Kyocera DA-710CX (c. 1987)
The DA-710CX is a Compact Disc player from Kyocera. The name is short for Kyoto Ceramics, and this player was a major step up from the company's earlier CD efforts. Audio (September 1987, p.89) took it to be one of the best-performing, best-sounding CD players of its moment, crediting both circuit design and mechanical construction. True to the company's name, it used a lot of ceramic. Four ceramic spacers sat in the chassis to isolate key components from external vibration, and the transport used zirconia-ceramic guide shafts.
Kyocera had been working toward this. High Fidelity (December 1987, p.87) notes that Kyocera introduced a CD player with true 16-bit digital filters back in May 1983. In September 1984 it brought out what it called the world's first Fine Ceramics anti-resonant CD chassis, years before similar ideas became common. The magazine suggests Kyocera's digital expertise came from years of building computers for well-known electronics names. The DA-710CX used digital filtering with oversampling, and the symmetry of its 1-kHz square wave and unit-pulse responses in bench testing confirmed the design (Audio, September 1987, p.92). On the electrical side, analog and digital circuits ran on separate voltage-regulated supplies, so digital noise couldn't leak into the audio path (Audio, 1986, p.105).
Rated total harmonic distortion was 0.005% at 1 kHz with a 20-kHz low-pass filter. A related model, the DA-510CX, appears alongside it in the same Audio specification table (October 1987, p.138). The one measured quibble Audio noted was a slight phase error between the left- and right-channel outputs at 20 kHz.
Audio's reviewer put it plainly: with all the refinements and features, he'd have been mighty surprised if this player hadn't sounded great, and it did (September 1987, p.92). Beyond those period reviews, little else is recorded about the DA-710CX. No original price or market context survives in the Archive's records.
Similar items on eBay
No exact Kyocera DA-710CX listings are live right now — these searches show current Kyocera and similar vintage camera gear on eBay:
As an eBay Partner, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support our independent vintage technology research.
Related Models
- Eico 3150 (1967)
- Fisher CUSTOM-ELECTRA-I (K-14/K-15) (1957)
- Fisher CUSTOM-ELECTRA IV (E33/E44) (1960)
- Akai AM-2400 (1978)
- Akai AM-2600 (1977)
- Akai AM-2650 (1975)
- Akai AM-2850 (1975)
- Akai AM-32 (1978)
- Akai AM-73 (1973)
- Heathkit AA-32 (1960s)