Dat Spat

Bring out the sandbags! The American music industry is already at war with a new audio technology that is expected to land in U.S. stores sometime this year. The enemy is the digital audio tape, yet another advance in high-quality sound reproduction that will be marketed by Japanese electronics firms. DAT's imminent arrival on U.S. shores has stirred a protectionist outcry from an entire industry, all the way from record-company headquarters in Manhattan to sound studios in Los Angeles.

The new technology takes consumer electronics one step beyond the compact disc. Like CDs, DAT is a product of the digital recording techniques that use computers to sort sound into billions of bits of information before they are put on magnetic tape. While current models of CD players can only play music, however, digital tape machines can also record live music and copy other recorded music.

The cost of both the DAT cassettes and the machines needed to play them is high enough so that the new technology will probably appeal, at least initially, chiefly to real audiophiles. Similar in appearance to ordinary analog cassettes but about two-thirds the size, DATs are expected to cost about $12. At first, digital tape machines will set buyers back anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500, vs. $200 to $600 for CD players.

What really alarms the music industry about the digital tape is its quality. Free of tape hiss and static crackling common to ordinary tape and record players, the DAT's sound is so fine that it is bound to encourage home taping of prerecorded music. To prevent unauthorized duplication, record companies and industry organizations have joined ranks to demand that manufacturers of digital players equip them with special computer chips that block the copying of prerecorded music. The Reagan Administration is expected this week to introduce legislation to require such protection.

But if experience is any guide, the music industry will be hard pressed to prevent consumers from enthusiastically embracing the new technology. Says Sony Spokesman David Kawakami: "Every day we get hundreds of calls asking when DATs will be in the stores." Congress may want to consider the potential consumer outrage before passing a law that restricts home digital recording.