by Christie Barter and Gordon Sell
CD HOTLINE To assist consumers (and retailers) with questions about specific CD's or CD technology in general, a trade organization called the Compact Disc Group has established a toll-free telephone service from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Eastern Time, Monday through Friday.
The number to call is 1-800-872 5565 (in New York state, 1-212 355-0011). Callers will also be able to have their names added to the CDG mailing list for catalogs.
TRANSPARENT SOUND
Martin Logan has developed an electrostatic speaker with a see through diaphragm and conductive coating. The full-range Curvilinear speaker's diaphragm is suspended midway between the perforated-metal electrodes. The driver system is shaped like the vertical 30-degree section of a tall cylinder. The as yet unnamed super-diaphanous-diaphragm speakers will cost $2,400 a pair.
HI-FI RADIO SHOW
The National Public Radio network is now airing a weekly hour-long radio show for audiophiles that is being fed to seventy two affiliated stations on Sundays at 2 p.m. Eastern Time. Show host John Sunier plays audiophile recordings on LP's, CD's, and tapes, gives helpful hints, and inter views interesting personalities in the recording and hi-fi fields.
HI-FI VCR'S TAKE OFF
Sales of hi-ft VCR's are expected to grow rapidly over the next six months as the machines become available at lower price points.
High sales of Sanyo's low-priced and much-discounted Beta Hi-Fi recorders were a significant factor in that company's ousting of Sony as the best-selling Beta producer. Panasonic is introducing four new VHS Hi-Fi machines starting at $750. Other VHS makers are likely to follow, and you can expect discount stores to crack the $500 VHS Hi-F1 barrier this fall. Sony and Sanyo are looking to the combination of Beta Hi Fi and Super Beta (said to improve video resolution by 20 per cent) to increase Beta's market share. Radio Shack will soon be selling both Beta Hi-Fi and VHS Hi-Fi VCR's, and Yamaha will introduce a VHS Hi-Fi machine with stereo-TV capability.
TECH NOTES
The Cambridge Audio CD1 Com pact Disc player has three different analog-processing circuits, enabling a user to pick the one that sounds best. The price of this Phil ips-based English player is
$2,000.... Crown International has developed a bridgeable car amplifier that can deliver either 100 watts each to three channels, 100 watts each to two channels and 50 watts each to two other channels, or 50 watts each to four channels and 100 watts to one channel.... Shure has just celebrated its sixtieth anniversary.
The company made its first microphone in the early 1930's and its first phono cartridge in 1935.... Some time in the next few months Matsushita (Panasonic and Quasar) will produce its 100 millionth color TV set....
B&W is going into the amplifier business with a mono 500-watt, $2,500 unit based on the technology developed for the new John Bowers Active 1 powered speaker system.... Barclay-Crocker will be issuing prerecorded open-reel tapes using dbx rather than Dolby B noise reduction.... Carver Corp. is going public with a 700,000-share offering to finance expanded manufacturing and research.
HONORS
Soprano Leontyne Price and composer Elliott Carter were the two musicians who received the National Medal of Arts from President Reagan in a first-time-ever White House ceremony in April.... A prize given in the name of the President of France by the Academie Charles Gros in Paris went this year to Murray Perahia's recordings, for CBS Masterworks, of the complete Mozart Piano Concertos.... Isaac Stern became the first classical artist to receive the Presidential Award of the National Association of Re cording Merchandisers.
BIG SELLERS
Multi-Platinum Awards, presented by the Recording Industry Association of America, have gone to Cyndi Lauper's She's So Un usual, which has sold in excess of four million units, and to Twisted Sister's Stay Hungry, the group's first two-million seller. Under RIAA rules, an album that has sold one million copies receives Platinum certification. It becomes eligible for Multi-Platinum recertification every time it achieves another million in sales.
FUND RAISERS
The Concert Music Broadcasters Association reports that nine of its member stations raised well over two million dollars this spring in radio marathons for their local symphony orchestras.
Included were WQXR in New York, which brought in (in round figures) $410,000; WCRB in Boston, $360,000; and WGMS in Washington, D.C., $280,000. But ahead of them all was WFMT in Chicago, which raised $570,000 for the Chicago Symphony. A feature of the WFMT marathons is the annual tally of donations made respectively by cat lovers and dog lovers. This year, for the first time in several years, the cat lovers won by a hair.
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Source: Stereo Review (USA magazine)