POLITICAL PRODUCTS

Recession-weary dealers and manufacturers descended on Chicago's CES last June in disappointing numbers. While the government tells us that we are coming out of the recession, most of us feel otherwise. The recession may have bottomed out, but nobody really knows when a general upturn will become apparent or how strong it may be.

In the meantime, the parade of new products continues, and major companies continue to battle it out for technological supremacy in the areas of low-cost digital recording and interactive CD. We'll discuss both of these later.

First, let's recap high-end audio. You remember exhibitors' plight at last year's show: No space at the inn-in fact, nothing but prefab demo rooms in the lower level of the North Hall. Shortly before the show, a large number of high-end exhibitors bolted and set up their own displays at the Chicago Historical Museum, well north of the Loop.

Fortunately, CES management took the necessary steps to reverse the trend, and this year the high-end exhibits were back at the Conrad Hilton Hotel, a site they had occupied in earlier years. However, the smallish rooms in the Hilton are not conducive to accurate sound reproduction, and the larger rooms, which work much better, are limited in number and cost a good bit.

A highlight of the Hilton was the Marantz USA exhibit. As you may know, Philips has acquired the Marantz trade name in the U.S. and is working hard to put that company back on the pedestal it occupied 30 years ago. That will take some doing, but they are making strides. In addition to standard models, Marantz was showing a DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) recorder and a write-once CD recorder.

Marantz also presented a generalized audio computer that can perform several functions. It can automatically equalize the stereo system for a given listening position in the room and provide additional user-adjustable parametric equalization. It has multi-channel outputs for ambience generation and Dolby Surround for video presentation. It offers stereo width control and headphone signal processing for accurate "out of head" localization. Signal compression/expansion and scratch elimination for older LPs is also included. As if this weren't enough, the unit also operates as a versatile test set with sine-wave and noise output signals and a 27-band real-time analyzer. Operation of the unit is made relatively easy through dual video displays which let the user see two menus concurrently.

At McCormick Place, Sharp was showing its latest designs in LCD video projection. The convenience of these projectors lies in the simplicity of setup no converging is necessary. The unique design makes use of standard (non-phosphor) white-light sources which are split into three paths, one for each primary color. These three paths are independently modulated by LCD elements, then are recombined and projected via a single lens. The picture has no flicker, but the individual pixels (picture elements) are quite apparent and are annoying to many viewers.

For the first time, Sharp was showing an HDTV projector. Here the pixels are so small (over 3 million in the composite picture) that none of them could be seen as such. Colors were accurate, and saturation was excellent. While this projector is a standard model in Japan, its only use in the U.S. would be in industrial HDTV applications.

Denon exhibited an interesting variation on standard CD technology, a 3-inch disc capable of 80 minutes of playing time, using no data compression at all. This is accomplished essentially by using a shorter laser wavelength and refined optics to give a pit size about one-half that of the standard CD's. This in turn results in four times the signal density on the disc, as shown in the photomicrograph. While this may never become a music format, it has tremendous potential for CD-ROM and related applications.

Hughes Aircraft is getting into the consumer electronics business! Its products will be a Sound Retrieval System (SRS) adaptor and a series of satellite stereo loudspeakers with sub woofers. While SRS was licensed for TV use by Sony and RCA/GE earlier, Hughes' adaptor is intended for use with normal home stereo electronics, where it will fit into the external processor loop. When SRS is engaged, the adaptor dynamically acts on the stereo difference channel (L R), creating an increased stereo stage width, largely in the midrange. The listener must sit virtually on the plane of loudspeaker symmetry if the effect is to be heard best. However, in TV application, where the loudspeakers are generally closer together, the listener-location constraints are more relaxed.

The control unit provides a good range of SRS settings, from subtle to quite pronounced. My feeling is that most listeners will probably settle into an operating point about midway on this scale. Hughes' satellite loudspeakers are designed for uniform radiation into a 180° horizontal angle and are small enough to permit more flexible options than conventional bookshelf loudspeakers.

Now for the corporate battles. When Philips introduced DCC last winter, the record industry pretty much felt it had a reasonable, viable replacement for the cassette. In fact, the backward compatibility of DCC meant that the changeover from analog to digital could be carefully planned to mesh with hardware growth. The approval of DCC by Matsushita and tape manufacturer BASF looks good, too.

Sony has now introduced the Mini Disc as its answer to the consumer's need for a recordable digital medium.

The advantages of the Mini Disc are its convenience and ruggedness. It can hold 70-plus minutes of music and will come in two forms. Like the CD, it can be pressed and, as such, will simply be another carrier of recorded music.

A recordable blank disc will be available for about the cost of a metal cassette, and this disc can be rerecorded any number of times. Like DCC, the Mini Disc makes use of data compression, so its performance will not be of the same quality level as the CD. If Sony's dream comes true, the con sumer of the future will have only CDs and Mini Discs. Cassettes would ultimately, like the LP, be relegated to the closet as the industry wound down the manufacture of cassette recorders.

(Sony's dream for DAT as a consumer medium has never materialized, despite the wide acceptance of DAT as a professional recording medium.) If Philips' dream is realized, the consumer of the future will have CDs, DCC, and a viable collection of analog cassettes with a continuing supply of new machines to play them on. The analog cassette would last well into the next century, in this scenario.

above: A shorter laser wavelength and new optics give Denon's quad-density CD system (right), smaller pits than standard CD's (left).

It's too early to call, but the outcome could hinge merely on the relative start-up costs of software and hardware manufacture for the two media.

The other battle now taking place is between proponents of CD-I and CDTV. CD-I stands for Compact Disc Interactive, while CDTV stands for Compact Disc Television. Both terms refer to the use of specially coded CDs, in combination with a dedicated processor, TV monitor, and a handheld control unit, to provide the user with graphics and text data bases on a wide variety of subjects. The user "interacts" with the system by giving commands via the control unit. Subjects range from informational/instructive to various games.

CD-1 is promoted by Philips, Magnavox, Sony, Matsushita, and Nintendo.

CDTV is promoted by Commodore.

CDTV has a slight edge in that it has already been shipped to the market, albeit on a limited basis. CDTV also has a strong proponent in Nolan Bushnell, the man who put Atari on the map in the early days of video games.

And-you guessed it-the two systems are not compatible.

(adapted from Audio magazine, Dec. 1991)

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