TURN-ONS AND TURN-OFFS IN CURRENT HOME ENTERTAINMENT RELEASES : Excellent Good Fair Poor : COMPACT DISCS

“The Digital Domain: A Demonstration Disc.” Elektra. Remember the special-effects records that were all the rage during the early days of stereo, the ones with noises (jet planes to bouncing Ping-Pong balls) that let you marvel at how the sound moved from one speaker to another? To demonstrate the beauty of CDs, this disc revives some of those noises (with racquetball instead of Ping-Pong) and mixes them with several pieces of computerized music. The noises are entertaining, but there aren’t enough of them to compensate for the music, which is uneventful for most listeners. 1/2