ADC 16/2R (1986–1987)

The documented record of the ADC 16/2R amounts to two short items in the mid-1980s hi-fi press: a new-product announcement and a lab test report. Both point to the same machine — ADC's compact disc player, introduced in 1986 at $369.95.

HiFI-Stereo (September 1986, p.24) announced the 16/2R as a remote-controlled, metal-chassis CD player whose advanced error-correction circuits were said to get it through scuffed, scratched, and dirty discs with fewer audible complaints than other players, and to make it more impact-resistant. The same blurb described a three-beam laser pickup — one beam for the signal, two for tracking — and linear digital-to-analog conversion, the latter chosen to keep distortion low. The front display showed track number and elapsed time, and the remote could program sixteen tracks into memory for playback in any order.

A later test report from Hirsch-Houck Laboratories, published in HiFI-Stereo (November 1987, p.75), found the front panel clean, with two large rectangular pushbuttons — STOP/OPEN and PLAY/PAUSE — serving as the principal controls. The accompanying measurements (p.76) showed a competent performer: harmonic distortion ran about 0.009 percent at −10 dB and 0.019 percent at −20 dB, the latter figure including some low-level spurious nonharmonic components. Frequency response stayed flat across most of the audio band, dipped gently below 50 Hz to −0.6 dB at 20 Hz, and rose to a small peak of roughly 0.5 dB at 16 kHz. The sixteen-track program, the review noted, could be assembled during a pause, with the disc stopped, or even while it was playing, using an ENTER/SET control.

That, in short, is the surviving record. The 16/2R appears to have been a solidly engineered mid-priced player that attracted no further commentary — which is also why this page is brief.