"MINe 109" wrote in message


In article ,
"Arny Krueger" wrote:

http://www.engin.brown.edu/courses/e...rawford-NEW-PR
ODUCT-DEVELOPMENT-print.pdf

This doc also cites Ex-Lax and Callaway golf clubs.

This is a problem?

Guess what Stephen, this is part of a general discussion of new product
development. Sue Brown University's Engineering department, cheapskate fools
that they are ;-), for thinking that the sun doesn't rise and set on just
audio.

starting with the foil in the lower left hand corner of page 11 that
reads:

Why CD?
Compact disk process around since the 1950's.
- market ready for innovation
- alliance of key industrial leaders
- superior product

This is the generally-accepted factual story, not the self-pitying
vinylphile conspiracy theory.

The point I argued was the importance of bullet point #2 "alliance of
key industrial leaders" in removing the competing medium from the
marketplace.

The point you seem to have missed Stephen is that the CD was a sucessful
inovation in the judgement of an esteemed member of Brown University's
Engineering department (and most of the thinking, perceiving world) because:

(1) The market ready for innovation. IOW, they knew that the LP was a
practical and technological dead end. The world was waiting for something
without the intractable flaws of vinyl which are well-known and were
well-known before the CD hit the market. People had long known that we could
do better than the LP, and also that they despirately needed to do better.

The only question remaining before the CD was such a stunning artistic,
technical and commerical success; was *how* we were going to do better. We
had already had false starts with open reel analog tape and various kinds of
cassettes, terminating with the Elcassette. Note that analog tape for audio
production is now out of production, worldwide.

(2) Alliance of key industrial leaders. IOW Sony and Philips were big
enough together, to overcome the market's inertia (except for that of a tiny
noisy minority who are still flogging the now-stinking dead horse identified
in point 1, more than 20 years later).

(3) CD was and is a technically superior product to the LP.

Just because there was an alliance to promote the CD doesn't prove or even
suggest that there was a conspiracy to pull the LP from the marketplace in
the US before it was commercially and technically justified.

Your original point was that lps disappeared because consumers
abandoned lps as soon as they knew about the technical superiority of
cd.

More or less. Besides sounding better, CDs are simply a more practical
product than LPs. It's more producable, more merchantahle, and more usable
in the hands of the consumer. LPs never achieved the producability and
reproducability of the CD, and there's really no way they could ever do so.
CD burners can produce fine-sounding copies and origionals in a few minutes
using inexpensive hardware and media that costs literally pennies a piece
with minimal skill requirements.

I think the cheapest new LP cutting lathe runs no faster than real time,
still costs $thousands and requires a lot of skill to get even barely
acceptable results.

BTW Stephen can you even find a public retail source of blank lacquer disks
for cutting lps with a published unit price?

Not so simple as that.

It never is, but the idea that there was a conspiracy to pull the LP from
the marketplace in the US before it was commercially and technically
justified is still looking for factual support. That doesn't seem to keep it
from being a cherished belief of many vinyl bigots. It's just another one of
their illusions, like superior sound I guess.