The Digital Dilemma

Consumers must once again choose between competing high-tech sound systems

As any music lover can tell you, the trouble with sound systems is that they have this unfortunate tendency to become suddenly obsolete. Remember the eight-track tape? The LP? Just when you think it's safe to settle on one system, the electronics industry changes the rules.

While everyone is getting comfortable with CDs and cassette tapes, the industry has come up with two competing options that threaten to make existing technologies obsolete. One is called a minidisc, the other a digital compact cassette. Like the popular CDs, they are each digital, which means electronically perfect sound with no static. But unlike...

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