Toshiba XR-Z90 (1983)
A thousand-dollar first-generation CD player that could find a track faster than almost anything else on the shelf - and Toshiba built it themselves.
Overview
The XR-Z90 weighs twenty-one and a half pounds and was priced at $1,000.00 when it landed. It is early-eighties CD hardware built like a serious component. The chassis measures 16.54 inches wide by 5.3 inches tall by 13.4 inches deep. That is a full-width box meant to sit in a rack next to a tuner and a tape deck, not a shoebox afterthought.
Toshiba's headline claim was speed. The company credited the player's quick random access to what it called a "one-beam time-difference detection system," and Audio (December 1983, p.69) came away convinced. The reviewer wrote that he had never worked with a CD player that could locate a given spot on a disc more rapidly. Average access time was quoted at one second, and the machine could search up to 99 track and index numbers.
The converter end of the chain used an 11th-order low-pass filter with its cutoff tuned to 20 kHz. It stripped out the noise above the audio band generated by D/A conversion. Downstream, the analog output stages used Lambda capacitors and copper-foil Styrol capacitors in a low-impedance circuit. Toshiba clearly was not treating the output stage as an afterthought.
There are two sets of outputs on the rear panel. One pair is fixed at 2.0 V. The other is variable from 0 to 5.0 V, set by a level control next to the jacks. Audio (December 1983, p.71) singled this out as useful in daily life. Many CD players of the era kicked out a hot signal that forced you to run the amp's volume control pinned near minimum, where fine adjustment is impossible. Trimming the player's output to match a tuner or tape deck let the reviewer keep the volume knob nearer its more usable mid-setting. There is also a chirp on the rear panel that can be switched off if it annoys you.
Programming is simple. Up to eight selections can be stored and played back in any order, and a repeat function replays the whole disc or just the memorized tracks at a single button press. Discs load vertically through a door that swings out like the one on a front-loading cassette deck. Operation is by light-touch pushbuttons.
The published specs are frequency response of 5 Hz to 20 kHz, ±0.3 dB; dynamic range and S/N both greater than 90 dB; harmonic distortion under 0.004% at 1 kHz; and channel separation greater than 90 dB at 1 kHz. Audio (December 1983, p.70) measured frequency response varying by only ±0.2 dB up to the 20-kHz test point. Harmonic distortion at mid-frequencies hit exactly the specified 0.004%, and unweighted signal-to-noise ratio was 95 dB, nearly 100 dB with A-weighting. Stereo separation stayed well above 70 dB across the test frequencies, and output linearity tracked accurately all the way down to −80 dB.
Not everything measured clean. The sharp-cutoff post-D/A filter produced high-frequency ringing on a 1-kHz square wave, which was typical of CD players using that topology. Audio (December 1983, p.70) noted a phase error of about 25° at 20 kHz, a time-delay error of roughly 3.5 µS, though the reviewer judged it a bit lower than usual for the breed. Error correction was the more practical concern. With a test wedge simulating scratches, audible muting appeared once the wedge reached 600 microns, which the reviewer rated below some competing machines. Dust simulation went better. Even the widest 900-micron black dots played through without interruption, and the laser read straight through a fingerprint smudge.
Toshiba was a prime manufacturer of its own player at a time when many brands simply rebadged machines from other factories. The company was supplying versions of this design to other highly regarded firms to sell under their own names. The retail price sat right alongside most other players Audio had tested of late, and the reviewer's verdict was that the XR-Z90 was a very worthy example of how a well-designed CD player should look and work.
High Fidelity Trade News (March 1980, p.95) reported the XR-Z90's introduction at the June CES, with a $1,000 price and a second model expected by year's end. It also noted Toshiba's own merchandise manager predicting CD player prices would fall rapidly, perhaps to $500 by the end of 1984.
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