THE SOUND AND THE FUROR
Compact Discord
It looks like the first company to produce a recordable Compact Disc system won't be Philips or Radio Shack (both of which had made big noises about it) but Taiyo Yuden, of Japan. The company, best known for Triad cassettes, says it plans to have recordable discs for sale in Europe in the first half of this year, though recorders, according to Billboard, won't be out until late 1989.
The discs will be of the WORM (write once, read many) type, which cannot be erased and reused. Both 3-inch and 4.7-inch blank discs will be available; the latter will cost about $9 apiece and carry up to 74 minutes of program material.
Last October, Philips released a statement that "CD-R [recordable CD] is likely to cause an even bigger and more immediate private copying problem than DAT. Copying with CDR is not only cloning, just like DAT, but in addition, the copy is the same format as the original." Philips has also, according to Billboard, pledged not to launch CD-R while the hardware and software industries are still discussing the question of DAT. It therefore surprised no one that the International Federation of Phonogram and Videogram Producers (the international equivalent of the RIAA) branded Taiyo Yuden's plans as "deplorable."
That company, meanwhile, says it recognizes the potential for copyright problems and will therefore market its CD-R mainly for such professional uses as broadcasting and small-run custom CD manufacture.
Professional Skepticism
Back in the days of Dynakits, a friend of mine went into the professional recording-console business. As his company was still too small to make everything itself, he had to buy his RIAA preamps from an outside source. After checking specs and prices, he picked the Dynakit preamp (which then sold for about $70 in kit form and $100 to $130 wired). To make it suitable for studio use, he removed all of the preamp's controls and all of its input/output jacks (except phono in and tape out), hard-wired the selector to the phono setting, and mounted the result on a rack panel. Figuring in the preamp's cost and the labor he'd put in adapting it, he charged about $250 for the modified preamp, but he couldn't sell it.
Too expensive? No--not even in 1970 dollars. The preamp was too cheap, compared to other pro equipment with comparable specs.
That was no surprise, as home equipment regularly outperforms pro gear. Pro equipment's superiority is less in performance than in reliability, ruggedness, repairability, and studio-oriented features.
Eventually, however, my friend did find a way to sell his Dyna hybrid. He raised its price.
Dymek Didn't Die
It's so much easier to get good sound and good reception from FM than from AM, that most people (including most radio and tuner manufacturers) have forgotten just how good AM can be. It therefore came as something of a shock when McKay Dymek came out with a line of AM receivers and antennas that showed just what AM radio could do.
When we reviewed their Model DR-33 receiver (September 1979), we measured frequency response that started rolling off above 7 kHz, with 0.45% harmonic distortion, and sensitivity of 0.7 µV for 20 dB S/N. The DR-33 also covered the band from 50 kHz to 29.7 MHz and could decipher single-sideband and continuous-wave (CW) signals. I know from my own experience that the company's DA-9 active indoor loop antenna could make distant signals sound like local ones, while tuning out strong local interference; presumably, the DA-100 active outdoor whip could do even better. So when an "Audioclinic" reader asked about long-distance AM reception (August 1988), we recommended that he look for these products on the used-equipment market.
Only, as we've now learned, they're still available as new products! While the original company has gone out of business, its products can now be had from Stoner Communications, 9119 Milliken Ave., Rancho Cucamonga, Cal. 91730. The Dymek receivers are no longer being made, but Stoner still has about 30 of them available-for half their 1983 list price. That comes to $800 for the DR-33. The antennas are still being manufactured. Their prices are $335 for the DA-9 with one antenna head (extras, for other bands, cost $110 each) and $179 for the DA-100 outdoor whip.
Indirect Current
Like Edward Tatnall Canby ("Audio ETC," November 1988), I've faced the problem of running a.c.-only audio equipment where only d.c. power was supplied. My college dorm had d.c. -- not surprising, when you consider that the college had a Gothic powerhouse.
Like Canby, we found that the a.c. output of a motor-generator was too unreliable in frequency to drive turntables, so we turned to a vibrator-type d.c.-to-a.c. "inverter." The vibrator's frequency was a steady 60 Hz, but its output (square waves, essentially) was too full of harmonics to run our amp, preamp, and tuner.
We wound up using both types of converter--the vibrator for the turntable, and the motor generator for all the electronics and our refrigerator.
Our problems didn't end there, though. We had to keep the motor-generator in a distant closet, so its noises wouldn't drown out the music.
(The chained extension cords we used for that would never have gotten UL approval!) We also had to switch the vibrator off when listening to the tuner-certainly for AM stations, and sometimes for FM, too.
But our biggest problem was not related to audio. Over Christmas vacation, we shut down the vibrator as well as the motor-generator.
Unfortunately, nobody remembered to empty the refrigerator and leave its door open. When we sold the fridge, a semester and a half later, we still hadn't gotten rid of the offensive odor completely.
A/D Convertible
Most tape decks make and play only analog recordings, while some handle only digital tapes. This may change. Stellavox plans to produce plug-in electronics, head blocks, and other items which will convert their TD9 recorder to a digital deck Plug-ins are planned for different digital standards, present and future. With two TD9s and two sets of plug-ins, users will be able to dub to and from digital and analog tor mats.
This ambitious idea comes in the wake of Stellavox's purchase by another Swiss firm, Goldmund. As you'd expect from the union of a high-precision maker of pro equipment like Stellavox and a maker of exotic home gear lice Goldmund, a complete digital-plus-analog TD9 system won't be cheap. Prices for the analog TD9 will be "in the five-figure range," says International Audio Technologies, which imports Goldmund and Stellavox.
XLP Records
No one objects when the cassette and LP releases of a given recording both contain the same amount of music, even though cassettes can (and sometimes do) hold more; after all, they sell for about the same price.
But the higher cost of Compact Discs made many consumers wonder why the CD issues couldn't be filled out with additional music-and many Compact Discs now carry extra tracks that wouldn't fit onto the original LP recordings.
This, in turn, has led a few musicians to think in terms of 50or 60-minute albums instead of the 45-minute or shorter albums typical of LP. So now there are extra-long-playing records to accommodate them. Two recent LPs, Hysteria by Def Leppard and Back for the Attack by Dokken, carry more than 60 minutes of music apiece, while Metallica's Kill 'Em All has been reissued with enough extra songs to bring its length to 66 minutes. Such LPs will probably become more common if Direct Metal Mastering, which allows more music to fit onto an LP without severe volume limitations or distortion, becomes widespread.
Longer LPs should cost no more to press and little if any more to master, but they will cost more in artist royalties and in recording costs.
The Digital '30s
Alec Reeves invented pulse-code modulation, which lies at the heart of today's CD and DAT systems, in 1938. He should have waited.
While the idea was brilliant, the hardware technologies of the day were ill-equipped to take advantage of it. By the time cheap transistors and ICs made PCM a commercial possibility, the patents (held by Reeves' employer, Standard Telephones and Cables) had run out.
For this and other developments, however, Reeves did receive many honors-including the issuance in 1969, two years before his death, of a British postage stamp commemorating the invention of PCM.
Not-So-Neologism
Audiophiles now commonly refer to monophonic power amplifiers as "monoblocks." The usage is new (perhaps within the past three years), but the word is not. Back when my father was a tot, the term was applied to automotive engines whose cylinders were part of the same casting as the crankcase-like today's car engines-rather than cast and fastened to the crankcase individually (like many motorcycle engines, until recently). So originally, it meant many units in one block, the opposite of its current meaning.
(adapted from Audio magazine, mar. 1989; by IVAN BERGER)
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