Sony PCM-2000 (1988)
Sony's first professional portable DAT deck weighed nine pounds four ounces.
Overview
The PCM-2000 was Sony's first professional portable DAT recorder. It premiered in prototype form at the London AES Convention in March 1988, provisionally priced at around $8,600. It was aimed at broadcast, film and location recording, not the home taping market. Studio-Sound (September 1988, p.63) framed the launch around that pitch: small, reliable, long recording time. It also noted that DAT was already finding work in industrial, scientific and institutional roles beyond broadcast and film.
The machine is built around a portable DAT transport with digital servo control, made to keep working under adverse conditions. Recording is available at 48kHz, 44.1kHz, 44.056kHz and 32kHz. The 32kHz rate is restricted to digital input, and the analog inputs are automatically disconnected when it's selected. The deck also carries 2× oversampling, AES/EBU digital I/O and a word sync input.
Inputs are balanced XLR, switchable between microphone and line level. The mic position offers switchable 48V and 12V phantom powering. A multi-function LCD shows sampling frequency, elapsed or remaining tape time, Start/Record/Erase ID status, transport and search modes, servo status, and warnings for dew, low battery and caution, plus an emphasis indicator. The meter section has a 28-segment level indicator with an Over indication, battery voltage, and RF output level readout. A battery-saving memory facility keeps the display from eating the power budget.
That power budget is worth talking about, because the PCM-2000 can run continuously for two hours on fully charged NP-1A batteries, or from an optional AC adaptor when a wall socket is available. Two hours of continuous DAT in 1988, in a package you could carry, was the whole point. The weight is the price of admission: at nine pounds four ounces without the BVG-200 time code generator, the PCM-2000 was the heaviest portable on the market. Mix-Magazine (March 1990, p.112) described it as a rugged, DC-powered portable deck designed for location recording, with balanced line and mic inputs — the kind of summary that reads like a field report rather than a spec sheet.
Time code is the complicated part, and collectors should understand it before buying one. The PCM-2000 offers SMPTE/EBU time code facility and will record SMPTE time code. According to a later survey of the market, though, the time code section didn't work effectively for nearly four years after launch. There is no way to pre-stripe or post-stripe a tape with SMPTE time code, which limits its usefulness in post-production. It also will not record absolute time. For a machine sold partly on its time code capability, that's a big asterisk.
The digital I/O is AES/EBU only, which is narrower than later decks that added S/PDIF and optical connections. It does carry a built-in error rate indicator in playback mode, and it can add a copy prohibit code while recording. Other documented features include emphasis on/off for analog recording, a master safe record function and a voltage selector.
The PCM-2500 was the first professional DAT machine Sony brought to market. It is a two-unit 19-inch rack product provisionally priced at about $5,700, with no record inhibits at 44.1kHz and a full complement of digital inputs and outputs including SDIF-2 and AES/EBU. The PCM-2000 is the portable counterpart: more money, more weight, more field capability and a narrower digital I/O set. The TCD-D10 PRO is a scaled-down version of the PCM-2000, recording at 48kHz with playback at 44.1kHz.
Pricing in the trade press drifted over the model's life. The launch figure was around $8,600, but dealer listings in the period show the PCM-2000 quoted as "CALL" rather than a fixed number — the kind of listing that suggests street pricing moved around, and that this was never a commodity purchase. The PCM-2500 appears in the same dealer listings at $1,800, which is a useful reminder that by the early 1990s the professional DAT market had repriced itself substantially from the 1988 launch numbers.
For the collector, the PCM-2000 is a machine with a clear identity and a clear set of caveats. It's Sony's first professional portable DAT, it's built for field abuse, and it records at a sampling rate almost nothing else would touch. It's also heavy, tethered to AES/EBU, and its time code implementation was compromised for years. Buy one because you want the first serious portable DAT Sony made, not because you want an easy post-production tool. And budget for batteries — the NP-1A packs are the difference between a two-hour field session and a paperweight.
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