My Emerson CD-150A CD player from 1985 | Somebody's First CD Player!

Well, life started feeling empty so I had to buy more junk. This latest victim is an odd-ball CD player from 1985: The Emerson CD-150A. This machine was custom made for Emerson in Japan but exactly who built it is up for debate. It has a lot of Yamaha chips in it but my research says many of those were made for Onkyo at that time. The DAC is a good one! It's a Texas Instruments 16 bit Burr-Brown PCM54HP. Look at the pic and you'll see the big-ass quartz crystal next to it for the clock. These people weren't messing around. Emerson probably didn't make any money on this. They most likely sold them to establish thier name in the CD player market. They came out with a new model in 1987, the CD-165, but that was it from them as far as hi-fi CD components went. They made a ton of portables and all-in-one type stereos, though. Some of thier designs in the mid 90's were quite innovative.
I bought this unit just to see what it could do and find out just how something from 40 years ago would sound next to modern stuff from today. It's fun to play my first pressing 1980's CD's in something authentic from the time, too. "The way it was... IS!"

This machine sounds good because of the quality TI DAC but it's a little fuzzy on the super high frequencies, probably due to aging analog brick wall low pass filters. As expected, it can't play home recorded CD-R's. Recordable CD's were not yet a thing in 1985 so most machines from the period are generally not calibrated to play them. Oh, it tries but there simply isn't enough laser power. CD-R's are less reflective than pressed CD's and so you need to crank things up a bit. Later laser designs include an automatic power setting that works over a wider range. I was surprised to see that it could handle modern 80 minute CD's without issues. CD's evolved over time and the standard maximum playtime went from 74 minutes 33 seconds to 79 minutes 57 seconds. Some early CD players can't handle the extra time and go crazy when you try to access the last couple of tracks on a long CD.

This machine is a relic of a time when CD was the new hip and happening thing. It is a very good example of what a kid like me would have gotten for his first CD player... Mine was very similar to this. It was a Multi-Tech MD-150, probably built by the same people.