FLYING SOLO
Exploring the Solo System
Since the infamous Copy-Code system was defeated by the combined efforts of the Home Recording Rights Coalition and the National Bureau of Standards, there has been talk of another copy inhibiting system. Known as "Solo," it was developed by Philips of the Netherlands, but there was no public information on what the system would restrict and how it would impose that restriction. During a recent visit to Philips headquarters in Eindhoven, the details of the system were finally revealed, as was Philips' attitude toward home recording.
According to Leo van Leeuwen, managing director of Consumer Electronics Audio at Philips, management at Philips believes that a consumer who has purchased a recording, be it a Compact Disc or an LP, has a right to copy it for his own personal use in a car or portable tape player. Based on this philosophy, and to help resolve the impasse which, to date, has discouraged manufacturers of Digital Audio Tape recorders from officially introducing those machines for consumer use in the U.S., Philips developed Solo.
If a DAT recorder were equipped with the Solo system, anyone using it could make one digital-to-digital DAT recording of any copyrighted CD or prerecorded DAT. While making that recording, the Solo-equipped deck would add copy-inhibit flags to the subcode areas of the tape. If you then tried to make a next-generation digital-to-digital DAT copy from the DAT you made, circuitry within the recorder would detect those subcode flags and prevent further copies from being made.
When word of Solo's development first reached these shores more than a year ago, there were all sorts of rumors as to what it would and would not permit. Now that Philips has clarified the matter, these rumors have been disproved.
To begin with, Solo will not prevent users of DAT recorders from making any number of copies of software using the analog outputs of their CD players and the analog inputs of a DAT recorder. Solo will not prevent you from making any number of first generation digital DAT recordings of the same piece of software in real time. Each of those DAT recordings.
however, will have the Solo subcode data encoded in it at the time the recording is made so that no further digital-to-digital recordings can be made from those first DAT tapes, no matter how many of them had been made in real time.
Because the current quasi-standard for DAT prevents even a single digital-to-digital recording from being made from a CD, Solo, in fact, represents a more sensible and consumer-friendly approach to the home taping problem. It prevents mass piracy yet allows the owner of a DAT machine to do assemble-editing-recording several tracks from more than one CD onto a single DAT cassette. This is one of the chief reasons why people currently make analog cassettes for use in their home tape decks or in their car cassette players. Also, in permitting owners to make that single copy, Solo allows those who have spent the considerable amount of money it takes to own a DAT recorder to fully avail themselves of this digital technology--something the current unofficial standard does not permit.
The RIAA has steadfastly maintained that even analog taping of copyrighted material by home recordists is something they won't tolerate. Yet, in the wake of Philips' clarification of their stand on Solo, a rumor arose that Solo would be accepted by the recording industry as a solution to the copyright problem. If true, then the major recording companies represented by the RIAA had actually been stating their maximum position all along, and they were really ready to settle the debate over home recording in general and DAT in particular. More recent reports of abortive conferences between the electronics and recording industries seem to indicate that the intransigence of the software hard-liners continues. This inordinately long debate, which has served no one, seems destined to go on even longer.
-Leonard Feldman
Klipsch Semi-Retires
Speaker manufacturer Paul Klipsch, founder and majority shareholder of Klipsch & Associates, has stepped down from his position as president of the company but retained his position as chairman of the board. His successor as president is P. Woody Jackson, who has been with Klipsch for more than 10 years. We suspect Mr. Klipsch will spend his extra leisure time skywriting "Down with Doppler Distortion" in the beautiful blue skies of Arkansas-or maybe over Cambridge, Mass.
Klipsch & Associates is one of the oldest American audio manufacturers, having been founded in 1943.
Quick, Watson, the ... er .. . Stylus!
What do you do when your stylus goes? Odds are, your dealer will suggest you replace your entire cartridge. That way, you get the benefit of the latest cartridge technology, and the dealer makes more bucks. However, because cartridges are more heavily discounted than styli, the dealer may not make much more profit on a whole new cartridge than on a stylus alone. His main concern is inventory-cartridges sell faster than styli, so he rarely stocks more than a few of the latter.
But what if you want to keep your old cartridge? One company that does stock styli in depth is the Needle in a Haystack Audio/Video Service Center chain, with branches in Washington, D.G. and its suburbs, in Canton, Cincinnati, Columbus, and Dayton, Ohio, and in Burlington, Mass. The company also has a phone-order operation, which can be reached at (800) 368-3506.
According to Harold Cohen, who owns the Burlington franchise, "We have everything from steel needles (the biggest bargain in the store, at 12 for $3.00) through Fisher-Price, to the most exotic audiophile styli. We even have 78-rpm styli for modern cartridges. We also stock styli for cartridges that were never sold in the U.S., or those that were sold here through nonstandard channels such as credit-card bill stuffers.
"We can identify the stylus needed if you tell us the cartridge or stylus number, or the model number of the phonograph it came from. Or you can send or bring the cartridge or stylus for identification.
"At this location, we do special things, also. For instance, we worked with Shure on developing special styli for a mastering engineer who's transferring old acetates to CD for the Smithsonian. He needs different stylus sizes, to read whatever portions of the groove are still unworn. It turned out, however, that these styli could not be made at a reasonable price. For another customer, who plays nothing but 78s, we're modifying an old flip over needle to get a better tracking angle."
Boom-Box Parade
The town of Willimantic, Conn., with a population of only 15,000 or so, has plenty of people to march in its July 4th parade but no band for them to march to. So, since 1985, Willimantic's citizens have carried portable radios and marched to appropriately festive music played by local station WILT-AM. In the 1988 parade, marchers carried everything from pocket radios to full-sized boom boxes, and there was even a float in the shape of a boom box.
Heard Instinct
Shuffling through a doorway with a crowd always makes me feel like a steer in a roundup. Apparently, I'm not the only one: One of Tower Records' New York City stores has taken to playing the mooing cows from Telarc's Round-Up (CD-80141) as customers file through the store's checkout line at closing time.
(adapted from Audio magazine, Jul. 1989; by IVAN BERGER)
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