Sony TA-E1000ESD
(1989 - 1991+)

A true landmark and one of Sony's biggest bestsellers.

Excellents DACs, a highly versatile EQ, a large and useful dot-matrix display, inputs aplenty and even a MIX function! We're used to all this nowadays - but this was 1989 ! And all this through TWO chips only : Sony CXD1335Q and Sony CXD1160.

Of course, every analog signal gets converted to digital so as to benefit from the numerous "sound fields" - digitalia still was fairly new, exciting, and Home Theater wasn't yet trying to replace traditional 2-CH audio...

Many regretted the few features Sony deemed unnecessary to carry over to the TA-E2000ESD successor (most notably the simplified parametric EQ section), but if the the A/D and D/A sections of the final TA-E9000ES were obviously more refined, the TA-E1000ESD and TA-E2000ESD both sold in bigger quantities - the right balance between quality, features, retail price and... timing.

Sold in Japan under the same moniker, for once :), and made to be powered by the TA-N55ES which in Japan was a TA-N330ES - as usual :))

The right image shows the TA-E1000ESD sandwiched between a Sony ST-S730ES and a Sony TA-N80ES, from a lavish 1991 USA catalog.