Nakamichi OMS-70II
The Nakamichi OMS-70II was the company's first serious try at the compact disc format. It was a full-sized, no-expense-spared player built during the 1986-1989 period. It sold for ¥288,000 in Japan around 1986 (later listed at ¥270,000 around 1989) and carried a US list price of $1,995. Nakamichi was famous for its cassette decks, and it brought the same obsessive mechanical and electrical isolation thinking to this player.
The technical story centers on what Nakamichi called its "glitch free" D/A conversion system. There is no conventional sample-and-hold stage. The OMS-70II took a 16-bit signal oversampled 4× by a digital filter (44.1 kHz pushed to 176.4 kHz) and passed it through a photocoupler to block servo noise. From there it went to a dual 16-bit high-speed D/A converter built around a Nichrome thin-film ladder resistor network. The analog side used a discrete third-order linear-phase Bessel filter at 30 kHz cutoff. The whole analog board was sealed in an aluminum shield case, with three layers of pure copper bus bars between the converter and filter for extra isolation. The power supply used separate transformer windings for analog and digital sections, plus a master/local regulator scheme with no feedback loop, and an FET buffer in the supply line. Nakamichi claimed a distortion figure of 0.0015% or less for the converter, and 0.0003% achievable with only light negative feedback applied.
The transport got the same attention. It has a 3-beam astigmatic laser pickup, and the disk drive mechanism is bolted directly to a zinc alloy die-cast chassis, then floated from the main base on springs and damping material. The clamping arm uses a magnet-chuck system. The front panel has an FL tube display and a 24-track program memory function. There is also a headphone output with its own volume control. A separate service manual (46 pages, English) exists and is available for download.
The record has real gaps. No conventional spec sheet values (frequency response, S/N ratio, dimensions, weight) have surfaced, and no detailed period reviews have been found. One source calls it the "OMS-7II," but the OMS-70II designation is confirmed across multiple references. A replacement drive belt is available on the used market, and a Russian marketplace listing shows a used unit at 80,000 rubles. Collector pricing data is otherwise thin.
- Type: CD player
- Production: 1986–1989 (per hifi-wiki.com); possibly discontinued in 1991 (per naks.com)
- Price: ¥288,000 (1986, Japan); ¥270,000 (1989, Japan); $1,995 (US)
- D/A: 16-bit, 4× oversampling, "glitch free" system
- Filter: 3rd-order linear phase Bessel, 30 kHz cutoff
- Pickup: 3-beam / astigmatic laser
- Features: 24-track program memory, FL display, headphone output
- Manual: 46-page service manual available in English
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