r/ShowaAudio

The cover says Plasma Diamond Speaker System. Inside, Kenwood breaks that down into driver materials: a Crystal Plasma Diamond dome tweeter, plus 3000-fiber carbon ceramic diaphragms for the woofer and squawker.

The LS-990HG page also talks about a large rigid round-baffle cabinet, low-loss internal wiring, and an Energy Loss Elimination crossover network.

The LS-990HG was ¥59,800 each - about $410 then, roughly $1,200 today. The floor-standing LS-G5000 was ¥170,000 each, with dedicated stands sold separately at ¥50,000 per pair.

The MA-XG shell had five sections: two composite halves held together by a three-piece metal frame. TDK said every cassette was assembled and individually inspected by hand.

In Japan it was called MA-XG Fermo. Internationally, it dropped the Fermo suffix.

At one end, the portable Point series weighed almost nothing by full-size headphone standards. Point 1 was 53 g at ¥3,600 - about $14 then, roughly $47 today. Point 3 and Point 5 were both 55 g, priced at ¥5,500 - about $22 then, roughly $72 today - and ¥7,700 - about $31 then, roughly $101 today.

At the other end, ATH-8 used a bipolar electret-condenser system and came with a separate step-up adapter. The headphones weighed 210 g; the adapter, 820 g. Its ¥34,000 price was about $135 then, roughly $440 today.

The brochure listed ten models: ATH-2, ATH-3, ATH-4, ATH-5, ATH-6D, ATH-7, ATH-8, plus Point 1, Point 3, and Point 5.

Betamax was a powerful format that lost the mass market to VHS. Sony pushed it into almost every niche it could find: home video, portable recording, cameras, PCM digital audio, hi-fi sound, and complete AV systems.

The April 1983 catalog has nine VCRs, including the portable SL-F1 and SL-B5. With the PCM-F1 processor, a Betamax deck could record digital audio on video tape. The July 1984 Betaplus catalog pairs the SL-HFR60 and SL-HFR30 with the HFP-100 for Beta hi-fi and the BMC-100 and BMC-200 Betamovie cameras.

The format never won the mass market, but it remained in regional television studios for years.

In July 1976, the YOU-OZ DD system paired an SL-2000 direct-drive turntable with an ST-2400 tuner, SU-2400 integrated amplifier and SB-240(A) speakers. The set cost ¥99,800 - about $340 then, roughly $2,000 today.

The RS-605U cassette deck was sold separately. Technics also offered stands, microphones, headphones and a National audio timer. I doubt the English bulldog was chosen at random: British loudspeakers were widely treated as a benchmark at the time, and the joke seems to be that even the dog knew Technics could sound just as good.

CD Graphics in a portable Lo-D catalog is the whole bit here: plug in a TV, put on the karaoke disc, and the screen gets pictures with the lyrics.

The CX-G700 page goes all in on that setup: boombox, Hitachi TV, two microphones, remote, and boxes of song cards. A few pages later the CX-G30W pulls the same trick in a more regular EDITBORG CD radio-cassette shape.

The catalog is 12 pages, and the rest is exactly 1992 Lo-D: CX-70W and CX-50W, 3D Super Woofer, dual decks, remote controls, plus the smaller cassette players and radios after the main machines.

Sony called the TC-5350SD's mechanism "the first upright, see-through cassette-loading system." Its Japanese copy says the upright lettering on the cassette face could be viewed directly.

Through the transparent lid, the index written on the cassette and the amount of tape remaining were visible at a glance. Sony stressed that this was not a horizontal mechanism merely turned on its side, but a dedicated vertical design.

Yet in 1974, Sony was introducing it as an innovation and explaining why.

This Sansui ælf (I have no idea how to pronounce that) cover is pretty enough to look suspicious: waterfall, tiny stack, calm little speakers. Then the pages get specific.

The top amp is the A-α9. The catalog gives it NEW Advanced Diamond, CD-Direct, Twin-Monaural construction and a copper-plated iron front panel. The cassette deck is D-α7 with Dolby B/C, HX-PRO and CARS PRO auto calibration. The MD-α7 is a separate MiniDisc recorder, not a token logo on the brochure.

The biggest full set was ¥333,000 - about $3,100 then, roughly $6,500 today. Small stack, real component pricing.