wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (06/06/84)
There is a wierd new audio device advertised and briefly described in the
June, 84, issue of CONSUMER ELECTRONICS, a trade publication. This is a
CES special edition, so there is lots of new-product announcement hype.
This is a digital audio recorder using floppy disks. The reason I
say this is "wierd" is that, after reading all the tales of woe and
misery and frustration regarding floppies that has appeared on
net.micro and related groups, I cannot believe that anyone would
desire to use this medium for anything; for microcomputers, it seems
to be a case of the cost-effectiveness and the lesser of several evils,
but this announcement seems to herald the use of floppies in this
application as the first step into a wonderful new era of audio. Of
course, everything from quad to "Playtapes" to Elcasets was so heralded,
so I guess I should be used to it by now...
Anyway, there is practically no technical info. The ad is just "gee-whiz,
this new toy is the greatest and a 'revolutionary concept'". The company
is "CompuSonics", and they have a toll-free number of 800-223-1821. The photo
may be of a dummy, as it is very dim, black-front on a black background,
with a few control legends dimly viewable and what may be LED's shining
on a few of them. A meter scale is visible, but no meter readings. It
appears to be about 4 inches high and 19 inches or so wide. A horizontal
floppy drive on the left (upper corner, with the floppy in a model's hand
hiding whatever might be below), meters on the upper right, probably
LED or similar. A row of buttons or switches is across the front, marked
"ENTER SKIP RESET FORWARD REVERSE RECORD A TELERECORD A ON B LEVEL A"
"FAST FOR. FAST REV. RECORD B TELERECORD B ON A"
(top line above the controls, lower line below); also jacks marked PHONES,
A, and B.
The article (on p. 130) has no picture, and I extract selections therefrom:
"The Denver-based firm recently introduced two systems, one for the
professional and one for the consumer market. The latter -- model
DSP-1000 -- should retail for around $1000 when it ships to audio
specialty dealers first quarter, 1985. It will allow consumers to make
home digital recordings from any digital or analog source. Storage is in
the digital format [sic - there's only one? -WM] on 5 1/4 inch high density
blank floppy disks. The system will be compatible with all conventional
stereo components."
"CompuSonics has formed an agreement in principle with Boston-based
Rounder Records for prerecorded music production and distribution of
Rounder artists (among them, The Persuasions, and George Thorogood and
the Destroyers) on floppy disks."
"Through its "Telerecord" funtion, consumers will be able to access a
remote database through AT&T's "Accunet" service. Down the road, the user
will be able to purchase digital transmission of music programming
directly for dubbing onto the system."
..it interfaces with an IBM PC...
"The consumer version is rack-mountable. It consists of a chassis
containing a single board computer with expansion bus, superfloppy
disk drive with controller, RCA jacks, power supply, and computer
and communications interfaces. [Note - no mention of audio circuits
or DACs -WM] The professional CompuSonics product line is already
shipping, priced at about $30,000 for a four-track system to about
$100,000 for 16-tracks."
*End of article extract*
Well, that's all I know about it. I would think that the amount
of digital data you could store on a floppy would mean a very limited
amount of music, or a quite low sampling rate. Neither sounds
desireable. And 16 tracks on the professional system would mean
a very short recording time on a floppy! (Maybe the pro system uses
8-inch floppies or hard disks; the article doesn't say.)
Technology stumbles on...
Willdmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale) (06/07/84)
Are there even floppy systems around which can provide the continuous data rate needed for digital audio, allowing for the occasional bad spot on disc? And who can afford to ship digitized audio across phone lines, unless the piece is very short, or the digitized audio is much inferior to what the CD provides.
alex@sdcsvax.UUCP (Alex Pournelle) (06/10/84)
They are incorrect that Kodak is the only people building those very-hih capy floppy drives. Kodak is second-sourcing them from DriveTek, a co. formed by a bunch of disgruntled Burroughs (well, Ampex) employees. They do indeed have 3.33 meg capacity--unformatted. Formatted, about 2-1/2 megs. The disks are recorded at an incredible 192 TPI-- four times the density of IBM PC disques. KayPro and Rana are supposed to use these drives, just as soon as large quantites are available. Someone better at math can work out the record time available at 2-1/2 megs a shot. Alex
wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (06/11/84)
Hi, there! Well, I was the one who originally posted the subject article(s). Now, having just received new issues of the hifi slicks, I see that there is more info on the subject, and better info than in the trade press. Both AUDIO and HIGH FIDELITY have short items on the CompuSonics. Since everybody who reads net.audio should be getting all the slicks (they're cheap enough, after all), I won't repeat a lot of text from them. HIGH FIDELITY's item is the best -- look at the July 84 issue, beginning on page 12. The current system, using current floppies, records a grand total of four (4) minutes. Having this be a viable product depends on the development of 50 megabyte floppies by 1985. The encoding scheme is NOT PCM, but something they are keeping secret. The product has one 68000 and four TI TMS-320's in it. And the professional system does use a hard disk for storage. Yet more in your life from Pie-In-The-Sky Electronics, the company that advertises the future yesterday.... Will