NEC CD-803
(1983 - 1984)

Strangely enough, reviews I have at hand show that not many did hear the CD-803 as much better-sounding than lesser players... Perhaps the format was new enough to keep the sound of it offstage. For a while. The CD-803 was part of the cream of the 1st generation CD player crop but strangely didn't sell nearly as well as the Yamaha CD-1 or Sony CDP-701ES...

A full in-house development, the CD-803 was surprisingly -and very briefly- rebadged as a Teac DL-700.

The mechanism doesn't seem to be Kyocera-based and of course neither Philips-based. Toshiba perhaps? Or a super-tweaked Hitachi?

Digital filters, then, represented a fair chunk (if not half of-) the price of any player - and NEC made its own digital filters !
Ultra-High tech all this was and we're so used to it nowadays that it still is a little difficult to remember that it really was.

Below is a photograph taken at the Paris Salon in march 1983 - note the top screws to allow for quick glances at a new kind of guts :-)