Steve, the article was a good summary of great audio and video milestones but there are a few points concerning the cassette, open reel, and VCR formats that could have used some clarification.
There's no question that Dolby B and chromium dioxide cassettes established the cassette format as a viable high fidelity format. But it would have been more appropriate to credit the Advent 200 instead of the Advent 201. The former was actually introduced in 1970 and had both Dolby B and provisions for chromium dioxide. As a side note, the Advent 200 had a Nakamichi-built transport with electronics designed by Henry Kloss. He felt that Nakamichi provided a transport that didn't meet his agreed-upon expectations so he replaced the 200 the following year with the 201, which had a Wollensak transport.
I would have better understood why there was no mention of Dolby C, Dolby S, or dbx (to say nothing of other challengers to Dolby B such as High Com II, ADRES, or Super-D) if you hadn't mentioned the open-reel format's superiority in high frequency reproduction. Generally, this is true. But by the time Teac introduced dbx to consumers in 1978, it was clear that later noise reduction circuits ushered in a new era because the cassette format's tape saturation issue was also being addressed. In fact, all the aforementioned noise reducers (accept for Dolby B, of course) do an exceptionally good job of allowing cassettes to resist high-frequency saturation. Since the early 80s, it has high-end cassette machines could routinely maintain flat response out to the highest audio frequencies at high levels. So high frequency saturation was no longer a real issue and neither was hiss. Dolby C and dbx were incorporated into quite a few machines and the last dbx units made by Marantz sold until the late 90s. At the same time, most people were only aware that the later noise reducers were more powerful than Dolby B. dbx and Sanyo's Super-D are the only two that allowed the cassette format to reproduce an honest 90+ dB of dynamic range.
Regarding open-reel masters, 15 ips was common during the 60s but 30 ips quickly became the standard by the 70s. The former already largely renders saturation a non-issue but the latter allows even quieter recordings.
It would be great if readers could be reminded that until 1983, VCR owners endured poor sound quality. It took Sony 7 years after Betamax's introduction to introduce the Beta Hi-Fi feature to provide hi-fi stereo soundtracks. JVC responded a year later with VHS Hi-Fi and the timing was especially smart on JVC's part because the 1984 Summer Olympics was being broadcasted in stereo. This brought a heightened awareness to general consumers.
Leonard
