Historical

Now that Sony has bought CBS's records division, and the infamous Copycode bill seems to be dying in Congress, the way may be clearing at last for the US introduction of the new Digital Audio Tape system. This has sparked renewed speculation in the industry about the impact DAT will have on existing formats, particularly the fledgling CD. Some are convinced DAT will kill CD, because of its ability to record as well as play digital recordings. Others believe DAT won't even gain a foothold in the market, for the same reason quadraphonic sound laid an egg back in the '70s: The public can't handle more than one "standard" format. I feel that both views are wrong, and that—as is usually the case with extreme views—the truth lies in between. I believe DAT will catch on in the marketplace, but never in a big way, and certainly not the way CD has. Here's why.

Stereophile is happy to start off another year, only one issue behind our published schedule. For most magazine subscribers, this would seem a confession of weakness; underground aficionados will, however, know what I'm talking about. We did in fact publish eight issues last year, but the first one happened to be Volume 6, Number 6 (the last issue in that volume), so that puts us still one behind. Ambitiously, I predict we'll get out nine (count them, 9) issues in 1985 and catch up with our schedule.

"What about coming over for a little bit of din-din?"

During the past 10 years, perfectionist audio has garnered for itself an impressive accretion of lore, much of which has never been accepted by the so-called scientific community.

In the four years since our last readership survey, Stereophile's circulation has grown by one third, from 45,000 to over 60,000 (footnote 1). We thought it time, therefore, to commission new numbers, from specialists Mediamark Research Inc. (footnote 2). Table 1 shows the demographic breakdown of the magazine's readers. While the launch of CD did bring more women into the audiophile fold almost 10 years ago, the proportion of Stereophile's female readers has not changed since 1988, at just over 1% (footnote 3). At one of the panel sessions at the 1992 High End Hi-Fi Show in Los Angeles, a man in the audience asked why high-end audio was so testosterone-bound when women were just as interested in music as men? The answers given by some of the many women at the show ranged from the fact that women only earn 47 cents on the dollar compared with men to conjecture that women are turned off by the hobby's tweak aspect. Certainly dealer Andrew Singer felt last October (footnote 4) that the high-end industry is hobbling itself by ignoring half the US's population.

"Tax proposed to fund Public TV, radio," read the newspaper headline. The Working Group for Public Broadcasting, described as a "private study group," was proposing to free public broadcasting "from improper political and commercial influences" by replacing its $228 million in congressional appropriations and $70 million or so in corporate funding with $600 million to be raised from a new sales tax on electronic equipment. The article went on to say that the proposal was being sent to the congressional panels concerned with communications (ie, the commerce committees), where it could become the basis for a new Public Broadcasting Act.

A couple months back, a question from a dealer set me back in my chair: "Are you guys really going to put out Stereophile on a monthly basis?" I was surprised—when he put the question, we were just starting production work on the issue you hold in your hands, the twelfth to hit the stands since we started publishing monthly. Beginning with Vol.10 No.5 in August 1987, a Stereophile has gone in the mail every month, pretty much on time despite having gone through the trauma of changing printers last December on one issue's notice.