TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/011491/0114204.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.6 KB | 120 lines

                                                                                BUSINESS, Page 44

Discs, DAT and D'other Things


Digital audiotape breaks out into the home-entertainment
marketplace

By JAY COCKS -- With reporting by Barry Hillenbrand/Tokyo and
Michael Quinn/New York


    Didn't get that CD player you wanted for Christmas? That's
all right. Amble down to the local audio vendor -- the one with
all the fancy futuristic stuff -- and check out the
digital-audiotape machines. Inquire particularly about the DAT
Walkman, a palm-size dynamo that puts compact-disc-quality
sound onto a cassette tape. The store should be receiving its
first limited shipment this week. The DAT Walkman is guaranteed
to cure CD envy. And clean your ears, and your wallet, right
out.

    Dogged by technophile speculation, consumer wariness and
legal wrangling, the DAT format has been the subject of
long-standing curiosity and skepticism. Would it really sound
as good as a CD? DAT was demonstrably fine in the recording
studio, where it has been used since 1987. But would it measure
up to the CD for consumer allure? Would it be as handy, as user
friendly, as downright cool? Would it be an all-around
commercial monster?

    The answers, in order: yes; yes; and, well, could be.
There's a lot riding on the outcome. Sony is spearheading the
DAT charge with its usual high-profile corporate promotion as
well as its snazzy technology. "Before, there were LPs and tape
cassettes," says Takeshi Inoue, a manager in Sony's DAT Audio
Group. "In the future, there will be CDs and DATs."

    Response to the first full-size DAT decks, which Sony began
to market selectively in the U.S. late this summer, was
cautious. "DAT's a great technology," says a Manhattan
retailer. "Our customers are very impressed. But they're buying
slowly." Money's tight, of course; a home deck costs $800 to
$900. But DAT has spent a good deal of  its Stateside existence
bound up in a series of legal maneuvers by record companies and
music publishers who feared that its crystalline sound would
encourage a ruinous splurge of home copying. The legal battling
over DAT duplicating has been effectively resolved, with the
advantage going to the tape: a CD can be copied without even
fractional loss of sound quality onto a DAT tape. But the
equipment will prevent that copy, even though it can be
duplicated on conventional analog cassettes innumerable times,
from being copied on another digital tape. Got that? There will
be a quiz Monday morning.

    As the legal problems fall away, worldwide sales have jumped
forward. Industry sources in Japan estimate that nearly 100,000
DAT decks made by Sony, JVC and others were sold in 1990 -- up
from 60,000 in the previous three years combined. "We sold out
of the home units," says Arnie Shurofsky of New York City's
Grand Central Radio. "And we can't wait to get the Walkman.
That's what's going to push DAT into the mass market."

    The DATman, as the new small unit is nicknamed, is Sony's
ultimate weapon in the DAT wars, a 1-lb. Walkman that will do
just about everything the larger home deck will do, and one
thing more: record with a microphone. Digital nirvana. The
DATman is about the size of a Stephen King paperback, but
rather less thick. It uses the same DAT cassette (which is less
than half the size of the traditional analog cassette),
records up to two hours of digitized splendor and plays it all
back with impeccable fidelity. It makes conventional analog
tape sound by comparison like an Edison cylinder.

    Among the crucial features of the home deck available on the
DATman is the ability to find any track with pinpoint accuracy
within seconds. At $849.95, this will be Sony's priciest
Walkman ever. "Like all new consumer products, the initial
price is high," admits Michael Vitelli, president of Sony
Personal Audio Products, who expects that the first purchasers
of the DAT Walkman will be the "high-end audiophile market and
music enthusiasts." But, he adds, "the prices tend to come down
when the demand is great enough, and the portable capabilities
of the DAT Walkman will help popularize the entire DAT
format."

    Unlike portable CD players, the DAT Walkman isn't
susceptible to skipping when the going gets rough. (Sony has
also introduced a DAT deck for cars.) The catalog of
prerecorded DAT tapes (typical price: $20) is just beginning
to build up, with only about 175 titles available. But as
Hirayama Toshikatsu of Panasonic's audio division points out,

their own selection of music." Sony spokesman Tsutomu Imai
agrees. "Software was important because the CD player was a
playback-only machine," he says. "It had to have prerecorded
music to succeed. But since DAT is for recording, software is
not that important."

    Philips, however, is gambling that software is vital. At an
electronics show in Las Vegas this week, the Dutch company
plans to demonstrate a new system (oh no, not again!) that will
record digitally and play both digital and analog cassettes.
Several record companies, including Polygram (a Philips
subsidiary), have already signed on to make recordings in the
new digital compact cassette (DCC) format. Philips says the
system will be available in early 1992 and promises it will
deliver DAT-quality sound. Experts, however, are dubious. "I
think Philips, as the inventor and promoter of the analog
cassette, is interested in prolonging its life," says Len
Feldman, senior editor of Audio magazine. That's
understandable. One quick turn with the DAT Walkman
demonstrates that the audio future is here, and well in hand.