newman (05/06/83)
Normally I would not be doing this, but when my name gets involved, I feel some defense is in order. I don't think I've ever seen such an example of missing the point as in Mr. Day's item about my slightly tongue-in-cheek article about car cd. He seemed to take the article personally for some reason, but also made several hints at my not being an audiophile that I was not too overjoyed about. I will begin at the beginning. My comments about someone putting a cd player in a car being "beyond help" or "flushing money down the toilet" were not to be taken literally (I thought that was obvious, maybe it wasn't). I was alluding to the expense of such a system and to the total abortion of its sonic qualities by the wretched acoustical environment that is the average car (yes, Mr. Day, I am aware that one pays different amounts for home and car stereo). My comment would apply equally to spending thousands (or many hundreds) on Nakamichi auto-reverse metal-tape dolby-C with 7-band equalizer and an amplifier requiring separate batteries. Owning such types of equipment does not make one an audiophile. As a matter of fact, I would say that taking only the quality of the equipment into consideration without any thought about the acoustic environment would indicate pretty clearly that one hadn't the slightest idea what being an audiophile is. In addition, one would typically play his car cd player through 6x9 speakers which would be the subject of some amusement in a rigourous audio evaluation, not to mention the fact that you would proceed to bounce the sound off your windows or absorb them with your plush upholstery to the point where you had to strain to hear the stereo effect from some positions. My comment about the 68000 unix system was a (rather obvious?) analogy to the overkill and waste represented to me by the use of a car cd player. Mr. Day seemed to be quite sure that car cd players could easily be made for $300-$400 (that would even operate in the vibration environment of a car), but even if they could, that does NOT mean that the result will be audibly worthwhile in a car. The issue is not whether the damn player will fit in a car or be cheap enough, Mr. Day. The issue is whether the result will be high fidelity, taking into account the entire audio chain INCLUDING THE ACOUSTICAL ENVIRONMENT OF A CAR WHILE DRIVING. There is a difference between "good sound" from a car stereo and high fidelity sound, which is the domain of true audiophiles. Also Mr. Day, the fact that Sony or whoever would make a certain size of disk so that they could sell car cd players does not automatically mean that they are doing this for its high fidelity merit, but simply that perhaps many "mobile audiophiles" like yourself would buy one. They will gladly sell you anything you want (remember quad?). You want a real-time analyzer on your car equalizer? They'll make you one. How about a moving coil input on your car preamp? No problem. Oh, yes, I also assure you my audiophile ears are always with me. Please if you wish to make personal remarks mail them to me and keep them off the net. Ken Newman decvax!utzoo!utcsrgv!newman
dmmartindale (05/07/83)
I don't think auto CD players are quite as ridiculous as Mr. Newman purports. Certainly, the sonic quality of any car system will be far below what is necessary to show off a CD player to its full merit. The real question, I think, is whether they will be audibly better than cassettes. If so, then a perfectly sane person might go out and spend the additional money for the CD player. Also, consider someone who is a "true audiophile" and has a home system which contains a CD player but no cassette deck and who has no current auto sound system. He has a choice of buying an auto cassette deck AND a home cassette deck (both of fairly high quality) AND some blank tape and then spending many hours recording tapes for his car (prerecorded tapes being so awful), or simply buying an auto CD player. Now, the CD player's sound might be audibly better, and could very well cost less than the two tape decks plus blank tape put together. Remember, as well as better S/N and frequency response, the CD deck should have NO flutter, which is the thing I hate most about my current car cassette deck. Dave Martindale
fritz@hpfclp.UUCP (fritz) (09/28/84)
I just saw an ad for the "WORLD PREMIERE (of) The First Compact Disc Player
For Your Car": The Pioneer CDX-1. (That's certainly an interesting model
number, given that Yamaha already has a CD-X1 player!) No price listed,
but it looks like they're headed in the right direction...
Gary Fritz
{ihnp4,hplabs}!hpfcla!fritz