Business Notes

Oh no -- not another piece of stereo equipment. We've been LPed, 8-tracked, cassetted, CDed, and DATed, and now comes the Mini Disc, or MD, unveiled last week by Sony, which expects it to surface in stores by late 1992.

Looking like a compact disc after a month on Slim-fast, the 2 1/2-in. MD is small enough to be played on a machine the size of a cigarette pack. But it holds as much music as its full-size cousin, and unlike the traditional CD (if something a decade old can be called traditional), the MD records as well as plays back. True, it does not offer the compact disc's perfection of fidelity, but the digital MD easily outperforms analog tape cassettes. And unlike portable CD units, the MD player doesn't skip when jolted.

All of which begs the question: Who needs it? "We'd like to introduce the MD to the industry as a successor to cassettes," says Sony president Norio Ohga. That sounds a lot like what the company said only last fall as it introduced the digital audio-tape Walkman. But now Sony argues that there is room for both DAT, aimed at hi-fi fetishists, and MD, whose lower price, smaller size and ease of use should appeal to the masses. Provided, of course, the masses will pop for yet another audio device.