Sony PCM-100 (1979)
Little formal documentation survives for the Sony PCM-100, but the period record is clear on what it was and where it sat in Sony's digital lineup. It was a digital audio processor - a box that turns analog audio into a pseudo-video bitstream so it can be recorded on a VTR - and it used a 14-bit code at a bit rate of 2.643 Mbits/sec. That put it between the earlier 13-bit PCM-1 and the 16-bit PCM-1600, a middle rung in the professional digital ladder Sony was building in the late 1970s.
The PCM-100 was announced in May 1979 alongside the domestic PCM-10 processor and the DEC-1000 digital editor, according to a Sony progress report reprinted in Electronics & Music Maker. Audio (February 1980, p.32) noted the new processor among Sony's show introductions that season. The ads and trade coverage make it plain that the PCM-100 was not a standalone recorder. It was a converter meant to be paired with an external VTR and with Sony's editing hardware. The DAE-1100 digital audio editor was designed to interface with the PCM-1600, PCM-1610, and PCM-100, and trade copy from Recording Engineer described the editor as working with all three. A later Recording Engineer item noted that Digital Services of Houston was using the PCM-100 with a DAE-1100 and a PCM-1610 to give owners of consumer 14-bit processors like the PCM-F1 access to true digital editing and disk mastering.
That is about the size of the record. The PCM-100 was a professional 14-bit processor, bit rate 2.643 Mbits/sec, announced May 1979, designed to work with Sony's DAE-1100 editor and the wider PCM ecosystem. No dimensions, weight, frequency response, price, or production run have surfaced.
- Type: Digital audio processor (PCM-on-VTR)
- Quantization: 14-bit
- Bit rate: 2.643 Mbits/sec
- Announced: May 1979
- Compatible editor: Sony DAE-1100
- Position in lineup: Between PCM-1 (13-bit) and PCM-1600 (16-bit)
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