Nikko NCD-600 (c. 1985–1986)
The NCD-600 was Nikko's bid for the top of the CD heap in the mid-1980s. It was a programmable 60-disc changer that worked as a random-access jukebox for a whole music library. The ad copy called it a "Programmable Compact Digital Disc Changer," which undersells it. This was a library machine, not a carousel for casual listening.
Documentation on the NCD-600 is thin, and much of the feature list survives thanks to Nikko's own advertising. That advertising was unusually specific. The NCD-600 held up to 60 CDs and could be programmed for 45 hours of continuous playback. It called up discs in any order, or queued up to five selections in any selection order. It used a linear 16-bit, three-beam laser pickup. A fiber-optic link let multiple NCD-600s be chained together, expanding access to as many as 240 discs. The side panel carried an RS-232 port and an 8-pin DIN RGB input, and the ad even claimed the unit could be interfaced with the then-new CD-ROM format. Nikko's own advertising in Audio (October 1985, p.96) called it "the most sophisticated digital disc player on the market today."
Independent data is scarcer. In a multi-player comparison, Audio (June 1986, p.73) listed the NCD-600's frequency response as 10 Hz–20 kHz ±0.5 dB and noted that the dynamic-range figures claimed by the manufacturers in that group were conservative, apparently written before the EIAJ standard existed. The comparison placed it alongside changers from Pioneer, Sony, and Mitsubishi — serious company.
One more trace survives. Nikko quoted sound designer Frank Serafine in its advertising saying that after sampling the NCD-600, he could cut his research time by 75 percent. That makes sense, since with random access across 60 discs the NCD-600 was effectively a sound-effects library with a laser pickup. What it cost, how long it stayed in production, and how it held up in the field are not documented in the material that survives.
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