Philips LHH1000
Two diecast boxes, thirty pounds apiece, and a $4,000 price tag. Philips' first consumer player to wear the professional LHH badge.
Overview
Thirty pounds of diecast aluminum-zinc alloy on a shelf tells you Philips meant this one differently. The LHH1000 is a two-piece compact disc player: an LHH1001 transport in one chassis, an LHH1002 digital-to-analog converter in the other. Each weighs 30.8 lbs. (14 kg) and measures 17⅞ inches wide by 4⅛ inches high by 13⅝ inches deep. The suggested list price was $4,000 with remote included. That was half what some rival two-box models asked, but still twice the cost of a state-of-the-art single-chassis player of the day, as Audio (January 1990, p.87) pointed out in its profile of the unit.
Philips made a point of the lineage. It billed the LHH1000 as a direct descendant of the company's broadcast-standard CD recording and mastering equipment, and as the first consumer model to carry the professional LHH designation. The transport is Philips' top CDM-1 mechanism, and the critical chassis components are solid diecast aluminum zinc alloy - heavy, rigid, and meant to keep the laser assembly stable. Philips' own advertising in Audio (November 1989, p.45) leaned hard on that broadcast pedigree. That is marketing copy, not an independent verdict, but the hardware underneath is real enough.
The converter section is where the LHH1000 made its case. Philips specified "select grade" TDA-1541A-S1 chips, the company's Special Select Grade version of its premier DAC, paired with four-times oversampling digital filtering. It claimed the combination realized better than 15.75 bits of resolution out of the 16 bits available in the standard CD format. Audio (January 1990, p.87) reported that claim directly from Philips rather than confirming it independently, so the 15.75-bit figure is a manufacturer's assertion. The converter accepts 48, 44.1, or 32 kHz sampling rates, selected automatically. It has both unbalanced and balanced analog outputs, 2 V and 3 V respectively, plus a headphone output rated at 45 mW into 32 ohms.
The measured numbers are respectable and, in places, strong. Frequency response on the unbalanced outputs is specified at 2 Hz to 20 kHz, ±0.1 dB. The balanced outputs run 20 Hz to 20 kHz, +0.3/−0.6 dB. Signal-to-noise is quoted at 101 dB, dynamic range at 96 dB, channel separation at 100 dB, and THD at 0.0015% at 1 kHz. On the transport side, the coaxial output sits at 0.5 V peak-to-peak into 75 ohms, with the optical level between −15 and −23 dBm. The transport stores 20 programmable "blocks," and the favorite-track memory holds typically 150 discs with five selections each or 70 discs with 20 selections each.
The listening-room verdict is more interesting than the spec sheet. Audio's reviewer (January 1990, p.94) found linearity virtually perfect down to −80 dB, with deviation of −3 to −4 dB at −90 dB on undithered signals. That is above average for players tested in that period, though not the best the reviewer had measured, and some cheaper players matched or beat it. The dithered low-level test told a similar story: −3 to −4 dB deviation at −90 dB, improving to −2 to −3 dB at −100 dB. The reviewer also finally detected a measurable difference between the coaxial and optical interfaces during a fade-to-noise test, with noise rising at low levels on the coaxial connection.
Owning one means living with two chassis, two power cords, and a digital link between them. Power draw is modest: 0.18 ampere for the transport and 0.2 ampere for the converter, both on 120 V a.c., 60 Hz. The operating envelope spans 41° to 95° F (5° to 35° C) at 5% to 90% humidity. The remote was versatile enough that Audio's reviewer used it for bench testing as well as listening sessions. Contemporary classified listings from the early 1990s show LHH1000 systems trading used in the $1,999 - $3,500 range depending on condition and dealer, against the $4,000 original. That is a steep but not unusual depreciation curve for a limited-edition digital product of that era.
Collectors note that the LHH1000 occupies an odd spot: it's a genuine reference-grade two-box player from the company that co-developed the CD format, built around the CDM-1 transport and the TDA-1541A-S1 — both of which have their own followings — yet it never commanded the cult pricing of certain other two-piece players. The diecast construction and the professional LHH designation give it real credibility, and the measured linearity was solid if not class-leading. Buyers should expect to verify the laser assembly and the digital link between the two chassis, since those are the parts that age; the rest of the package is about as robust as 1989 digital got.
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