Man I remember someone in college being the first in our fraternity to have this CD player. As cassette tape player audiophiles , we were so envious always going to his room to listen.
I brought one in 1982, and still have it, the laser packed up after the first year of ownership and was replaced by Sony. I did get it out of the box a couple of years ago and it was still working. It has a 'battleship build' quality to it.
Jointly developed with Philips who at the same time introduced the CD100. Credit is due to both manufacturers, although for some reason Americans firmly believe that Sony invented the CD technology, most of it came from the Dr. Neher Lab of Philips in The Netherlands.
I always knew that Phillips and Sony co-developed the technology. I also thought that Phillips had the first player, but I guess they were simultaneous with Sony.
I bought mine in 1982 with the whole stack system package consisting of record turntable, radio tuner and amp. As someone mentioned earlier, it came with a disc but for some reason I had two of them in my box. I still have everything and only recently had the CD unit serviced as the tray stopped opening. The grease they used in those days had hardened solid! It's all back and working and still sounds fantastic when you think how old it is. I have a more modern set up now but just can't see myself to letting the old thing go. Because it was always kept in a enclosed rack system with a glass front door, it's still in mint condition. To buy a CD when they eventually started to come out used to cost me £14, nearly a third of my weeks salary at the time. Forty years on I get a lot of my CDs now from charity shops and pay just 50p to £1 and still collecting. 😁
This is the first CD player I ever heard, I went with my parents to hear a demo of this unit at Marvin Electronics in Fort Worth, TX. That was March 1983 I think, come Christmas that year my Dad bought a Yamaha CD-1 instead.
I started engineering school in the fall of 1985. This was in Terre Haute Indiana, where one of the first CD pressing plants was built. I was told that the plant donated one of this very CD player to every radio station in town, including the one on the campus of my engineering school. I was a disc jockey at that station all four years. The Sony CD player served us well for a couple of years but the button to open the drawer kept failing. We repaired it over and over but finally gave up and bought two new CD players to replace it.
From a nostalgic and robustness point of view, I agree, but audio reproduction has made many improvements over the years. I love the new and old but my Technics SA-500 can't compare to my Onkyo integrated amplifier in terms of distortion and signal to noise ratio, etc.
I bought a Sony CDP-302 in 1985 for $400. It uses a linear rail motor to move the laser carriage. Tracks play instantly. I have had to lubricate the tray rails a couple of times bur it still works great.
I have an early Kenwood CD player...also has a "hot" output. So high we had to make a "pad" rca lead to bring the level down a few millivolts. I went inside it and found output level could be adjusted...but even at minimum it was still too high! Cheers from Australia. GREAT YT CHANNEL
This brings back many happy memories. My first CD player was a leter model but it had the same function set and the exact same display. I spent many nights in the low light of my student bedroom looking at that display as i listened to music.
In the UK the Philips CD100 was the first, You even got a disc to play on It, as there were none around to buy. It was "Now That's What I Call Music 4" a single disc exclusive to the CD100.
Had one of these, wasn't it a 14 bit design? Turned out that moving to 16 bit version later did not help the sound quality much. Frankly from the get-go I could not get the same audio feel from CDs that vinyl had, but being techie I assumed CDs would eventually produce real hifi. It sort of did in the end but only with a dedicated outboard DAC in my case. For some weird reason I'm finding high bitrate MP3 or AAC more satisfying than CDs were. While on the topic, some of my mates had budget integrated CD players that used a single channel DAC to decode L and R channels. If you switched to mono the treble would slush out due to phasing problems.
this thign was mde before i was born and it still looks modern! I remember when we had Made in Japan things.. All about quality and technology and nice colours
The aesthetics of this early Sony model look so much more modern to me than those of the Philips CD-100. While the Philips reminds me more of an early Laserdisc from the late '70s, toploader with no VCF display but just two rows of leds, the Sony design would not be out of place in the late '80s if the CD had been introduced at that time.
Nice unit! One thing this player has that I have never seen in others is the relay/solenoid driven touch plate controls. Pretty cool back in the day and probably expensive to implement! By the way, Sony was still producing top notch CD players in the 1990's. My current player is a CDP-XA7ES in champagne finish with all copper chassis, which retailed for $3000 in the mid to late 1990s..
Anti-shock would be the most interesting part, and you skipped over it as if it were nothing. Electronic anti-skip buffers appeared on portable players only a decade later, at least they were heavily advertised at that time, so what would constitute a 1983 anti-shock system? Without re-compressing to a lossy format, one second of PCM takes 176 KB, which is peanuts today, but the first IBM PC came out with 16 KB RAM (!), costing $1.5K. Its maximum addressable memory was 1 MB and no one thought that a personal computer would ever need more memory. So, 176 KB at that time was huge, and this is just one second. Three second buffer would be half a megabyte!
That's probably one of the reason why this unit was kind of pricey. 528k of memory, it's much more than 95% of the RAM amount available in computers of the area
That makes it seem like a big mistake to include it in this machine. They could have reduced the price and likely no one would have missed the anti-shock feature.
This machine had no such thing I can assure you of that being an Ex-Sony Engineer that used to repair these. The anti-shock switch connected to the base of Transistor 307 and would ground it, this in turn would add extra current to the tracking servo (or not depending on position of the switch) so vibrations from the environment would not cause it to skip as the servos could use more current and thus would be stronger and resist vibrations, but this feature would actually cause discs that were damaged to skip and that's why the switch was fitted. The unit had 16k of ram built inside the decoder chip in IC501 to decode the disc data before being passed to the A/D chip. Electronic skip protection you talk about did not appear until the mid 90's and was around 3 seconds as the ram was so expensive along with supporting circuitry. Back in 1982 when this CD was brought out it would have been almost impossible to build such a thing without it costing a few years wages as the supporting electronics needed back then to go with the RAM would have been a lot. Back in 1982 the Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer had 48k of RAM but actually had 64k of RAM all for £175 so about $230 in US money but would not have been fast enough to buffer music.
@@ianknight9589 That's interesting, thank you for your answer! As for the skipping you mention when the CD is damaged, is it because of the fact that the servo takes the scratch for a strong vibration and deviates to compensate so much that it ends up in the adjacent track? I'm a student in Electronic and Computer engineering (in low-level programming, electronics and in IC making through HDL), so it interests me quite a lot. I love to know how things were done in the past, how the engineers were dealing with the limitations back then.
@@benjib2691 Keep up the good work. I think there was a few reasons why it would skip, mainly because it was then slow to react with extra current going through the coils when it needed to react quickly this would cause it to jump onto the next track where it would just align itself onto that track and carry on. As with all CD players they were basic as in the laser would hit the disc and be reflected back to 6 diodes, 4 grouped together into a square (A to D diodes) to read the data and focus and two other diodes one each side of the square for the tracking (E & F diodes) the data would be read off the disc and sent through the IC's and straight into the A/D convertor. It used Reed Solomon code for error correction but this was basic to correct the data being read off so the music was good and could handle small damage or scratches in certain directions (Scratches that weren't circular around the disc) but didn't check for time codes or where it was on the disc and thus it didn't actually know it had jumped a track. So although the anti skip feature was good if you were playing loud music or using it at a party with good discs it caused issues with damaged discs where it was slower to respond. The early players mean't we had to align the laser using an oscilloscope to get the tracking, focus and amplitude spot on, I was glad when the KSS-210 laser came along where is set itself up LOL and no need for manual calibration.
I remember waiting for the Sony shop to open on the first day of selling this player, very expensive at the time but I really wanted one. Sadly after 1 month it developed a fault, went back to Sony for repair, took 1 month to return. I cannot remember what the fault was but a large IC was replaced. The same fault happened again about 4 weeks later, same fault. This time the IC was replaced by a completely different one. It remained fault free, sold it 8 years later still in mint condition. I don't recall mine making so much noise on CD removal.
Somehow Diamonds department store in downtown Phoenix managed to get one of these in stock in early 1983 and it was amazing to listen to connected to a high-end Sony rack system. No noise, instant track access and those soft touch controls with the click. Smooth, glassy, transparent sound compared to any turntable or cassette deck in the $500 price range, and NO noise. The only thing I’d heard before that came close was reel to reel tape. It would be another 4 years before I scored a player for myself. They dropped in price pretty dramatically starting in 1987 or so.
I couldn’t run to one of these - they’re very collectible now. Instead I bought my second Marantz CD-54, which is a late first gen CD player, using the very desirable Phillips CDM-01 cast metal transport. I had one back in the 80s, and always liked the sound, and the ‘battleship’ build quality, and I still enjoy it immensely now.
I have a Harman Kardon HD500 cd player that also has no stop button and I learned that if you hold the pause button for a couple seconds that performs the "stop" function.
I was the Buyer of a Hi-Fi shop and a Sony main dealer. They were great first machines and I bought a couple for myself. I didn't keep them but a great first buy. The CD players all got better until production got moved to other countries. I still have a couple of the better machines made in Japan and well built.
there is no better in case of a digital media - the only problematic place is the DAC and that's why digital outputs exist in fact there is no difference between a 10 dollar or a 10000 player for audiofools
I was an early adopter. Cost me a month's pay. I think my first CD was Paul McCartney and Wings followed by Jackson Browne. I was obsessed with digital tech. Even had a Commodore computer with a cassette deck for storage.
In '85 my parents got a brand new sterero for the living room, it had a turntable, dual audio cassette deck and CD player, my parents probably rewired the plugs in wrong as they never got the CD to work.
Hadn't heard the thing about the 101 meaning a five out of ten. When I went to Sony Tech School in Atlanta in the late 80's, I was told by a Sony tech that the "101" corresponded to the release date of October 1 here in America.
About the anti-shock device: i had several decks and portable cd players form this time (Sony, Philips and Technics to name a few) and this anti-shock system was, as far as I can remember, a BBD circuit inserted in the playback line allowing to buffer up to 5sec of signal as a sort of digital shock absorber. The drawback being that due to the technology used (the same as on solid state echo or reverb pedals of the late 70s) it tended to deteriorate the S/N ratio and the bandwith in high frequencies.
This machine had no such thing I can assure you of that being an Ex-Sony Engineer that used to repair these. The anti-shock switch connected to the base of Transistor 307 and would ground it, this in turn would add extra current to the tracking servo (or not depending on position of the switch) so vibrations from the environment would not cause it to skip as the servos could use more current and thus would be stronger and resist vibrations, but this feature would actually cause discs that were damaged to skip and that's why the switch was fitted. The unit had 16k of ram built inside the decoder chip in IC501 to decode the disc data before being passed to the A/D chip. Electronic skip protection you talk about did not appear until the mid 90's and was around 3 seconds as the ram was so expensive along with supporting circuitry. Back in 1982 when this CD was brought out it would have been almost impossible to build such a thing without it costing a few years wages as the supporting electronics needed back then to go with the RAM would have been a lot.
The accessory connector output the CD subcodes. There was a short time window where you could get an external CD+G decoder for karaoke that would plug in (Sony CDG-3000, c. 1986), before they became integrated.
Bought one new in 84....the 2nd gen models had just come out so the 1st gen models were on sale for half price....that thing is a tank ! It was so hard finding cds back then....my first cd was Christopher Cross....still have it....I later sold my 101 when the 3rd gen models came out....CDP 302....wish I had kept that 101
About the buttons and the clicking sound. The buttons are not touch-capacitive. They poke at a short throw membrane keyboard, which has very little mechanical and no audible feedback. The clicking sound is actually made by a relay. The relay isn't connected to anything, its sole purpose is to make a clicking sound when a button is pressed. It's even labeled "CLICK SOUND" in the schematic. Speaking of audible feedback, there is a "BEEP ON/OFF" switch on the underside of the unit. You can have it make a beep when it receives a command from the remote control.
Remembering me that i changed lot's of the famous bx ic, we were strictly ordered to do so on all machines that came in to service, sony did this of course free of charge. A few modifications more and you have a reference class cd-player, still in 2021!
Antishock actually reads and saves the information on the disc a few seconds in advance, so if the player gets jolted, the saved information will play and the listener won't notice that the CD skipped.
Not on this cd player. The amount of memory needed for that would be way too expensive back in the day. Remember that in 1982 the Commodore 64 was introduced, with 64 kB of RAM. A 1 second buffer of CD quality audio already requires the combined memory of 3 of those computers.
I don't think any Sony CD players ever had the TDA1541, Philips developed that DAC. The CDP-101 has a CX20017 DAC if I remember, that was made by Sony.
Still looks very modern, I still have a Philips CD 630 player, from 1990, top of the Philips range at the time, still all fully working, including remote control & connected up to a Sony separates system.
Interesting to note - where's the STOP button! I have looked and admired these things for years as they are a very important first step in the world of hi-fi - but there's no STOP!!!
@@SkyFiAudio Yes that must have been it! My first CD player was a 1986 D-50 Mk2 Discman - and it had a stop button, they must have figured it out by then 😏
@@arnolddill Thank you, I kind of assumed there had to be a way, several presses of a key, key combination or something like that, but I'm glad you cleared that out.
We shot this video a bit back, but I'm quite sure it wasn't plain plastic. I believe it was a metal/composite as they used the better to the best when building these first generation units. And it shows as here we are in 2022 and they STILL work!
My first CD player was a Hitachi DA-5000, similar design to this one, got it in 1985 or so. I'd already bought myself a Sanyo rack system in 1984, but it didn't come with the CD player, so had to pick up the Hitachi later. The Hitachi had a slimmer profile case than this Sony did, and the earlier Hitachis. Sounded phenomenal and lasted until 1997 or so, when I sold my rack system including the player. I used to show off my rack system with four speakers running, extra tweeters, and played the first batch of RUSH CDs to friends of mine, and those CDs sounded amazing on that system via the Hitachi. No subwoofer required. Anybody that tells you those early CDs didn't sound phenomenal on a good system are full of beans, the Rush CDs at least, sounded great.
This player has hot output because early CDs were mastered somewhat more properly at first...only somewhat. Digital has a top volume shelf that causes "clipping" if a recording is too loud for the disc. "Mastered somewhat more properly...only somewhat"... Early CDs were recorded very quietly from old album tapes, so all the spikes (like drum strikes or vocal jumps) won't be louder than the format's top limit. "The CD Loudness Wars" came after remasters of session tapes (not album tapes) began. Session tapes sound far better than album tapes, which could be several generations of copies down from a session tape--each generation made away from session tapes get more dull and hissy. Session tapes are most dynamic and clear, so every volume spike is perfect as it should be. What "The Loudness Wars" did--old and new recordings alike squashed all those dynamic spikes that give humans our "emotional connections" to performances. You don't notice that the artist is playing intentionally louder or quieter to invoke the feelings they want to.
Understand what you are saying however 2 V RMS (MSB ; line out) standard output for all Sony unbalanced digital audio equipment to avoid the poor signal to noise ratio of the input amplifiers on power amps and cassette decks from some manufactures!
"Not a, you know super high quality CD player". It was top of the range in 1982 with only a Marantz/Philips model for competition. And it was built like a tank. I wanted one but I had to settle for the Philips.
Ironically the Philips one (CD-100) proved to have better performance and longevity. It’s now very highly prized by collectors and most are still in good working order - More so than the Sony. Back then it was seen as a basic model lacking in features compared to the Sony (possibly why you’d have preferred the Sony?). How perceptions can change with the passage of time !
Bought mine in mid 80's I loved the convenience the dead quiet of it perfect speed and you can just jump from track to any other track also it was completely immune to any type of vibration,i remember being amazed that i could put the player right ontop my speaker.the only problem was the sound , it was very cold mechanical and emotionless, I could listen to vinyl all day but couldn't get through more than few songs on the cd player.when I went to college I would do cd vs vinyl listening tests and the listeners would always pick the vinyl as more musical.
You've just explained why analogue is more appealing to humans; People hear AND FEEL all of the recording's dynamics properly. The host said this player has a very loud output. Early CDs were mastered very quietly to allow wider dynamic range within the format's volume limits. By the 2000s, we had "CD loudness wars", where drum strikes and vocal jumps are squashed to being up overall volume. It took all emotion and feel out of music.
It's cold because it doesn't have rumble, hiss and record pop. Rip your vinyl to cd and then play it back in the CDP-101 and you won't be able to tell the difference.
When my dad was in the army back in 1982 one of his army buddies wives was in a car accident and used her insurance money to buy a huge stereo system and she had a CD player it was the first time I ever seen anything like that it was so expensive it was ridiculous I couldn't afford a CD player until sometime in the '90s
I got mine in 1983 and I had only 10 CDs for about a year; at $20 a piece, it was tough to keep up at that time. That player was built like tank, and played well for about 10 years! I had it connected to a Fisher 500B FM tube receiver..................
The anti-shock was meant to control skipping while heavy footed people were walking around. The early CD players skipped the way some record players did. Many cd players after 1990 had the ant-shock built in (along with much better transports in the first place).
Holy smokes! I've seen this CD player in photos but only the front. I was definitely *not* expecting to see that absolutely gigantic transformer and heatsink. I would have liked to know how much power that took. I didn't see any sticker with the watt rating. Cool stuff.
HEY... the reason the volume may seem "hot" is because CD mastering was new at the time. ALL Compact Discs were normalized under 0db to prevent clipping (max -6db without compression... maybe?) So the output had to be LOUD or consumer's would have to have their volume knobs at 8 (out of 11) just to hear anything at a normal level. Today, Most Music is compressed and maxed at 0db (any louder, there's digital clipping). ALSO, you mentioned Philips... should have mentioned how different the laser transports were between the two.
My first CD player was a Denon in 1990. a hifi magazine named it the best CD player in the budget class, it cost the equivalent of 200 $ or 2000 Swedish kronor
I think the "Anti Shock" is so the music will still play even if the unit gets bumped. If anyone remembers the CD walkmans/discman, many of them had that too. I have no idea what that technology is doing on a home desktop unit though. Maybe the early units were extra sensitive to vibrations from your base if you're playing your music loud. . . just a guess. A crude explanation of how that works is basically the laser reads a minute or so ahead of what the speakers are actually playing, if the unit gets disrupted/bumped the laser will stop and re-read that section while the music keeps playing uninterrupted. I believe Sony eventually patented the name "G-Shock". I have no idea what the Auto Pause does though. Is there an owners manual for it out there somewhere online? They would surly talk about that stuff in their. I did some very quick Googleing and came up with the explanation of "the music will automatically pause when the headphones are disconnected". . . . is that it?
Anti Shock on this unit does not use a memory buffer. Memory was silly expensive at the time. What it does is adjust the tracking servo loop, to react faster and follow the track on the CD more precisely. The downside is that it gets more sensitive to dirt and scratches on the CD. Auto Pause puts the unit in pause mode when the next song is just about to start. It's for situations where you don't want the next song to start playing automatically, e.g. karaoke and radio stations. In the service manual it's mentioned as "Auto pause function provided for sing-along enjoyment."
The first CD player I saw was quite something else, about 2,000 in todays dollars. Could not believe the sound, salesman stomping on a CD to show how "indestructible" it was.
I remember going in to a Video Concepts store and looking at a Sony Cd player in 1984 and the sales guy asked the other sales guy for their demo cd (Twisted Sister) and he would put it on the ground and stomp on it and put it in the player and it worked.
I worked at the Sony Service Center in Costa Mesa, CA. Which SSC were you at? I started there in August, 1983 - the same month the CD player shown in the video was made. One was just plopped on my bench and I was told "fix it". Uh, yeah. How? What is this thing? Just joking, I knew what a CD player was but since it was brand new tech, I'd never worked on one or had any kind of training on how to repair it. I got up to speed pretty fast, but it was tough at first. They had a lot of issues with the servo driver IC's, IIRC (it's been a while...) and the one sent to KLOS here in L.A. had a problem with skipping. I actually called them at the time and told them what was wrong, and to send it in for repair. I owned one myself, which I traded for a car to another Sony employee at the time (funny story) but I got the better end of the deal. The car was junk, the CDP-101 was great for its time. I sold it years ago, probably in the 90s sometime. Remember the BU-1C laser base unit in the CDP-302 and others? That simplified repair a lot - went through hundreds of those over the years. I still have one new in the box.
@@1hit1ders ha, good times though. I worked for SES in Staines UK that was part owned by Sony and part owned by 3 directors. In the same building as the Sony warehouse and used to love buying graded items.
Beautiful machine. The styling is very much like the Hi-Fi Stereo Super Betamax machines (like the SL-HF950), including the Open/Close button recessed into the top lip of the tray.
Man that thing looks brand new. This was my first cd player. Used it for about twenty years. Have a great day!
@Hi-Fi Haven Welcome to the club. The sound is superb!
Yep, what a beauty.
can you tell me anything about the quality for your past 20 years?? did you run into any type of problems?
I still have my Sony CDP707ESD player in my system purchased in 1988
Man I remember someone in college being the first in our fraternity to have this CD player. As cassette tape player audiophiles , we were so envious always going to his room to listen.
I brought one in 1982, and still have it, the laser packed up after the first year of ownership and was replaced by Sony. I did get it out of the box a couple of years ago and it was still working. It has a 'battleship build' quality to it.
Jointly developed with Philips who at the same time introduced the CD100. Credit is due to both manufacturers, although for some reason Americans firmly believe that Sony invented the CD technology, most of it came from the Dr. Neher Lab of Philips in The Netherlands.
Actually laserdisc and CD technology were conceived in the United States and then further developed by Philips in Holland.
I always knew that Phillips and Sony co-developed the technology. I also thought that Phillips had the first player, but I guess they were simultaneous with Sony.
"reset" is the STOP button!
I bought mine in 1982 with the whole stack system package consisting of record turntable, radio tuner and amp. As someone mentioned earlier, it came with a disc but for some reason I had two of them in my box. I still have everything and only recently had the CD unit serviced as the tray stopped opening. The grease they used in those days had hardened solid! It's all back and working and still sounds fantastic when you think how old it is. I have a more modern set up now but just can't see myself to letting the old thing go. Because it was always kept in a enclosed rack system with a glass front door, it's still in mint condition. To buy a CD when they eventually started to come out used to cost me £14, nearly a third of my weeks salary at the time. Forty years on I get a lot of my CDs now from charity shops and pay just 50p to £1 and still collecting. 😁
💪
It’s a Sony time machine, I love it! Thanks for sharing. $700 back in 1983 was serious money!
This is the first CD player I ever heard, I went with my parents to hear a demo of this unit at Marvin Electronics in Fort Worth, TX. That was March 1983 I think, come Christmas that year my Dad bought a Yamaha CD-1 instead.
changing song in a second in 1982 was probably revolutionary or cool
You could do that with 8-track tape or open reel, although it usually wasn’t right at the start of the song
Still have my Sony CD player from 1987. Still works.
I started engineering school in the fall of 1985. This was in Terre Haute Indiana, where one of the first CD pressing plants was built. I was told that the plant donated one of this very CD player to every radio station in town, including the one on the campus of my engineering school. I was a disc jockey at that station all four years. The Sony CD player served us well for a couple of years but the button to open the drawer kept failing. We repaired it over and over but finally gave up and bought two new CD players to replace it.
Nothing can beat 80-90s audio hi-fi stuff
Most stuff after 2000 can beat it.
@@mcplutt Like?
From a nostalgic and robustness point of view, I agree, but audio reproduction has made many improvements over the years. I love the new and old but my Technics SA-500 can't compare to my Onkyo integrated amplifier in terms of distortion and signal to noise ratio, etc.
Except the good modern stuff. 😬
@@mcplutt Name me one tape deck made after 2000 that is better than anything made in the 80s and 90s. Receivers also went down in quality.
I bought a Sony CDP-302 in 1985 for $400. It uses a linear rail motor to move the laser carriage. Tracks play instantly. I have had to lubricate the tray rails a couple of times bur it still works great.
I want to buy
Absolutely fascinating! This is one of the coolest audio / HiFi channels!
80s hi-fi tech is just so .... Class
IT would be awesome if Sony Re-releasing this model! 40 years anniversary model 😎
LOL no, CDs are dead.
@@JohnSmith-zl8rz lol no
I have an early Kenwood CD player...also has a "hot" output. So high we had to make a "pad" rca lead to bring the level down a few millivolts. I went inside it and found output level could be adjusted...but even at minimum it was still too high! Cheers from Australia. GREAT YT CHANNEL
I walked into my local stereo shop - The first CD players were $1,000
This brings back many happy memories. My first CD player was a leter model but it had the same function set and the exact same display. I spent many nights in the low light of my student bedroom looking at that display as i listened to music.
In the UK the Philips CD100 was the first, You even got a disc to play on It, as there were none around to buy. It was "Now That's What I Call Music 4" a single disc exclusive to the CD100.
Had one of these, wasn't it a 14 bit design? Turned out that moving to 16 bit version later did not help the sound quality much. Frankly from the get-go I could not get the same audio feel from CDs that vinyl had, but being techie I assumed CDs would eventually produce real hifi. It sort of did in the end but only with a dedicated outboard DAC in my case. For some weird reason I'm finding high bitrate MP3 or AAC more satisfying than CDs were.
While on the topic, some of my mates had budget integrated CD players that used a single channel DAC to decode L and R channels. If you switched to mono the treble would slush out due to phasing problems.
@@captaincrunch5201 Compressed Red Book CD's, And now modern Brickwalled ones are even worse, says It all. I'll stick with playing Vinyl.
this thign was mde before i was born and it still looks modern! I remember when we had Made in Japan things.. All about quality and technology and nice colours
The aesthetics of this early Sony model look so much more modern to me than those of the Philips CD-100. While the Philips reminds me more of an early Laserdisc from the late '70s, toploader with no VCF display but just two rows of leds, the Sony design would not be out of place in the late '80s if the CD had been introduced at that time.
Nice unit! One thing this player has that I have never seen in others is the relay/solenoid driven touch plate controls. Pretty cool back in the day and probably expensive to implement!
By the way, Sony was still producing top notch CD players in the 1990's. My current player is a CDP-XA7ES in champagne finish with all copper chassis, which retailed for $3000 in the mid to late 1990s..
Anti-shock would be the most interesting part, and you skipped over it as if it were nothing. Electronic anti-skip buffers appeared on portable players only a decade later, at least they were heavily advertised at that time, so what would constitute a 1983 anti-shock system? Without re-compressing to a lossy format, one second of PCM takes 176 KB, which is peanuts today, but the first IBM PC came out with 16 KB RAM (!), costing $1.5K. Its maximum addressable memory was 1 MB and no one thought that a personal computer would ever need more memory. So, 176 KB at that time was huge, and this is just one second. Three second buffer would be half a megabyte!
That's probably one of the reason why this unit was kind of pricey. 528k of memory, it's much more than 95% of the RAM amount available in computers of the area
That makes it seem like a big mistake to include it in this machine. They could have reduced the price and likely no one would have missed the anti-shock feature.
This machine had no such thing I can assure you of that being an Ex-Sony Engineer that used to repair these. The anti-shock switch connected to the base of Transistor 307 and would ground it, this in turn would add extra current to the tracking servo (or not depending on position of the switch) so vibrations from the environment would not cause it to skip as the servos could use more current and thus would be stronger and resist vibrations, but this feature would actually cause discs that were damaged to skip and that's why the switch was fitted. The unit had 16k of ram built inside the decoder chip in IC501 to decode the disc data before being passed to the A/D chip. Electronic skip protection you talk about did not appear until the mid 90's and was around 3 seconds as the ram was so expensive along with supporting circuitry. Back in 1982 when this CD was brought out it would have been almost impossible to build such a thing without it costing a few years wages as the supporting electronics needed back then to go with the RAM would have been a lot. Back in 1982 the Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer had 48k of RAM but actually had 64k of RAM all for £175 so about $230 in US money but would not have been fast enough to buffer music.
@@ianknight9589 That's interesting, thank you for your answer! As for the skipping you mention when the CD is damaged, is it because of the fact that the servo takes the scratch for a strong vibration and deviates to compensate so much that it ends up in the adjacent track? I'm a student in Electronic and Computer engineering (in low-level programming, electronics and in IC making through HDL), so it interests me quite a lot. I love to know how things were done in the past, how the engineers were dealing with the limitations back then.
@@benjib2691 Keep up the good work. I think there was a few reasons why it would skip, mainly because it was then slow to react with extra current going through the coils when it needed to react quickly this would cause it to jump onto the next track where it would just align itself onto that track and carry on. As with all CD players they were basic as in the laser would hit the disc and be reflected back to 6 diodes, 4 grouped together into a square (A to D diodes) to read the data and focus and two other diodes one each side of the square for the tracking (E & F diodes) the data would be read off the disc and sent through the IC's and straight into the A/D convertor. It used Reed Solomon code for error correction but this was basic to correct the data being read off so the music was good and could handle small damage or scratches in certain directions (Scratches that weren't circular around the disc) but didn't check for time codes or where it was on the disc and thus it didn't actually know it had jumped a track. So although the anti skip feature was good if you were playing loud music or using it at a party with good discs it caused issues with damaged discs where it was slower to respond. The early players mean't we had to align the laser using an oscilloscope to get the tracking, focus and amplitude spot on, I was glad when the KSS-210 laser came along where is set itself up LOL and no need for manual calibration.
Really cool. Simple. Uncomplicated. They put out a warmer sound versus the much later models.
I remember waiting for the Sony shop to open on the first day of selling this player, very expensive at the time but I really wanted one.
Sadly after 1 month it developed a fault, went back to Sony for repair, took 1 month to return. I cannot remember what the fault was but a large IC was replaced. The same fault happened again about 4 weeks later, same fault. This time the IC was replaced by a completely different one. It remained fault free, sold it 8 years later still in mint condition.
I don't recall mine making so much noise on CD removal.
Somehow Diamonds department store in downtown Phoenix managed to get one of these in stock in early 1983 and it was amazing to listen to connected to a high-end Sony rack system. No noise, instant track access and those soft touch controls with the click. Smooth, glassy, transparent sound compared to any turntable or cassette deck in the $500 price range, and NO noise. The only thing I’d heard before that came close was reel to reel tape.
It would be another 4 years before I scored a player for myself. They dropped in price pretty dramatically starting in 1987 or so.
It may be that we have a different view of plastic today than we had in 1982
Right. I think Plastic gives it a more "futuristic" look.
@@Trance88 Plastic manufacturing has come a very long way since then, too.
This was well explained. Thank you. I learned more than I thought I would about the first Sony CD player, I mean it had a heat sink?! Wow.
Even today, its design looks amazing!
My exact thoughts, really sleek, not that dated for a nearly 40-year device.
Classic Sony is the best
I couldn’t run to one of these - they’re very collectible now. Instead I bought my second Marantz CD-54, which is a late first gen CD player, using the very desirable Phillips CDM-01 cast metal transport. I had one back in the 80s, and always liked the sound, and the ‘battleship’ build quality, and I still enjoy it immensely now.
I have a Harman Kardon HD500 cd player that also has no stop button and I learned that if you hold the pause button for a couple seconds that performs the "stop" function.
Great review !
Very professionally explained
I was the Buyer of a Hi-Fi shop and a Sony main dealer. They were great first machines and I bought a couple for myself. I didn't keep them but a great first buy. The CD players all got better until production got moved to other countries. I still have a couple of the better machines made in Japan and well built.
there is no better in case of a digital media - the only problematic place is the DAC and that's why digital outputs exist
in fact there is no difference between a 10 dollar or a 10000 player for audiofools
I was an early adopter. Cost me a month's pay. I think my first CD was Paul McCartney and Wings followed by Jackson Browne. I was obsessed with digital tech. Even had a Commodore computer with a cassette deck for storage.
They were very expensive back then!
In '85 my parents got a brand new sterero for the living room, it had a turntable, dual audio cassette deck and CD player, my parents probably rewired the plugs in wrong as they never got the CD to work.
Am I the only one who really loves the design of that player? it looks fantastic !
Not at all, I also think it doesn't look like it's almost 40 yr old at all.
Hadn't heard the thing about the 101 meaning a five out of ten. When I went to Sony Tech School in Atlanta in the late 80's, I was told by a Sony tech that the "101" corresponded to the release date of October 1 here in America.
About the anti-shock device: i had several decks and portable cd players form this time (Sony, Philips and Technics to name a few) and this anti-shock system was, as far as I can remember, a BBD circuit inserted in the playback line allowing to buffer up to 5sec of signal as a sort of digital shock absorber. The drawback being that due to the technology used (the same as on solid state echo or reverb pedals of the late 70s) it tended to deteriorate the S/N ratio and the bandwith in high frequencies.
This machine had no such thing I can assure you of that being an Ex-Sony Engineer that used to repair these. The anti-shock switch connected to the base of Transistor 307 and would ground it, this in turn would add extra current to the tracking servo (or not depending on position of the switch) so vibrations from the environment would not cause it to skip as the servos could use more current and thus would be stronger and resist vibrations, but this feature would actually cause discs that were damaged to skip and that's why the switch was fitted. The unit had 16k of ram built inside the decoder chip in IC501 to decode the disc data before being passed to the A/D chip. Electronic skip protection you talk about did not appear until the mid 90's and was around 3 seconds as the ram was so expensive along with supporting circuitry. Back in 1982 when this CD was brought out it would have been almost impossible to build such a thing without it costing a few years wages as the supporting electronics needed back then to go with the RAM would have been a lot.
The accessory connector output the CD subcodes. There was a short time window where you could get an external CD+G decoder for karaoke that would plug in (Sony CDG-3000, c. 1986), before they became integrated.
A Japanese thing 🇯🇵
In Australia I never saw a cd player until 1988 but my mate didn't talk about it.
when did cd players got big what year
Bought one new in 84....the 2nd gen models had just come out so the 1st gen models were on sale for half price....that thing is a tank ! It was so hard finding cds back then....my first cd was Christopher Cross....still have it....I later sold my 101 when the 3rd gen models came out....CDP 302....wish I had kept that 101
About the buttons and the clicking sound. The buttons are not touch-capacitive. They poke at a short throw membrane keyboard, which has very little mechanical and no audible feedback. The clicking sound is actually made by a relay. The relay isn't connected to anything, its sole purpose is to make a clicking sound when a button is pressed. It's even labeled "CLICK SOUND" in the schematic.
Speaking of audible feedback, there is a "BEEP ON/OFF" switch on the underside of the unit. You can have it make a beep when it receives a command from the remote control.
Remembering me that i changed lot's of the famous bx ic, we were strictly ordered to do so on all machines that came in to service, sony did this of course free of charge.
A few modifications more and you have a reference class cd-player, still in 2021!
Antishock actually reads and saves the information on the disc a few seconds in advance, so if the player gets jolted, the saved information will play and the listener won't notice that the CD skipped.
Not on this cd player. The amount of memory needed for that would be way too expensive back in the day. Remember that in 1982 the Commodore 64 was introduced, with 64 kB of RAM. A 1 second buffer of CD quality audio already requires the combined memory of 3 of those computers.
At 176KB/sec, a three second buffer’s worth of SRAM would have easily cost as much as that whole player.
Wow, that looks like a player from the late 90's!! Ahead of its time!
80s design was just superior.
@@thefreestylefrEaK It look like it said it was made 7-84 on the sticker on the back
@@thefreestylefrEaK
I said it "looks" like a player from the 90s! (ie, it looks ahead of its time for an 80s player). Doh..
Man growing up you never noticed the clamping setting the disc. Just it was slow. Damn 90’s kids were so impatient.
I favor the older CDP's with the TDA 1541 DAC chips. They sound so sweet!
I don't think any Sony CD players ever had the TDA1541, Philips developed that DAC. The CDP-101 has a CX20017 DAC if I remember, that was made by Sony.
Still looks very modern, I still have a Philips CD 630 player, from 1990, top of the Philips range at the time, still all fully working, including remote control & connected up to a Sony separates system.
Interesting to note - where's the STOP button! I have looked and admired these things for years as they are a very important first step in the world of hi-fi - but there's no STOP!!!
LOL right? They figured you would never "stop" listening!
@@SkyFiAudio Yes that must have been it! My first CD player was a 1986 D-50 Mk2 Discman - and it had a stop button, they must have figured it out by then 😏
It’s the button top left marked RESET.
@@arnolddill Cool, thanks for the info.
@@arnolddill Thank you, I kind of assumed there had to be a way, several presses of a key, key combination or something like that, but I'm glad you cleared that out.
I bought my first CD player in 1987 from Rat Shack I still have it and it works well . Newer models sound a lot smoother and more natural
What is the material of the disc tray? Is it plastic also or is it some kind of metal/composite material like in the great ES series later?
We shot this video a bit back, but I'm quite sure it wasn't plain plastic. I believe it was a metal/composite as they used the better to the best when building these first generation units. And it shows as here we are in 2022 and they STILL work!
Kool unit you allways do nice
Thank you!!
My first CD player was a Hitachi DA-5000, similar design to this one, got it in 1985 or so. I'd already bought myself a Sanyo rack system in 1984, but
it didn't come with the CD player, so had to pick up the Hitachi later. The Hitachi had a slimmer profile case than this Sony did, and the earlier Hitachis. Sounded phenomenal
and lasted until 1997 or so, when I sold my rack system including the player. I used to show off my rack system with four speakers running, extra tweeters, and
played the first batch of RUSH CDs to friends of mine, and those CDs sounded amazing on that system via the Hitachi. No subwoofer required. Anybody that
tells you those early CDs didn't sound phenomenal on a good system are full of beans, the Rush CDs at least, sounded great.
Never owned one of these.Bought A Pioneer in late '85.loved these things ever since.lol!!
This player has hot output because early CDs were mastered somewhat more properly at first...only somewhat. Digital has a top volume shelf that causes "clipping" if a recording is too loud for the disc.
"Mastered somewhat more properly...only somewhat"...
Early CDs were recorded very quietly from old album tapes, so all the spikes (like drum strikes or vocal jumps) won't be louder than the format's top limit.
"The CD Loudness Wars" came after remasters of session tapes (not album tapes) began. Session tapes sound far better than album tapes, which could be several generations of copies down from a session tape--each generation made away from session tapes get more dull and hissy. Session tapes are most dynamic and clear, so every volume spike is perfect as it should be. What "The Loudness Wars" did--old and new recordings alike squashed all those dynamic spikes that give humans our "emotional connections" to performances. You don't notice that the artist is playing intentionally louder or quieter to invoke the feelings they want to.
Understand what you are saying however
2 V RMS (MSB ; line out) standard output for all Sony unbalanced digital audio equipment to avoid the poor signal to noise ratio of the input amplifiers on power amps and cassette decks from some manufactures!
Amazing !! So beautiful !! I would love to have one of that !!
When I went to Osaka I was in an used audio store, the owner recommended me this CD player but I didn't know that was the first CD player until now.
"Not a, you know super high quality CD player". It was top of the range in 1982 with only a Marantz/Philips model for competition. And it was built like a tank. I wanted one but I had to settle for the Philips.
Ironically the Philips one (CD-100) proved to have better performance and longevity. It’s now very highly prized by collectors and most are still in good working order - More so than the Sony.
Back then it was seen as a basic model lacking in features compared to the Sony (possibly why you’d have preferred the Sony?). How perceptions can change with the passage of time !
I have a Red Sony D-50 first portable compact disc player still playing perfect.
Bought mine in mid 80's I loved the convenience the dead quiet of it perfect speed and you can just jump from track to any other track also it was completely immune to any type of vibration,i remember being amazed that i could put the player right ontop my speaker.the only problem was the sound , it was very cold mechanical and emotionless, I could listen to vinyl all day but couldn't get through more than few songs on the cd player.when I went to college I would do cd vs vinyl listening tests and the listeners would always pick the vinyl as more musical.
You've just explained why analogue is more appealing to humans; People hear AND FEEL all of the recording's dynamics properly.
The host said this player has a very loud output. Early CDs were mastered very quietly to allow wider dynamic range within the format's volume limits. By the 2000s, we had "CD loudness wars", where drum strikes and vocal jumps are squashed to being up overall volume. It took all emotion and feel out of music.
It's cold because it doesn't have rumble, hiss and record pop. Rip your vinyl to cd and then play it back in the CDP-101 and you won't be able to tell the difference.
I love old technologies, sad i probably never gonna have one of these.
I really love this style of video. If I could have one wish it would be this style of video.
I bought that in May 1983 for 2350 DM. I still own it. It lives retired in my livingroom now.
I was hoping for a tear down... But great video👍
When my dad was in the army back in 1982 one of his army buddies wives was in a car accident and used her insurance money to buy a huge stereo system and she had a CD player it was the first time I ever seen anything like that it was so expensive it was ridiculous I couldn't afford a CD player until sometime in the '90s
I got mine in 1983 and I had only 10 CDs for about a year; at $20 a piece, it was tough to keep up at that time. That player was built like tank, and played well for about 10 years! I had it connected to a Fisher 500B FM tube receiver..................
I feel like i recognize this from my local hi-if store back in the day.
A piece of legend!
Very good video mate thanks👍
No one can deny the elegance of the CD'S PLAYER lines.
Interesting. Not bad for a first model.
Very good Video - thank you for explanations and upload
I never saw such outside power supply and also not 'antishock' switcht - interesting!
Bought mine in 1982, I still have it but can't obtain a new laser. Cost me £550 (approx $950)
Why do I get the feeling that this thing is superior to later CD players...? 🤔
The anti-shock was meant to control skipping while heavy footed people were walking around. The early CD players skipped the way some record players did. Many cd players after 1990 had the ant-shock built in (along with much better transports in the first place).
Happy 40th anniversary sony cd first player
Looks actually very cool😮
I had the 102, most solidly built player I've ever had, best disc transport tray too.
Yeah, 102 was my first, but not as solid as my CD transport later on.
Aww, the early 80s was the start of the compact disc era I have a feeling CD are going to be the next vinyl in the coming years!
so what year was bigger on cds 80s or 90s?
Holy smokes! I've seen this CD player in photos but only the front. I was definitely *not* expecting to see that absolutely gigantic transformer and heatsink. I would have liked to know how much power that took. I didn't see any sticker with the watt rating. Cool stuff.
I still have my 1987 Technics CD player.It works great! I stayed away from Sony CD players.✌
HEY... the reason the volume may seem "hot" is because CD mastering was new at the time. ALL Compact Discs were normalized under 0db to prevent clipping (max -6db without compression... maybe?) So the output had to be LOUD or consumer's would have to have their volume knobs at 8 (out of 11) just to hear anything at a normal level. Today, Most Music is compressed and maxed at 0db (any louder, there's digital clipping).
ALSO, you mentioned Philips... should have mentioned how different the laser transports were between the two.
It being the first CD from 1982. I'm surprised it still works.
The benefit of having 4 motors, no belts to replace.
Techmoan would be disapointed.
Quite probably it has gone through thorough servicing, but not bad anyway.
I bought one of these in 1983 for £999 and it outlasted quite a few other components by 10 years.!!!!
My first CD player was a Denon in 1990. a hifi magazine named it the best CD player in the budget class, it cost the equivalent of 200 $ or 2000 Swedish kronor
Pretty cool! I have the worlds first car CD player. It's the Pioneer CDX-1.
I think the "Anti Shock" is so the music will still play even if the unit gets bumped. If anyone remembers the CD walkmans/discman, many of them had that too. I have no idea what that technology is doing on a home desktop unit though. Maybe the early units were extra sensitive to vibrations from your base if you're playing your music loud. . . just a guess.
A crude explanation of how that works is basically the laser reads a minute or so ahead of what the speakers are actually playing, if the unit gets disrupted/bumped the laser will stop and re-read that section while the music keeps playing uninterrupted. I believe Sony eventually patented the name "G-Shock".
I have no idea what the Auto Pause does though. Is there an owners manual for it out there somewhere online? They would surly talk about that stuff in their. I did some very quick Googleing and came up with the explanation of "the music will automatically pause when the headphones are disconnected". . . . is that it?
Anti Shock on this unit does not use a memory buffer. Memory was silly expensive at the time. What it does is adjust the tracking servo loop, to react faster and follow the track on the CD more precisely. The downside is that it gets more sensitive to dirt and scratches on the CD.
Auto Pause puts the unit in pause mode when the next song is just about to start. It's for situations where you don't want the next song to start playing automatically, e.g. karaoke and radio stations. In the service manual it's mentioned as "Auto pause function provided for sing-along enjoyment."
@@RagnarJensen That makes a lot of sense.
The first CD player I saw was quite something else, about 2,000 in todays dollars. Could not believe the sound, salesman stomping on a CD to show how "indestructible" it was.
I remember going in to a Video Concepts store and looking at a Sony Cd player in 1984 and the sales guy asked the other sales guy for their demo cd (Twisted Sister) and he would put it on the ground and stomp on it and put it in the player and it worked.
Worked for Sony Service back then and remember the big deal when we got to work on one of these when they were new. Sony was the Apple of the 80's
HA I'm also an ex-sony engineer and worked at Sony Service on them although I started in 1990
I worked at the Sony Service Center in Costa Mesa, CA. Which SSC were you at? I started there in August, 1983 - the same month the CD player shown in the video was made. One was just plopped on my bench and I was told "fix it". Uh, yeah. How? What is this thing? Just joking, I knew what a CD player was but since it was brand new tech, I'd never worked on one or had any kind of training on how to repair it. I got up to speed pretty fast, but it was tough at first. They had a lot of issues with the servo driver IC's, IIRC (it's been a while...) and the one sent to KLOS here in L.A. had a problem with skipping. I actually called them at the time and told them what was wrong, and to send it in for repair. I owned one myself, which I traded for a car to another Sony employee at the time (funny story) but I got the better end of the deal. The car was junk, the CDP-101 was great for its time. I sold it years ago, probably in the 90s sometime. Remember the BU-1C laser base unit in the CDP-302 and others? That simplified repair a lot - went through hundreds of those over the years. I still have one new in the box.
@@ianknight9589 I think we had a class together once for Sony
@@1hit1ders ha, good times though. I worked for SES in Staines UK that was part owned by Sony and part owned by 3 directors. In the same building as the Sony warehouse and used to love buying graded items.
@@richardnowak2941 your name rings a bell 🤣 would that have been Sony in Thatcham UK
Watch SONY do a remake on this classic.
That would be retro-amazing-cool...
自分もこの世界初のCDプレーヤーのSONYのCDP-101を持っています。ただ、HARD OFFのJUNK品ですけど。
I had exactly this one back in the day!
Beautiful machine. The styling is very much like the Hi-Fi Stereo Super Betamax machines (like the SL-HF950), including the Open/Close button recessed into the top lip of the tray.
Wow...this came out the year that I was born and looks like it came from the mid 90s. I don't feel that old anymore.
I think the Reset button is the stop
NAD used this as well
It was the first available to the public in Japan. The worlds first CD player in prototype form was demonstrated to the trade by Philips in 1979.
The CD format wasn’t finalized until 1981. Phillips was showing technology demonstrators but the first actual CD players didn’t exist until the 1980s.
I bought one of these back in 1982. If I remember correctly, to stop it from playing, you press the play button again.
That's a very nice player
Thank you 🎵