Cleaning Time

My family and I will be moving to a new apartment come April or June. I've been looking for a quiet place since last year and I found this apartment for rent a few months back. This place belongs to my "Ate" Lorie, a not so distant relative. I told her that I could only moved in by April or June and she gladly have the place reserved for me. For the mean time, the least I could do is to well, have the whole place painted, applied varnish on the flooring etc... I also did installed some venitian blinds for the window panes.

[the master's bedroom as viewed from the terrace, the aircon rack is empty, I dont have an airconditioner :-) ]



[The flooring]




[We went there last Saturday to clean the whole place up, this is the kitchen with an oven and a coffee maker (and some rags too) that we brought for use]






[My two daughters posing on the terrace]





[My eldest son doing a mock cellphone calls]



[Posing posing]



[The terrace at night]



[My kids playing inside one of those build-in cabinets]



[The build-in cabinets makes a good sleeping room]



[King Kong Frago]



[Another terrace at the back]



[Computer]



[New Flat LCD TV]



[Beds for the kids]



[Bedroom in sepia]

Accoustic Testing

Now that I have everything cleaned up, it's time to test its accoustic property. Lying on the floor is the Marantz Slim-Series audio systems. The amplifier section is a 40W + 40W RMS amplifier/preamp with 0.001% total harmonic distortion (as per specs). Below it is the CD/DCC deck. On the background, you could see the Pioneer Tudoroki speaker systems.



The Slim-Series is the brain child of Ken Ishiwata, the chief designer of most Marantz products since the early 90s. What makes this component different is it's slim size, about 2.5 cm in height. An earlier version of the series can be found here

[Ken Ishiwata. Marantz opened it's first branch in the Philippines way back 2004, they pulled out after around 2 years... sad. One Marketing Manager from Marantz that I met in Shangri-La, Jeroen Vandenhurk, said they will soon have a marketing arm here though]





[A very thin profile, it practically fits anywhere on your component cabinet]



The CD deck is actually a CD and an a DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) player in one, notice the front loading mechanisms for both.



Unfortunately, the DCC was never been a main format in the Philippines, in Europe it once became popular, but alas, due the increasing titles for CDs, and the lack of support for the platform, DCC (together with the MD) never made it as a mainstream format to replace the analog cassette tape.

[DCC underside]



[DCC topside]



Unlike the analog audio cassette that stores data by varying the magnetic fields representing the analog audio frequencies, DCCs on the other hand records data in 0's and 1's, very much like the CD, but using a magnetic tape as a medium instead. Some players, like the one offered by Technics plays both analog audio cassette and DCCs on the same deck.

The system did sound great with Bass and Treble controls set to 'on'. The Todoroki speaker, in streo mode, wasnt able to reproduce sounds better when 'Tone Defeat' controls were set to 'on'. This button directly feeds the source to the amplifier defeating the Treble and Bass controls. I would suggest a better speaker when playing this component on this mode. Perhaps a Mardaunt Short or Canton speakers can reproduce the desired sounds (but a little bit pricey). In fairness, I have treid to hook this up before to Pioneer's CS-5070 speakers, and they sound great (a friend owns one).


[The Marantz system coupled to the Pioneer VSX system, notice the profile difference]

Discman Era a.k.a. College days audio

The first commercially available CD player was the CDP-101. By the beginning of 1983, several other companies began selling CD players. Roughly one thousand CD titles were available, and the CDP-101 was selling well by year's end. This initial frenzy gradually subsided, however, and the CD market was lackluster for nearly a year.

I wasnt able to get my hands on the said CD player until 1986 when my father bought a unit while working for ARAMCO. This a nice sleek machine, and it sounds well with APM speakers. Back then, I am using an SONY FH-7MKII unit together with my CDP-101.

[This is my CDP-101]



[The accompanying brochure (scanned)]

Along came the DISCMAN

Executives at Sony realized that something had to be done to revive the market. A product that would popularize the CD needed to be launched quickly. We're going to commercialize a CD player of this size, said Ohsone, head of the General Audio Division while showing his staff a piece of wood which was 13.4 cm across and about 4 cm thick. This was about the same size as four CD cases stacked one on top of another. He added, I don't care how you do it, or whether you decide to put cicadas or grasshoppers in it, but just make this produce sound. Everyone laughed.

The D-50 was released in November 1984, marking the two-year anniversary since the CD was first mass produced. Though it was only double the width of a single CD case, the unit offered the same functionality as the CDP-101, but came without a remote and the repeat functionality of the unit. The D-50 retailed for only 49,800 yen, approximately half the cost price of the unit. The unit successfully sparked public interest in CDs, boosting their popularity, and within a year and a half the D-50 became profitable.

[Sony D-50]




Because of its portable nature and similarity to the Walkman, the nickname 'Discman' was given to the D-50. This name has been used to refer to any Sony portable CD player.

However, Sony has since changed the name to CD Walkman. [excerpts from SONY HISTORY]

My First Discman

My first discman was the D-22 (1986). It was actually the first generation of Discman that runs on ordinary batteries. The D-22 was actually a variation of the D-20, only with a Mega Bass option switch on its side.




When I went to may mom's house last month and went inside my old room I've found, .... my good ole Discman DZ-555 and the D-22 (with Allan's trademark, 'no scratches').

I bought the D-22 unit for P6,000 way back then. I used a 9V universal adaptor and tried if it's still working and to my surprise, it does play music the way it used to be (after almost 24 years, this 'SONY' product is great !!). It's even capable of playing 96/24 CDs.



Can you magine all my classmate's amazement when i brought this unit to school? I am the only one who has this player back then (astig !!!) .



Unlike most of today's audio device which is 95% plastic, this gadget is made of composite carbon and aluminum parts. On the side of the unit is a jack for remote control sensor (I dont know where it is now). And the back panel has an audio out that you can hook up to a stereo system. But as with other SONY portables, you'll be happy with the included headphones.

During my 5th year in College, with my father's financial help, I was able to buy my second discman, the purely metallic SONY DZ-555 (I think prized at around 9K then). This is the best puppy I've ever had. Besides having a good (at the time) 16-bit, 8-times oversampling, it also was one of the first units to offer dual digital to analog converters (one per channel) within a portable CD player.

[Sony DZ-555]




The DZ-555 made use of a Digital Signal Processing (DSP) quite a "high-tech" add-on then. In 1990 DSP was a novelty. This unit also offers digital equalizer (with 63Hz, 250Hz, 1kHz, 4kHz, and 10kHz center frequencies), or Surround, or Bass Boost.

The side of the DZ-555 has a digital optical output, a rare option during those days. As with my D-22, the IR remote terminal is also present.



And this gadget also features dual LCD display (the top display shows the equalizer, dsp settings, spectrum analyzer. The LCD on the front displays the CD's track/time.