BARS AND STRIPES FOREVER

Bar None

The bar codes on products like this magazine are for the convenience of distributors and stores, but bar-code readers have already started infiltrating homes. Some new VCRs, for instance, have wands that read bar-coded programming instructions in the accompanying owner's manuals, and a few TV program listings have begun to carry the codes as well. This is a boon to people who make mistakes when programming their VCRs--which, I suspect, is almost everybody.

(I confess to having taped the odd half-hour of cable classified ads or hair-restorer promos myself.) Soon, we may have CD players that read bar-codes too. This may well be a fallout from CD-V, since it involves a format jointly developed by Sony for CD players and Pioneer for videodisc machines and which is now being proposed as an industry-wide standard. This application of bar codes is intended not so much to solve existing user problems as to open up new programming possibilities; Sony and Pioneer both plan to produce textbooks keyed by code to specific spots on educational CDs or videodiscs.

I suspect that there may be an additional, hidden motivation behind all this activity: If people have to keep their manuals around for bar-code wands to read, they won't toss out those manuals the instant their equipment is up and running. And that means fewer silly calls to manufacturers' service departments asking questions that the manual answered in the first place.

International CD Scene

The most comprehensive directory of non-classical CDs I've seen is CD International, a West German publication. The premier edition of CDI, which is to be published six times a year, has 215 pages of listings which show the issuing companies and the record numbers each album bears in the U.S., Britain, West Germany, and Japan. The value of this international info to record collectors who travel is obvious, but stay-at-home collectors will find it useful too. If you know what's available, you can ask your travelling friends to keep an eye out for the discs you want or you can order them from overseas. (The publishers of CDI sell a list of international mail-order record sources.) Or you can simply keep on the lookout in this country CDs available abroad frequently do come to the U.S. later, and some discs not officially available here turn out to be on sale in the better American record shops.

So now I'm on the lookout for some CDs I did not know of previously and will be doubly on the lookout if I travel overseas. For instance, there's a Bessie Smith CD available only in Germany (Jazz Classics, IRS 970.477), and my favorite Charles Mingus album, Mingus Presents Mingus, is available only in Japan (Tokuma 32JCD-101).

I found CDI pretty accurate when I cross-checked some of its entries against the Schwann CD Catalog-no errors of commission, and the very few omissions were par for the course in an enterprise this size. One English-language comedy album (The Three Faces of Al, by Firesign Theater) was listed as available only in Germany, not in the U.S. or U.K., a weirdness the Firesigns themselves would appreciate.

Keeping up with the Joneses, I checked to see how the number of albums by people named Jones varies from country to country. I noted that George Jones is best represented in the U.S. (nine albums here, none in Britain, one in Germany, and none in Japan), Grace does better in Europe (four in the U.S., five in Britain, seven in Germany, two in Japan), Hank Jones CDs are most available in Japan (the count is one, zero, one, and four), Quincy is a hair better represented here than in Japan (19, four, six, and 18), and Rickie Lee has three albums available in each of the four listed countries.

Elvis Presley, of all people, is better represented on CDs abroad than in America (15 in the U.S., 17 in Britain, 36 in Germany, 24 in Japan). Old rock 'n' roll, in general, is at least as available overseas as here. And when it comes to jazz, Germany and Japan each have far more CDs in that genre than the U.S. does.

The second or third issue of CDI should be available on newsstands for $6.98 by the time you read this; it is imported by Phi-Beta Project, P.O. Box 22014, Milwaukie, Ore. 97222. The company also plans a version for classical music, to be followed by a version on PC-compatible floppy disks (4.5 megabytes' worth).

Falling Dollar, Rising Price

Japanese audio makers have been trying to hold the line on prices despite the rising yen and falling dollar. To accomplish this, they've had to cut their profits and, in some cases, to cut back on product features. Tape makers, however, have no features to eliminate. So a number of Japanese suppliers have announced price rises of 15% to 20% on their audio tapes. This has proved to be the precursor of a rise in prices for Japanese components too, probably to be followed by rising prices for audio imports from Europe.

(adapted from Audio magazine, mar. 1988; by IVAN BERGER)

= = = =