Discs, Dat and D'Other

By JAY COCKS

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, "The majority of users want to create their own tapes with 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.

With reporting by Barry Hillenbrand/Tokyo and Michael Quinn/New York