Record companies defend their substitution of laser-read compact discs (CD’s) for the much less expensive traditional long-playing vinyl records in their catalogs by claiming that the audio market is ruled by consumer demand for ever-improved sound reproduction rather than by record manufacturers’ profit-motivated marketing decisions. But this claim cannot be true, because if it were true, then digital audiotape, which produces even better sound than CD’s, would be commercially available from these same record companies, but it is not.

12. Which of the following, if true, best explains how the record companies’ claim about the nature of the audio reproduction market could be true and digital audiotape nevertheless be unavailable for the commercial market?

(A) Most consumers prefer audiotape to long-playing records or CD’s because of the tape’s durability and compactness.

(B) Prototypes of digital audiotape have been used to make master tapes of some performances in recording studios.

(C) The manufacturing technology that underlies the commercial production of CD’s requires equipment very similar to that needed for commercial production of digital audiotape.

(D) Record companies have not yet solved several quality-control problems that have beset attempts to produce digital audiotape in commercial quantities.

(E) CD’s are more expensive than long-playing vinyl records by about the same ratio as digital audiotape cassettes would be more expensive than conventional cassettes.


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