REWIRE YOURSELF

REWIRE YOURSELF

A SOUND REVOULUTION?

by

Richard Robinson

THE COMPACT DISC

The moment I first held a Compact Disc in my hand, I thought, “My God, if we could do this, we could cure cancer. We could eradicate hate and hunger.”

Then I remembered where I was. Downtown 20th Century. And the Compact Disc is about as close as we’re likely to get to any real answers to real questions. The Compact Disc is a real triumph for the polyester-heads.

WHO: The people who make records have noticed that, generally speaking, records are of poor quality. Poor technical quality. They pop and click. They collect dust. They melt if left on the radiator. They scratch. They wear out with use.

Records (plastic, 33V3 rpm) also don’t do the best job doing what they’re supposed to do: reproduce sound accurately.

WHAT: The answer to the poor tech record? Need you ask? The answer is: “If it doesn’t work throw it away.”

If it doesn’t work throw it away. And invent something that works better.

If it works better it should cost more.

If it costs more, more can be charged for it.

WHY: In the record business things are generally not looking up. It has been 20 years since the last Beatles; 30 years since the last Elvis.

Today’s kids don’t always buy records. They make cassette copies. And Congress won’t put a tax on blank cassettes and give the tax money collected to the record companies.

Not that the record companies haven’t tried to get Congress to tax blank tape.

In the record business, progress these days is not slipping too far backwards. Not too many chances are being taken. Free spirits have been replaced by free fear.

WHEN: Now, at selected record stores, there is a new music system. The system is the Compact Disc. The disc (it used to be called a record) costs about $20. The disc player (it used to be called a record player) costs about $800. The sound is supposed to be better.

WHERE: Japan, U.S., Europe. Western and consumer-oriented Oriental civilization is dependent on the purchases of Compact Discs and Compact Players in mass quantities. Otherwise it could well be curtains for us all.

PRO: It sounds too good to be true. (Actually, it is too good to be true, but let’s ignore that for a moment.) The facts are that there is a new music system that is so close to perfect you need sunglasses if you’re going to look at it too long.

Ever heard of the videodisc that uses a computer and a laser and some metal and some plastic to put an hour of TV on a record that you can play at home?

Well, the Compact Disc is the sound-only version of that. A system that uses a computer and a laser and some metal and plastic to put an hour of music on a disc you can play at home.

Weren’t the videodisc and the audio disc supposed to be the same disc? That was last year, when the videodisc was trying to make it against the video tape. This is this year, when the audio disc is trying to make it against the record and audio cassette. Consumers aren’t supposed to remember that last year the videodisc folks were claiming they could put eight complete audio albums on a video disc if they wanted to. The consumer is just supposed to snort and gurgle that the audio disc can get one complete audio album on one Compact Disc.

This isn’t sounding like the Pro part. Let’s start again.

PRO: Sony in Japan and Philips in Europe have co-developed a new sound storage system to improve on the current album and audio tape systems that we’re familiar with. This new system is known as Compact Disc (sometimes called CD) Digital Audio. The system consists of a Compact disc. The prices quoted to start on the players are between $800 and $1,200. A pre-amplifier, power amplifier, and speakers are required as well.

The music, or other sound, is stored on the CD using digital technology. In fact it is estimated that 13 billion bits of information will be encoded on the face of the disc to produce one hour of music. These 13 billion bits are in the form of smooth or pitted areas that the laser diode, striking the surface of the disc, can translate into digital pulses which can be translated into analog sound as we know it.

The advantages of Compact Disc over any previous recorded music system is, as Philips is saying in its full page advertisements in Europe: “No record or stylus wear. No dust, static or vibration problems. No surface noise. Giving you perfect sound Disc Player which replaces the current 33ty3 record albums on which the majority of prerecorded music is sold.

SONY CD

The Compact Disc is 43A” in diameter, made of clear plastic and aluminum, and on its one usable side it can store upwards of one hour of music. It will cost, initially, $16.95 and up per disc.

The Compact Disc Player plays these CDs. They are played at somewhere between 200 and 500 revolutions per minute (as opposed to 33V3 of the current album), and the music is retrieved from the disc by the player using a laser diode that scans the that will last forever.”

Because the information on the disc is digital, there are none of the signal-to-noise problems that exist with current record and tape systems, which produce hiss, wow, flutter, or other distortions. Because the disc is “read” by a minute shaft of laser light, there’s no record “needle” to wear out—or to wear the record out—so that each play is perfect. Because there are no grooves as such and, in fact, the disc surface is covered in clear plastic, there is no way to ruin the CD the way a current record album can be ruined with too casual handling.

Sounds like the best thing since white bread, doesn’t it? Theoretically it is.

CONS: While there are problems with the current record album as a system for storing and playing back music, most of the problems have to do with shoddy manufacturing and shoddy user habits. In fact, if you were to spend $800 or so on a high-tech turntable for the contemporary record album, and buy the digitally mastered and direct^ to-disc recordings currently available in the $20 range, you would probably discover fhat the Compact Disc and the Upgrade Regular Album sound about the same.

Bui this isn’t a comparison of perfection. Truth is that the current 33V3 album in its normal state is shoddy, and most of us don’t use it carefully enough to make it much better.

But is the $5 record, for all its problems, worth replacing with a $20 record? Not really. Because most of us don’t hear most of the problems of the $5 record. Partially because we’re listening to the radio or TV or an audio cassette, partially because many Of the “advantages” of the Compact Disc are more theoretical than practical.

Is the $100 turntable worth replacing with the $800 turntable? Again, not really. After all, if it were, we’d all be out buying $800 turntables for our current stereo systems.

And what about the rest of the stereo system? Any stereo system is only as good as its poorest component. Which means that most of us would not hear any real differences between the .Compact Disc and normal disc without going out and spending several thousand dollars on new amplifiers and speakers once we’d purchased the compact disc player.

The only question is: should we throw our video machines away now, or wait until we get the nod from japan?

BETA Hi-Fi

But suppose we have a brand new stereo complete with Disc player and a supply of Compact Discs. Then what? Would it sound any different?

Different? Yes.

Better? That’s open to question.

Computers don’t make music too good.

The big drawback; your ear and brain may not be ready to listen to a digital recording.

That’s right. All-the things that are wrong with the current record are missing from the digital record. And because they’re missing, we miss them, the digital record can tend to sound “funny.”

Also, the digital record does not produce a continuous wave of sound like the current analog record does*So it may in actual fact sound funny.

Well, we can get used to that, right? Right.

I sometimes think the problem gets back down to the fact that people who make all this high tech hardware (and the CD is uery hi-tech) don’t listen to rock music. If they did they’d realize that rock music is noise, is all the things they’re trying to get rid of. They’d realize that there is no reality in the recording studio as a musician twists and turns metal and plastic and wood and sweat to make the music scream and distort and sound just right.

So for this we need perfection of reproduction.

And we’d also like to point out that, as yet, there are no such things as digital microphones or digital speakers. So for all the digital guff that’s going around about “digital” recording, the sound starts and finishes up the way it always has—in an analog device. Until Mr. Sony and'Mr. Phillips figure out how to do something about that, digital is still the slave of analog.

The whole thing is like tubes vs. transistors. Tubes sound more human than transistors. So when transistors replaced tubes in rock ’n’ roll (and in certain cases they still haven’t!) a lot of work went into making transistors sound distorted like tubes. It seems like the digital folks may have to stay up late to figure out how to make the purity of digital sound a little more downhome rock ’n’ roll.

And while they’re at it, they might want to bring the price down.

Final note: don’t be surprised if in a year or two there’s a few newer, cheaper systems for storing sound on computer.

PS: Anybody want to buy a Quadrophonic system? Mint condition?

THE VIDEO 45

If you don’t have MTV or Nightflight on your cable box, you can see now what you’re missing as Sony goes into the business of marketing what they call “Video 45s.” These are rock videotapes, roughly 15 minutes long, featuring four video music tapes by a particular artist.

The first thing Video 45s are tapes by Jesse Rae (a Scottish artist who seems to be launching his music career via video), Michael Nesmith (presenting four video cuts from his long playing video Elephant Parts), Duran Duran (including the so-called “banned” for being too sexy video cut “Girls On Film”), Elton John, and Rod Stewart.

Three things make the Video 45 an interesting event. First, it is the first time that a relatively short (approx. 15 minutes) video program has been marketed directly to the consumer and in keeping with the tape length the price is about double the cost of blank tape—about $15 to $20 depending on tape format. This cost is roughly half what movie length prerecorded tapes are selling fof at their least expensive. Second, this is the first product that spins off that highly successful video music TV programming that is lighting up cable channels across the country. Remember when if you liked a record enough from hearing it on the radio you might go out and buy a copy? Well now the same thing is possible with a rock video, albeit on a limited basis right now. Third, the Video 45 has stereo sound.

Since Sony is marketing the Video 45, it isn’t surprising that the cost of the V45 is about five dollars cheaper in the Betamax format ($15) than it is in the VHS format ($20). What the actual pricing of the V45’s will be after the discount houses get through with them remains to be seem, but I suspect that the V45 will eventually sell for about what blank tape sold for a year ago.

Both the Beta and the VHS versions of the V45 are produced with stereo sound. This stereo is compatible with present monaural sound video machines (most of them are mono), all you do is play the tape and hear it on your mono TV speaker in mono. But if you happen to have a stereo audio-video machine, then you can listen in stereo.

There are several VHS machines with stereo sound, as there are already some stereo sound VHS pre-recorded movies and other programming (as well as stereo sound TV broadcasts like MTV and The Movie Channel which can be recorded off-air in stereo with a stereo recorder). Needless to say, stereo sound VHS machines are upgrade top-of-the-line video recorders— the stereo being an extra you know you’re paying for when you look at the price tag. Since most video users have yet to liberate their video recorder sound from being routed through the TV set and out the TV speaker, just like the picture, the fact of stereo sound is more talked about than the reality.

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 35

Up to now, Sony has not featured stereo sound as part of the Betamax picture. But that is changing rather dramatically as Sony introduces the Beta Hi-Fi System, which will make the Video 45 sound truly spectacular. (Sony is also planning other software backup for Beta Hi-Fi besides the Video 45, including stereo sound releases of films like Apocalypse Now, Star Trek II, Chariots Of Fire, and Superman, and video music specials from the likes of McCartney and Blondie.)

The stereo sound of Beta Hi-Fi is a totally different method of putting stereo sound on a videocassette. Normally, the audio on video is recorded on a separate audio track in exactly the same way sound is put on any other recording tape, such as an audio cassette. Since the video tape runs at a very slow speed, and since frequency response (the “range” of an audio tape) depends on the speed of the tape to a great degree (the faster the tape runs by the audio head, the better the frequency response), the audio on video is relatively minimal. Not that most TV viewers would notice—the speakers and amplifiers of most TV sets are just as minimal.

To achieve what Sony refers to as close to “digital quality” sound a new system was developed to put the sound on the video tape. (It is interesting that Sony is saying Beta Hi-Fi “approaches the latest digital audio systems.” Are they getting us ready to think digital is better—which it may or may not be—or don’t they know that other folks at Sony are trying to sell us a Digital Compact Disc that is supposed to be better than anything Beta Hi-Fi could possibly offer?!)

This new Beta Hi-Fi system, which has been introduced with a new Betamax videotape recorder, the SL-5200 (available mid-1983, no retail price announced yet), is not exactly revolutionary. But it is the first time it has been done in a consumer machine. In video, the video signal gets on and off the videotape via rotating video heads that trace a diagonal path across the videotape as they rotate around a drum, spinning like tiny propellers. These video heads can spin, in relation to the videotape that is moving by them, at speeds of 1,800 revolutions per minute. The point being that the tape to head speed (called “writing speed”) is very high, and as we remember from before, that can produce a better frequency response than slow tape to head speed.

In the ordinary home video machine, the videotape heads spin by the tape to impart or recover TV picture (b&w) luminance and picture (color) chrominance. That’s it. the synchronizing signals and audio go on separate tracks that run on other areas of the videotape; Sony has added the stereo audio signal to the luminance and chrominance signals being stored on the tape by the spinning video heads.

The result is a frequency response of 20-20kHz, which is the same kind of response claimed by good stereo systems and record albums. Very low distortion. And separation between the stereo channels that exceeds anything you’re likely to run into as far as specs are concerned.

Does it work? No reason why it shouldn’t. So long as the FM stereo audio system being mixed in with video chrominance and luminance signals doesn’t affect those signals, the result is practical method of putting high quality audio signals on video tape and getting them back the same way.

Those who don’t have the SL-5200, or want to listen to the Sony Video 45’s on a mono machine, can still do so because a mono version of the sound is on the conventional audio track of the cassette—in effect, there are both mono and stereo versions of the sound stored in different places on the videocassette tape, and you get back one or the other, depending on the machine being used.

NEW TV & NEW VIDEO

This spring there was a meeting in Tokyo that may well mean the end of the current VHS and Betamax video formats. About 100 electronics manufacturers got together to decide on the new video format. The format that will eventually replace VHS and Beta.

This new format will use videotape that is half the width of the half-inch wide video tape used in VHS and Beta cassettes. This quarter-inch tape will be put in a cassette format that can record from 60 to 90 minutes per cassette.

The basic idea among the manufacturers is to make the videotape recorder small enough so that it can be built inside of the videotape camera. The result: an all-in-one unit that will replace the home movie camera.

Insiders admit that if this home video camera idea catches on, it will also replace VHS and Beta.

What advantage is there to all this? Well, if you do use a video camera with deck to record home videos, you know that it isn’t all that much fun to lug around, no matter how small it is now. The new half-size system will make it close to half as small (and one piece instead of two), so it is an advantage.

There is also no question but that the current state of the art will allow manufacturers to reduce the overall size of the videocassette tape and housing and format and etc. , and still produce the same picture quality, perhaps better.

The only question is: should we throw our current video machines away now, or wait until we get the nod to do so from Japan?

While you’re dumping your video recorder into a garbage bag, you might also want to throw out your TV set. It too is on the way to being obsolete.

HD TV stands for high definition television. The picture has more lines in it than current TV. (Current TV has 525 lines, of which we see on a normal set roughly 300 if the wind is blowing in the right direction; HD TV will have from 1000 to 1500 lines.) HD TV is absolutely fantastic. Honest. ^