Kenwood DMF-7020 (1999)
The Kenwood DMF-7020 is a MiniDisc recorder that Kenwood positioned as a new standard for digital sound recording when it appeared in January 1999. It was heavy, at 9.7 kg, with a 440 mm wide chassis and a price of ¥94,000 in Japan. This was not a casual consumer deck. It was built to compete at the upper end of the MD world.
The headline feature was Kenwood's 24-bit D.R.I.V.E. system, an evolution of the company's earlier digital processing technology. Earlier systems worked with 20-bit information. The DMF-7020 processed digitally at 24 bits, pairing two fixed filters with a continuously variable low-pass filter to control input data and minimize quantization distortion. The recording path used ATRAC 4.5 compression, and on playback a D/A converter with 24-bit arithmetic processing handled output. Kenwood also paid attention to clock purity, using 74AC-type logic ICs in the oscillation and frequency division circuits to keep jitter low. The A/D converter used fourth-order noise shaping with 20-bit resolution.
The spec sheet reads like Kenwood was checking every box an enthusiast might want. There's a digital REC volume adjustable from +12 dB to -∞, fade-in and fade-out with times from 1 to 10 seconds, and a sampling rate converter that automatically converts 32 kHz or 48 kHz sources to the MD standard of 44.1 kHz. The unit has both coaxial and optical digital inputs and outputs, plus line in/out and a headphone jack. A Sound Synchro-Rec function starts recording automatically when input sound is detected, and there's an auto-cut that adjusts unrecorded gaps between songs to 3 seconds. Editing is extensive: quick erase, track erase, edit cancel to restore accidentally deleted songs, quick move and track move for reordering, track combine and divide, and title input up to 80 characters per track. The included remote control has a shuttle dial for title entry. A separate accessory, the Cyber Tight CT-H90 (¥32,000), allowed title input and label printing from a computer.
The deck is built to resist vibration. It has a highly rigid aluminum mechanical base and frame, plus an air shield structure using 1.2 mm and 2.0 mm steel plates. The idea was to suppress disc resonance from vibration and sound pressure, using the combination of different metals to damp natural resonances. Measured performance is excellent on paper: signal-to-noise ratio of 110 dB or more, dynamic range of 95 dB or more, total distortion no more than 0.004% at 1 kHz, and wow & flutter below the measurement limit of ±0.001% WPEAK.
The DMF-7020 was a Japanese-market unit, running on 100 VAC. It remains a fairly obscure model, and documentation is thin. The 56-page owner's manual is in Japanese. A Russian marketplace listing described it as a collection piece kept in storage, and another seller asked 29,900 rubles for one. Little is recorded about how it was received at the time or how it holds up today.
Known specs, in brief:
- ATRAC 4.5 compression, 44.1 kHz sampling
- 24-bit D.R.I.V.E. digital processing
- 1-bit D/A conversion, 8fs (352.8 kHz) oversampling
- Frequency response: 8 Hz–20 kHz (EIAJ)
- S/N: 110 dB or more; dynamic range: 95 dB or more (EIAJ)
- Distortion: 0.004% or less (1 kHz, EIAJ)
- Inputs: line, optical, coaxial ×2; outputs: line, headphone, optical, coaxial
- 440 × 125 × 373 mm, 9.7 kg
- Introduced January 1999 at ¥94,000
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