the Netherlands, with a daily capacity of about 400,000 CDs, 10,000 DVD, 22,000 CD-R, and with the Quality Control Division), also acting as a Managing Director for the Austrian operations and the Quality Control Business KOCH Digital Disc. KOCH boasts of 34% of the world wide market share for testing equipment. Asia Pacific accounts for 25% of KOCH’s turnover. 
   Papst can be categorized as a pioneer of the optical disc industry in India. He set up KOCH Rajes as the first replicating unit in Mumbai in 1995 at a time when the market was slightly suspect. However he relied on his inclination and instinct and saw the demand. 

   Papst is known in the industry for his overall expertise in any aspects of Optical Media Manufacturing, and his openness in sharing this knowledge on numerous seminars and conference presentations worldwide. When asked for his ‘private life’, he said, "I have a nice Japanese girlfriend. I have much fun in traveling with her in the mountains, more than 15,000 miles every year." On the picture you see Mr. Papst with his "girlfriend", a Yamaha TT600 motocross bike!

   Gerhard Papst on one of his frequent visits to Mumbai interviewed with Studio Systems on the Indian market, CD-R, DVD, Multi channel audio and much more.

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Copyright © 2002-2020 Gerhard Papst, Gepa Consulting, Lamberg 34, A-8411 Hengsberg, Graz - AUSTRIA;    Latest Release:  2014-09-15 - Latest Update:  15. September 2020