Word: lps
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This is the year to pity poor music lovers. Just when they thought they had assembled the best audio system budgets could buy, along comes a technological development that may render their expensive turntables and library of LPs as out of date as Edison's first talking machine. This month two major manufacturers, Sony and Magnavox, are introducing a limited number of digital record players in audio and department stores across the U.S. The machines, which retail for $800 to $1,000, use a laser beam instead of a conventional tone arm and stylus to play compact discs...
Until digital, record technology had not changed much in principle since the Edison cylinder. On conventional LPs, called analog recordings, images of sound waves picked up by a microphone are traced into vinyl grooves; a kind of aural photograph is "developed" when a stylus retraces the grooves and re-creates the sonic vibrations. Digital recordings are akin to the computer-assisted cameras used in space, which translate images into a series of binary numbers that are later reassembled into pictures back on earth. In digital recording a computer takes 44,000 impressions of sound per sec. and assigns each...
...important advantages over conventional records. For one thing, there is no surface noise, since the laser reads only the numbers, not any dust or grime on the disc's laminated surface. Because nothing touches the disc, there is no wear. Digital records lack the distortion customarily found on LPs in loud passages and near the end of a side, when the sound is unnaturally compressed. The new players are designed to plug into conventional component systems, and the discs will be compatible with any player on the market...
Mahler: Symphony No. 7 (RCA, 2 LPs). The Song of the Night defeats most conductors. James Levine and the Chicago Symphony crack its secrets with a powerful performance...
Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro (London, 4 LPs). Matchless Mozartean Sir Georg Solti leads the London Philharmonic and a cast including Kiri Te Kanawa in a sparkling reading...