I was looking around at mine, I've got more than I thought, it seems to be a size issue, small units are tape on the right. I'll run your link through the translator, thanks for the information!
Sony XF-3000, this is the first time I've seen it called "Freedom III." I've posted other information around the site for this model and it's higher end version the XF-5000. These were very expensive in 1980 and could be configured a few different ways including a not seen EQ. The case for this is solid metal, there's a motorcycle battery in the case for rechargability and there's optional metal-cased speakers which added another $200 to the price. With both speakers this is one of the heaviest boomers, just a little short of the ultra-heavy AIWA Compo Boxes/ Through my research I figure this was part of a series for the car, boat and portability, the modules pull out and would be similar to what they offered in their car stereo line-up. These units are high-wattage, I'd have to guess they are in the top 10 of all portables.
Yes, it was the very first with a CD - uses the same technique as in the Philips CD150. It was high end, top of the range, but unfortunately also when it comes to the price. Have not found an information if it was successful or not. However it was very soon replaced by the much cheaper D8854. For instance, the CD decoder of the D8854 contains the SAA7210 and one TDA1541/N3 DAC instead of SAA7000, SAA7010, SAA7020, SAA7030 and two TDA1540P as in the CD555. In addition, the cassette mechanism is very common and widely used in Philips products. I only know one Philips product which used the same tape mechanism as the CD555. Right now I would have the chance to get my hands on a D8854 but not sure if it is worth the high price called for a non working device...
Daniela, where did they make the Philips Boxes? Once in a while we see the Magnovox Version over here, there's very few Philips Branded products until the mid-90's.
Panasonic RX-DT37 and RX-DS11 from 1997 from Electronics Australia (Australian Dollars). This magazine had in-depth articles of boomboxes in the 70's, it's too bad they're pushing 240 PMPO watts.
The Bose Wave Radio is not a boombox but they get a lot of respect from the boombox world. During the 90's and early 2000's Bose ruled the home audio world, the tiny speakers and good design made wives everywhere make their men get rid of the old boat anchors for this pretty equipment. In the 90's Bose heavily marketed the Bose Wave Radio, I'd even say it had more money spent on it's advertising than any radio in history. These still go for pretty good money on the used market, the price listed here is Australian Dollars. As a sidenote, some 80's Bose Euipment was made by Miyako Marantz of Japan, I wish they showed the speakers in this article, who knows if they were holdovers from the 80's.
Well, the CD555 points out to be made in Belgium. Think the first CD-Player were all made in Belgium, but not 100% sure. I know there were a lot of those Philips Boxes made in Austria during the eighties. At this time we haven't had moved the production to China
I have a Philips Roller 2 Radio Cassette bought new in 1989 and made in Austria. Production in China started later than people might think. I still regret not buying a radio "Made in China" I saw in the mid 1980s. It had Chinese writing and pictures of Pandas on it. At the time finding a radio Made in China would be the equivalent of finding something made in North Korea these days. It was quite a surprise when ten years later in 1995 I bought an Olympus camera and it was labelled "Made in China" although they did qualify this with "Parts made in Japan". Of course back then Hong Kong was an entirely different story. I have Philips and other radios made in Hong Kong and most of the own brand products for the likes of Dixons were made there. My very first camera bought from Dixons in 1975 was "Made in Macau", which sounds to have been the Portuguese equivalent to Hong Kong up until 1999.
One of my first nice point and shoot cameras was Olympus but I think it was made in Japan. That thing took great photos, which I posted here, I still have a hard time getting that quality with my Nikons.
...my dad got one of those, when i go there next time, i can chek the speakers. even i don‘t like Bose, this is a nice sounding little system
Just in case your wondering, this was just below the above copy, most of the new releases are classics today but it looks like there are also reissues for the new format, so The Dark Side of the Moon and a few others are charting. White Winds is the only album I have zero knowledge of, pretty amazing for the times.
Pioneer PD-C7 from 1986 Stereo Review Magazine, I've got one of the models under this without the CD player and it's plastic fantastic, a real lightweight and embarassment for the the older models.
Those are all awesome devices. Interesting if Sony has been first? Philips invented the CD-Player and Sony later joined the project. Philips designed everything with 14Bit but because of Sony they changed to 16Bit. That's why Philips first CD-Players contain 14Bit DAC's, two TDA1540P's. DAC's where expensive at this time and they used this design. Even with 2Bits missing they sound absolutely amazing. The successor TDA1541 already contained 2x 16Bit DAC's. Philips was not able to finish their first CD-Player CD100 in time that's why Sony release the first CD-Player in and only in Japan a couple of months ahead. Seems they had a contract and Philips had to be the first to sell international. About the first portable CD-Player in a boombox, the official press release from Philips's CD555 points out it's the first (a lot of flyers on my page) Maybe not in Japan? Anyway, who cares. Interesting is the different approach that Sony and Philips followed. Philips had a swing arm concept and Sony used a linear unit. Think the latter on is more resistant against bumps. Just kick a Philips swing arm and the music is gone. To carry the CD555 with running CD-Player is almost impossible. The CDF-5 is using the same electronic and drive as Sony's first CD-Discman. And the electronic is very different. Sony is using highly integrated SMD parts, Philips still using DIP cases. For me, this makes it much more user friendly to repair. Not getting younger and already need a magnifier lamp even for simply DIP cases Whoever was the first I am pretty sure the Sony CDF-5 was much more successful as the expensive Philips CD555 considering the amount of information on the net and the devices on sale.
This is very debatable but as I commented on Youtube, what do you get if you cross a Sony PCM-F1 https://www.kenrockwell.com/audio/sony/pcm-f1.htm with a laserdisc player ? https://www.rewindmuseum.com/philipslaserdisc.htm A CD player of course. At the time Sony led the world in Digital Audio while Phips led in Optical Discs, so by combining their knowledge they gave us the CD.
Thank you Longman for reminding me to add my sources. As Abraham Lincoln already stated "You should not believe everything you can read on the internet". I always try to get sources from press releases or newspapers. YouTube or Wikipedia are no scientific sources. And you're absolutely right, I am pretty sure that was the main idea that Philips and Sony followed when they worked together. Beside this, together they had much more power to release such a groundbreaking new system to the market. "Following the pioneering work of Philips on an optical video player in the early 70's, a project was started in 1974 within Philips and its Research laboratories to develop a digital optical audio disk with error correction code. Parallel work on digital optical audio recording was done in a number of companies and Sony first publicly demonstrated an optical digital audio disc at the 1977 Audio Fair. On 8 March 1979, Philips demonstrated for the international press a 11.5 cm Optical Disk and a Compact Disc Audio Player. The demonstration showed that it is possible by using digital optical recording and playback to reproduce audio signals with superb stereo quality. Through the co-operation with Sony the final diameter was 12 cm and the initially proposed resolution (accuracy) of 14 bits was increased to 16 bits. With this concept Philips and Sony took the first step in setting a worldwide standard." (Philips, The history of the CD - The beginning) Another article (sorry in German) mentions Philips 14Bit DACs more in detail. In a short - Philips designed the Audio CD with 14Bit and when Sony joined the project they changed to 16Bit. They also agreed on 12cm disc size. "Als Wortlänge für die PCM-Signale sind 14 Bit vorgesehen. Das ändert sich, nachdem Sony ins Spiel kommt..." "Europa und Japan geben Gas, einigen sich auf zwölf Zentimeter Disc-Durchmesser, knapp 75 Minuten Spielzeit, 16 Bit PCM-Wortlänge, Cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon Code (CIRC) als Fehlerkorrektur und die EFM-Leitungskodierung." (2019, heise, 40 Jahre CD: Die silberne Klang-Revolution) An article not only described that Philips was using their 14Bit design but also gives much more details and an interesting technical explanation "Philips had found a clever way of using its existing 14-bit DAC to meet the 16-bit CD standard. In its 14-bit, 4-times oversampling system, a digital filter stage prior to the DAC created three extra samples for each of the original samples. When these extra samples were integrated in the DAC, at four times the original rate, the result was a resolution equal to 16-bit. As far as the DAC was concerned, the sampling frequency was now 176.4kHz instead of 44.1kHz. This in turn meant that the unwanted frequencies contained in the DAC’s output were much higher too. Now, instead of a steep ‘brickwall’ filter acting at just above 20kHz, and causing problems in the audio band below, the Philips player’s audio output stage needed only a gentle, innocuous analogue filter. This gave the early Philips players a sonic advantage over ‘16-bit linear’ rivals. Although 14-bit 4-times oversampling was born of necessity, it sounded smoother and less fatiguing. Also contributing to the CD100’s superior performance was Philips’ swing-arm mechanism, as opposed to the linear, radially-sliding ‘sled’ types used by the Japanese makers." (2011, hifi-news, Philips CD100 (Vintage)) About the Sony CDP101 release in Japan I only found again only German articles that point out that Sony released their CDP101 only in Japan on 1st Oct. 1982 and Philips followed half a year later. "Am 1. Oktober 1982 brachte der Elektronikkonzern Sony in Japan den weltweit ersten Audio-CD-Player auf den Markt. Das Gerät hörte auf den Namen CDP-101... ...Ein halbes Jahr nach der Vorstellung des CD-Players in Japan erschienen auch die ersten Modelle in Europa und den USA." (2002, heise, Noch'n Geburtstag für die Audio-CD) About the different design - the Philips CDM devices with swing arm are well known - I do not have the Sony but I found some pictures of the CDF-5 and the guy mentioned that it look like the portable D-50 "After all it seems to be Manma D-50. Since the D-50 is a portable machine, parts such as screws are also small." (SONY CFD-5 (1985) Disassembly) Easy to spot the differences of Sony's SMD technology and Philips with ICs in DIP cases. An official flyer (as well as other press releases) from Philips itself introduced the CD555 as „the first-ever portable CD-Player“ (Philips CD555 Folder, https://70cd555.com/data-sheets/catalogues/)
Digital audio didn't start with CD, as this thread describes https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/mfsl-beta-vhs-tape.37863/ If you had deep pockets and wanted Dark Side of the Moon in state of the art audiophile quality prior to CD it came as a digital stream on VHS or Betamax cassette http://pinkfloydarchives.com/DUSMFSL.htm#DSMFSLBeta Not the sort of thing you would pick up in your local record shop though. Back to the Sony PCM-F1. If you bought a CD in the 1980s, there was a good chance the audio had been recorded and sent to the mastering plant using one.
i remember the first cd on radio 1 jumped....i also had a couple of cd's then and one was jumping, i knew even back then that cd was mickey mouse despite buying loads of them back in the early days.......i think maybe sony and phillips launched there boomboxes at the same time imho
I can recall three different people telling me about some CDs not playing in some players. One story I have heard several times from a colleague was about how after nine months of ownership his Philips CD player purchased in the mid 1980s started playing up with an increasing number of CDs. He took it back to the shop where he bought it. As they no longer stocked that model he swapped it for a Sony which played all the CDs they tried on it and which he still uses today. As for CDs jumping I am thinking back to how many times I was in a Pub or Restaurant in the 1990s and the music would suddenly start stuttering like in Paul Hardcastle N - N -N - N without ever reaching Nineteen. Only of relevance to UK members does anyone have a Youview box ? After buying a Roku which it turns out doesn't support Britbox here in the UK, I am using a PC which twice in two days has done something similar with video playback. Alternatives seem to be an Apple TV which is expensive and gets negative comments in reviews about the remote or a Youview box.
