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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."