CD Recorder Questions: How Much Change Is Sound?

Get ready, music lovers. The format confusion and decision-making that plagues video fans is coming to audiophiles.

Tandy Corp.’s plans, announced earlier this week, to market a CD player that will also be a CD recorder--that’s right, it will enable owners to record on a compact disc, and for less than $500--raises a lot of questions.

Among them:

-- What now for DAT? The digital audio tape (DAT) balloon that’s supposed to go up, up, up when the first U.S. DAT machines go on sale in a month or two may be punctured by the Tandy news. (Tandy plans its first U.S. marketing of CD-record in slightly less than two years.)

-- How will consumers react? Will they put off exchanging their analog tape machines and turntables for DAT until recordable CD debuts? And then will both systems flourish?

-- How will the recording industry react? It’s been fighting a long battle against the U.S. introduction of DAT because of that format’s ability to record LPs with almost no quality loss. A recordable CD system would provide the same high-quality digital taping--onto a disc. And that means, with two machines and the proper hookups, copying CDs with CDs.

--How much will blank CDs cost? Tandy hasn’t ventured an estimate.

-- Will other companies follow suit? Or even market their own CD-record units before Tandy? In any case, Tandy says it will license its system to other companies.

--Can we expect full digital quality? The CD world has been led so far by Sony and Europe’s Philips. Has Tandy--the company behind the Radio Shack stores--cut corners to beat them to the punch? Another possibility: Sony and Philips may have simply put too many eggs in the DAT basket and allowed another firm to get the jump on them in CD.

--How about music on the road? Are people with automobile analog-tape machines going to buy a recordable-CD player for their home--when they can’t play the discs in the car? Will they lay out another $500 or so for an automobile CD player? Or will they opt for DAT in both places?

And for those video fans. . . .

-- How long until we hear an announcement of a recordable videodisc? The technology of videodiscs and compact discs are very similar, both using a digital/laser system. If home CD-record machines are now practical, can home LaserVision-record decks be far behind? And will that format wipe out others--including giant VHS and its just-introduced improvement, Super-VHS?

One possibility: The speed and variety of format development may backfire on the recording industry and hardware manufacturers.

In the past, big changes--the kind that meant completely revamping your equipment--came years apart in audio and video. The 78 lasted for two decades before the LP, the 45 and analog audiotape. The latter lasted three more decades since, though CD and DAT look like they’ll make those old standbys fade away (and the fading will be even faster with the advent of recordable CD). In video, color TV and the VCR are the only two giant developments most consumers had to deal with until the late ‘80s.

But now there are so many video and audio formats--either available or coming soon--that consumers may get tired of switching equipment, or even thinking about it and the involved expense.

Many will buy the new toys, of course. But if there are too many questions in the minds of too many home-tech shoppers, a lot of them will throw up their hands and vow to hold on to what they’ve got until the smoke clears. If it ever does.

A better guess: Despite what may be early consumer reluctance, the recordable compact disc--since it combines all the advantages of other systems--will sweep those other systems off the shelves by the mid-’90s, whether Tandy leads the way or someone else does it.