Sony CDP-R1
Eight thousand dollars, two chassis, twin fiber-optic cables - Sony's shot across the bow of the high-end CD world.
Overview
Sony hung a price of eight thousand dollars on the CDP-R1/DAS-R1 Compact Disc Reference System. Up to then, Sony's most advanced player had been the $1,800 CDP-707, a fine machine but not aimed at the audiophile fringe. The R1 was a two-box transport-and-converter system. Sony brought it to the SCES to announce it was getting serious about the high end. Audio (September 1988, p.48) reported that Sony surprised everyone with the move, and described the player as the distillation and embodiment of the company's most advanced Compact Disc research.
The architecture is the whole point. The CDP-R1 transport connects to the separate DAS-R1 digital-to-analog converter over special twin fiber-optic cables. Splitting the mechanical and conversion stages let each box be optimized on its own terms. Sony's engineers went after jitter hard. A master-clock circuit in the DAS-R1 uses a quartz-crystal oscillator precise enough to hold measurable time-base error to 0.1 nanosecond, which the company claimed was a sevenfold reduction in time-delay distortion compared to any other player then existing. Audio (September 1988, p.48) called the figure one ten-billionth of a second, and noted that Sony had painstakingly addressed every mechanical, electronic, and optical parameter that influences CD reproduction. Even the capacitors, according to that report, were mounted with anti-resonant damping material.
The conversion chain runs 18-bit linear quantization with 8-times oversampling. The digital filtering is handled by Sony's CXD-1144, an IC that calculates to a precision of 45 bits at that 8X rate. Sony's own literature explains why: fractional errors accumulate in conventional digital filters and can drag decoding below full 16-bit accuracy, and the 45-bit math is meant to prevent that. Noise Shaping then carries that accuracy into the 18-bit converters, trimming requantization noise so the converters can pull out more low-level detail. Bass fundamentals in particular, Sony claimed, came through with a strength and clarity that left ordinary players behind.
The servo design got its own rethink. Sony's Servo Stabilizer Circuit was developed specifically for the R1 and then carried down into the rest of the ES line. It improves tracking on badly scratched discs and cuts radiated servo noise by as much as 10 dB. The CXD-8003 Digital Sync IC, developed during the R1 program, maintains time-base accuracy to within millionths of a second and corrects errors before they reach the music. That chip and the Servo Stabilizer both show up in later ES players. That was the trickle-down Sony marketed: the R1 existed so the cheaper machines could inherit its advantages.
The reception was more than polite. Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt, quoted in Sony's own advertising, called it "the best CD player I have heard at the time of writing" - a line the company reprinted everywhere it could. Sony noted that critics in Japan and Europe were similarly unstinting in their admiration. At $8,000 the R1 was, in Sony's own words, an experience reserved for the uncompromising few. The company was candid that the point of the exercise was to learn lessons it could then apply to the ES Series players ordinary enthusiasts could actually afford.
The R1 is a first-generation high-end digital transport/converter pair, built when the argument over whether separate boxes and exotic clocks made any audible difference was still fresh. The twin fiber-optic link between the two chassis defines the system. Without the DAS-R1, the CDP-R1 transport is only half the story. The Digital Sync IC, the 45-bit CXD-1144 filtering, the Noise Shaping, and the Servo Stabilizer all trace back to the R1 before spreading across the ES lineup. Anyone chasing one should expect to hunt for a complete, matched pair. It was never a single component, and it does not function as one.
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