The mother and father of all C.D. units in terms of qualty

[Telecolor 3007]

There where 3 companies that in the early days made relaible C.D. players:
"Sony", "Philips" and "Hitachi".
But "Philips" made what I consider the best mechanism. Theyr machines where very simple - they made protototypes of cooler one, but never made into production,
trough all "Marantz" which back then was theyr company made nice one like the 'C.D. 84', which had big V.F.D. display, a row of over 20 track display, direct track selection,
but the 1st and 2nd mechanism where wow! 'C.D.M.' 0 and 1. Sheet metal and cast Zinc. I have a "Philips" C.D. 204 - wanted 100, 101, 202, but too pricy - my machine was around 80-100 $ cheaper then at other sellers. It haves that cast zinc block. Besides the look of that mechanism, the assambley is very good, since more then these at least 40 years old machines works. And I don't know what made the so good, but despite beeing slower then linear tracking machines, they are very good at reading C.D.'s.
Oh, "Marantz" C.D. 84 used also 'C.D.M.' 1, but Made in Japan. I wonder if they where as relaible as those one made in Holland. My machine is Made in Holland.
'C.D.M.' 3 was also of metal, but not very relaible.
I wonder how 'C.D.M.' 4/53 and 4 industrial, also made with metal where in terms of relaibilty.

[old_tv_nut]

Back when CD players first came out at around $1000, Marshall Field's, the high end department store in Chicago, one day advertised the Philips player for $200! I told everyone at work about it and went that same afternoon to buy one. The salesman remarked about how amazingly popular they were. I kept my mouth shut, as I didn't want to tip them off in case the price was a mistake.

I also remember in those days keeping the receipt for every CD in case it skipped and I wanted to exchange it for a good one. I did that for several years until the manufacturing quality of the discs improved.

I haven't had the Philips player for decades, and can't remember what I did with it. I eventually replaced it with a JVC, which is now old itself, but works fine.

[Telecolor 3007]

I wonder if the popularity was given by the fact that it was a novelty or it was the built qualty.
200 $. I wish I could found one at that price today.
C.D. pressing qualty was a problem?

[old_tv_nut]

The brief high sales were obviously due to the low sale price.

Yes, CD pressing was a problem. You may know that the audio CD standard includes two cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon forward error correcting codes. Players added an error interpolation process to mask uncorrectable errors. Even with all that, some early discs had uncorrectible audible errors or were even worse in that the player wouldn't track the disc and would skip or get stuck on a segment.

Audio magazines were full of player tests showing how large a segment of a disc could be destroyed and still play well on different machines.

I believe that later the discs got so good that some cheap decoder ICS deleted one layer of error correction and just relied on one code plus interpolation.

These days, my guess is that most players are based on chips that are also used for CDROM and have full error correction by default.

[Telecolor 3007]

The "Philips" C.D. 204 reads well C.D.'s. But I don't early ones, a 1983 and a 1985 ones. Hard to find.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

several years until the manufacturing quality of the discs improved.

This is interesting. I waited to get into Compact Discs until spring 1985, when I bought a Sony CDP-111 player with remote control (that I still have). Then, I jumped in to the CD world far and wide, going to stores all over the place to find more CDs that I liked/wanted. Hundreds of them in the first couple of years alone.

In all of my years of buying CDs, I can remember ---one--- CD that was bad! Every other one played flawlessly, every time. That bad one was a 3-inch CD single, that had a physical flaw in the data area (but still had the proper reflective coating).

I have had two or three CDs that I unfortunately damaged, both/all on the label side.

[ARC Tech-109]

Someone forgot technics, had both my SP-P8 and SL-XP7 since new. P8 was 1984 and the XP7 late 1985 and both get used almost daily.