The Bright New Sound of Music Cd Players Are the Hot Sellers in Home Electronics

By Stephen Koepp.

The sound is as pure and compelling as a siren song, and consumers seem powerless to resist. They have been snapping up compact disk players, which reproduce music with near perfection, at a rate that is overwhelming both retailers and manufacturers. Annual sales of the newest high-tech wonder, which came on the U.S. market in 1983, should reach 1 million next year. That will make the CD player the fastest-selling machine in home-electronics history. The videocassette recorder took six years (from 1975 to 1981) to reach the same milestone. "We're selling every single CD we can get our hands on," says Donald Swallen, vice president of the eight-store Swallen's retail chain in Cincinnati. "We can't order them fast enough."

CD players are transforming the way people listen to music. With their sweet sound, easy operation and virtually indestructible disks, they represent a technological leap beyond records and tapes (see box). Manufacturers confidently predict that CD machines will become the standard music player, overtaking sales of turntables and cassette decks as early as next year. At stores in some wealthy neighborhoods, CD players are already outselling turntables 2 to 1.

The CD boom, like other electronic crazes before it, has been spurred by plummeting prices. Only two years ago, a machine cost more than $1,000 and a disk about $20. But today retailers sell them for as little as $180, while disks cost $12 to $14. Now that the CD no longer looks like a shameless frill, sales have zoomed. An estimated 600,000 players will be sold this year, compared with 240,000 in 1984 and just 35,000 in 1983. Says Alan Perper, marketing director for the Warner Brothers, Elektra and Atlantic record labels: "The drop in prices has made it a mass-market product faster than anyone expected." Industry analysts expect prices for simple players to dip as low as $150 by Christmas and $100 next year.

Consumers who buy CDs tend to become fervent disciples. Senator Barry Goldwater, a jazz fan who bought a Hitachi model last year, demonstrates the durability of CDs to neophytes by tossing the disks across his Washington apartment. He is thinking about buying a CD player for his car. Musician Nile Rodgers, who has produced albums for singers David Bowie and Madonna, listens to the CD player in his Porsche as he commutes between Connecticut and New York City. Gerald Koris, a Los Angeles lawyer, has bought more than two dozen classical-music disks since becoming hooked last year. Says he: "It's the first time I can hear the piano with full power. In chamber music, I can't tell the difference anymore between recorded and live."

CD systems are the stars of a home- electronics industry that is suffering through an otherwise trying year. Sales of home computers, the hot item two years ago, have fallen sharply. Conventional turntables have also been moving at a stagnant rate. Manufacturers of audio gear hope that the popularity of CD players will create a resurgence of demand for amplifiers and speakers. Says Tadahiko Nakaoki, a product planner for Japan's Pioneer brand: "Everybody in this business must be relieved deep down in their hearts."

Surfing on the tidal wave of demand, more than 45 companies, most of them Japanese, have begun producing CD players. The first devices were designed for use at home, but now disk devotees can take their music wherever they go. At least half a dozen companies currently produce automobile CD systems, which can endure nearly any pothole without a skip. Sony, among others, has produced the inevitable boom-box version (price: $550) that one reviewer described as having "enough rock-'n'- roll power to digitize everyone on the bus." Sony has even introduced a CD jukebox ($3,560), sold only in Japan, that carries as many as 120 disks, or 1,800 tunes.

Perhaps the hottest seller of all is Sony's Walkman-style model, which measures only 5 in. across and 1 1/2 in. thick. It lists for $300, but discount stores are now selling it for as little as $250. The rival Technics brand has an even smaller model that grabbed the limelight earlier this month at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. "The reaction has exceeded our wildest expectations," says Richard Del Guidice, a Technics product manager. "We are only limited by how much our factories can produce."

Today's CD machine is the result of a technological race among electronics firms to develop a laser-based music system. It was won in 1978 by two companies working together, Sony of Japan and Philips of the Netherlands (U.S. brands: Magnavox, Sylvania). Philips originally designed a 60-min. disk, but Sony convinced its ally that the current 75-min. version would be better. Recalls Sony Chairman Akio Morita: "The reason was so that we could put Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on one record. The Ninth has a special significance in Japan because we traditionally play it over and over at year end."

For audio retailers, the CD is one of those dream items that deliver their own sales pitch. The sound, of course, is the first grabber. "It will knock you out," says Larry Canale, an editor of Digital Audio magazine. "I love watching the looks on the faces of people who haven't heard one before." CDs produce none of the surface noise, the hissing and clicking sounds, found on tapes and records. They have no wow and flutter, the trembly changes in pitch that are caused by the mechanisms of turntables and tape decks.

Best of all, since the laser is basic to all CD players, even the lowest- priced device produces the same near perfect sound as the top-end models. Costlier units are loaded with special features that let users determine which songs or tracks they want to hear and in what order. Some systems have remote controls for programming from across the room.

Once a consumer buys a CD player, he often develops a staggering appetite for disks. Manufacturers first expected new owners to acquire six to eight within two months, but they often buy four or five times that many. Americans will purchase an estimated 15 million CDs this year, up from a mere 770,000 in 1983. That demand has created backlogs of one to two months for many disk makers. They have been concentrating on mainstream releases, mostly classical, jazz and pop. About 2,500 different titles are now available in the U.S., and about 4,500 will be on the market by year's end. But that is still only a fraction of the roughly 70,000 LP albums currently in release. Fans of country music, rap, rhythm and blues and other styles will have to wait a year or two for a good selection.

CDs are much more difficult to make than tape cassettes or LPs. The single- sided, 4 3/4-in. CD contains almost 50% more music than the combined sides of a 12-in. LP. In the highly exacting manufacturing process, clear plastic is first molded and then stamped with a thin, mirror-like sheet of aluminum. Employees at CD plants work in superclean rooms and must wear aprons, gloves, hoods and boots. The first CD plant in the U.S., one of 13 around the world, opened last September in Terre Haute, Ind. Its initial product: Bruce Springsteen's album Born in the U.S.A. Operated by a joint venture of Sony and CBS, the plant has only enough capacity for CBS's releases, so all other U.S. labels must order their CDs overseas.

The only sour notes in the symphony of praise for CDs are coming from purists who say that the new sound seems cold and unreal in its perfection. Even the squeak of a violinist's fingers on the instrument's strings can be detected, something a concert audience probably would never hear. Aficionados blame this on overzealous engineers who were trying to create too powerful a sound when they made the first CD recordings. Writes Audio Columnist Hans Fantel: "The stridency and blasting of the first releases issued about a year ago are rarely heard on the latest CDs."

Despite the feverish growth of CD players, record and tape music will not vanish overnight. U.S. consumers still own some 80 million turntables and 140 million cassette players. They currently buy nearly 500 million record albums and tapes a year. But hearing is believing. Says Michael Harvey, a salesman at the Federated department store in west Los Angeles: "I've succumbed to CDs and will never go back. Once you have it, you're totally spoiled."

With reporting by Barbara Kraft/Los Angeles and Raji Samghabadi/New York