CHOICE CUTS

The practice of unauthorized tape copying at home has been viewed with great concern by the American record industry. On the other hand, the hardware industry has downplayed the problem, stating that consumers have always had the facility to copy software and that record companies have still prospered. Last year was, in fact, the all-time high for profits in the record industry. While large-scale piracy may be a real problem for the industry, home copying probably is not. In any event, there is a major alternative to home copying, one which should make the record companies quite happy.

Personics, based in Redwood City, Cal., has come up with an interesting in-store method allowing consumers to make personalized cassette copies of a wide range of program material at reasonable cost--and with copyright payments going to the record companies! At the present time, Personics installations are in selected record stores in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. The process has been up and running only since October 1988.

What you see in the store is an audition display counter where you can put on headphones and sample any item in the Personics catalog. Over the 'phones, you will hear a short segment of any item you have picked, simply to let you verify the choice you have made. When you have made your selections, you fill out a sheet indicating the order in which you would like them taped. You can also create a title for your cassette, personalizing it with your name or whatever.

You then take your desired list of songs to the main counter and give it to the attendant. The data on your list is entered via a keyboard that interfaces with a large rack of electronics. On the front of the rack is a highly modified Nakamichi cassette recorder, which does the actual duplicating.

The music, running into thousands of titles, is stored on CD-size optical discs, but not in the normal PCM format. The program material which Personics has licensed has been transferred using Dolby B NR and then converted to an adaptive delta-modulation code developed by Dolby Laboratories for greater storage density on the disc. (Each disc may hold up to 60 or 70 songs.) A complete set of encoded software is in each store, and the eventual program capacity will be 15,000 catalog items.

Selected catalog items are then transferred to a blank cassette. The copying process is carried out at an eight-to-one duplication ratio, indicating that an average-length cassette is transferred in a matter of about five minutes. A laser printer has, in the meantime, produced a neat-looking set of labels for both sides of your cassette as well as a J-card to insert into the outer box.

Each item in the Personics catalog carries a price tag from 500 to $1.50 for most of the pop/rock selections and up to $2 for some of the longer classical items. These are the only costs, and they include tape, labeling, and royalties for the record companies.

Some readers may wonder why there is a complete program storage system in each store. Would it not have been possible, even desirable, to have a central depot from which all program information could be sent out via fiber-optic links or some other form of data transmission? This was considered early on, but abandoned as too expensive and not as reliable as the current method.

According to Personics, the company takes extreme care when they initially transfer the licensed program material. When possible, they go back to the earliest unequalized source material available, and Personics is happy to provide a mastering engineer to supervise the transfer process.

The Dolby adaptive delta modulation process is itself a refinement of earlier methods, in that its output converter "knows" some 10 mS ahead of time any changes which must be made in order to accommodate sudden changes in signal density or dynamic range. It can thus avoid problems of clipping or "breathing." The overall duplicating process is capable of producing a cassette which maintains, at the very least, a frequency response from 20 Hz to 16.5 kHz, ±3 dB. TDK Type II tape is used for the in-store duplication.

Personics has the basic interests of the record business very much at heart; one of their shareholders is Thorne-EMI, the British parent of Capitol and Angel Records in the United States. Personics' intent is to enhance overall album sales by offering only the main cuts from a given album. This may encourage the user to buy it, since it is not possible to copy an entire album in the store.

A monthly publication lists the Personics catalog to date and contains articles on artists. The catalog listings are given for major categories, and there is also an artist listing. The program categories are blues, classical, country, easy listening, folk/bluegrass, heavy metal, jazz, oldies, New Age, pop, rap/dance, reggae, rock, soul, and sound effects. With mainline record companies participating, and with their catalogs dating back several decades, it is clear that Personics has quite an artists-and-repertoire job on its hands. It is interesting to peruse, for example, the easy listening section.

Here we find five entries for the Andrews Sisters (going back to the '40s), three for Johnny Mathis (from the '60s), and three for Patti Page (from the '50s). That's plenty of nostalgia, and a clear indication that Personics is interested in tape enthusiasts of all ages! The jazz section is fairly large and presents the best of the past as well as current artists. The largest section by far is for rock.

The classical section is a problem. Mainly, it consists of selected movements from various works, including Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, Handel's "Water Music," Vivaldi's "Four Seasons," and Brahms' Hungarian Dances. Sibelius' "Finlandia," Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik," and a Strauss waltz are offered for good measure. The longest work listed is Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata ( 14:36 for $2). The problem here is that the repertoire base for classical music is so broad, and the works basically so long, that the entire notion of in-store dubbing is questionable.

Personics proposes to make additions to the catalog biweekly, since this is about the turnaround time for optical disc production. At any given time, a licensor may want to change the product mix, deleting or adding items. Another benefit for participating record companies is that an accounting may be made at any time of the units duplicated on a given catalog item. Personics ultimately expects each store installation to generate 10,000 cassettes per year.

Personics' marketing is aimed both at major record distribution chains and major record companies. For the most part, the record companies have been very receptive to the concept and feel that it poses no threat to their album sales. One adverse reaction has come from A&M Records, which feels, purely from an artistic view, that the Personics approach runs antithetical to the integrity of the album concept, that an album is programmed by the artist and producer for continuous listening from start to finish.

In closing, I wish to thank Charles Garvin, President of Personics, for providing much of the information presented here. Thanks also go to Henry Brief, of the International Tape Association, for the loan of taped proceedings of ITA's technical seminar presented in May 1989.

(adapted from Audio magazine, Aug. 1989; by John Eargle)

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