TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/caps/83/83capmus.1

Text File | 1990-10-09 | 5KB | 91 lines

Think Small:  Here Come CDs

March 21, 1983

Digital sound opens a new age in recording technology

This is the year to pity poor music lovers.  Just when they thought
they had assembled the best audio system budgets could buy, along
comes a technological development that may render their expensive
turntables and library of LPs as out of date as Edison's first talking
machine.  This month two major manufacturers, Sony and Magnavox, are
introducing a limited number of digital record players in audio and
department stores across the U.S.  The machines, which retail for $800
to $1,000, use a laser beam instead of a conventional tone arm and
stylus to play compact discs, or CDs, that are only 4.7 in diameter
and will sell for about $17.  Says Dan Davis, vice president of the
National Association of Recording Merchandisers:  "There is a
consensus that this is perhaps the most exciting of the breakthroughs
in the field, including the LP and stereo."

The new system has been enthusiastically welcomed in Japan, where the
players and discs went on sale last October; despite the high price
tag, more than 35,000 players were sold in the first three months.
Originally plans called for the equipment to be introduced in the U.S.
this summer and fall, but Magnavox and Sony have each launched a
spring offensive to seize an early share of the crucial American
market.  At first supplies of both players an discs will be limited,
as the companies struggle to get the bugs out and meet production
goals.  But dozens of other manufacturers have been licensed to make
players by Philips, the Dutch electronics giant, and Sony, the joint
developers of the technology; thus competition and increased sales are
expected to improve the product and drive costs down to a more
affordable $400 or so in time.

Until digital, record technology had not changed much in principle
since the Edison cylinder.  On conventional LPs, called analog
recordings, images of sound waves picked up by a microphone are traced
into vinyl grooves; a kind of aural photograph is "developed" when a
stylus retraces the grooves and re-creates the sonic vibrations.
Digital recording are akin to the computer-assisted cameras used in
space, which translate images into a series of binary numbers that are
later reassembled into pictures back on earth.  In digital recording a
computer takes 44,000 impressions of sound per sec. and assigns each a
numerical value.  The numbers are then recorded in pits embedded in
the disc, read by a laser beam and changed back into sound.  The
"digital" LPs currently found in record stores are really hybrids,
recorded digitally but pressed and played back as analog discs.

Digital CDs have several important advantages over conventional
records.  For one thing, there is no surface noise, since the laster
reads only the numbers, not any dust or grime on the disc's laminated
surface.  Because nothing touches the disc, there is no wear.  Digital
records lack the distortion customarily found on LPs in loud passages
and near the end of a side, when the sound is unnaturally compressed.
The new players are designed to plug into conventional component
systems, and the discs will be compatible with any player on the
market.

The real advance, however, may turn out to be artistic.  Because of
the clarity of digital sound, every flaw, both in performance and
production, is ruthlessly exposed.  One probable result: pop-record
producers will be more careful with such studio gimmicks as
overdubbing and excessive reverberation.  In the classical sphere, an
even higher premium will be put on technical excellence.

Skeptics assert that the excitement over digital sound is still
premature.  They point to potential consumer resistance, the player's
high price and the lack of discs.  In the U.S., CBS/Sony currently has
only 16 titles, and polygram, whose labels include Philips, Deutsche
Gramophone and London, has but 35 classical and pop releases, although
CD catalogues will grow as more companies enter the fray.  "Even
within the next decade, I cannot imagine a total changeover," says
Hi-Fi Pioneer Henry Kloss.  "The good stuff available on the market
right now means there is no need to abandon it for a new standard that
isn't totally tried."

Still, it would not be wise to bet against digital.  Once the
equipment and discs are widely marketed, they will be pushed by
merchandisers eager to rejuvenate an industry that has seen customers
siphoned off by such high tech gadgets as video games and home
computers.  To listeners with good ears, the difference between
digital and analog sound is, in its own way, as striking as the
distinction between mono and stereo:   the startling realism of high
notes; the silent surfaces that allow even the lowest passages to be
heard clearly; the explosive strength of the climaxes.  "This is
definitely a mass product," says a confident Bert Gall, CD system
product manager at Philips.  "Naturally the freaks will buy first, but
the large public will surely follow."

--By Michael Walsh.  Reported by Raji Samghabadi/New York and Allan
Tansman/Tokyo