Sony TA-FA777ES
(1999 - 2003)

In fact, this where it really ends, for Sony as well as all the others : the launch of the best and least compressed audio format ever accessible to a soon-to-be wide audience. SACD is like 10-bit / 4:4:4 video : pure signal, no loss. Unfortunately, it is big, bulky, expensive, and requires new loudspeakers, new sources and... new discs. Nearly ten years after, we all know where things are at : computers have engulfed everything and the best way to sell albums seems to either include a video track and "bonuses" aplenty or to go the download way through myspace and youtube. Attempts at quality downloading (even 24/96 high-res) are actually ongoing but whether this will make a market (even if niched-like) remains to be seen.

So the FA777ES was Sony's last stand for 2-channel audio, for the home and the old fashioned way. Takashi Kanai was at the helm as he had been since the late 1970s. Non-magnetic and gold-plated MOS-FETs, Torus Toroidal Core transformer, copper-plated chassis (something Sony did first in the PCM-F1, along Sansui and way before Marantz started being praised for such audiophile seriousness), ultra-select parts, solid aluminium controls, heatsinks and switches - the FA777ES inherited from both the contemporary TA-N1 & TA-E1 and the 5000 series tricks while remaining price-wise accessible. It was Sony's last high-end but non-exorbitant ES pre/main amplifier - a 1999 version of the 1965 ES TA-1120.

After the immensely successful launch of the original ES separates in 1965, in between the industry high time of 1977 and the peak-to-be of 1999, the ES series saw its all-time best (ST-A7B, TA-N7B), side shows to those (TC-880-2, TTS-8000, PS-X9), its all-time best and market-wise truly successful (TA-E86B, TA-E88B, TA-N86B), a sadly badly marketed and technologically incoherent follow up series (ESPRIT, APM-8, TA-N900, TA-E900, TA-N902, SE-P900), the digital revolution (CDP-5000, CDP-101, PCM-F1), a slump in coherence but excellent amplifiers (TA-F555ES, TA-F777ES, TC-K777ESII) and what is undoubtedly Sony's last successful period -image-wise, sales-wise AND sound-wise- which began with the TA-F800ES and culminated in 1993 with the TA-F808ES, by way of magnificent pieces such as the CDP-R1 & DAS-R1, CDP-X777ES, CDP-X707ES, DTC-1500ES, DTC-2000ES, SS-A5, SS-GR1, TA-ER1 and MDR-R10 "King". And I won't even mention Beta/Digibeta video or BVM Trinitron monitors which are all undisputed industry standards : since the mid 1980s for professional Beta (before that it was U-Matic, a Sony/JVC standard) and since about always for Trintron...

In 1990, Sony was recognized in a worldwide poll as the most "positive" brand : making the more inventive and desirable products on top of having the most instantly recognizable logo - impressive.
Celebrating in 1996 its 50 years of almost continuous success, Sony interspersed those five decades with quite a few compulsively repeated contradictions and self-anihilation efforts, said efforts having in 2008 long since taken over - I won't go into this now but will post someday a detailed compilation here on TVK about that sad subject.

At any rate, you can thank Ibuka, Iwama, Ezaki, Nakajima, Kanai and the others for turning a tiny little part of the electronics industry into gems of audio engineering : musically satisfying, long-lasting and beautiful components.

The TA-FA777ES is the ultimate evolution of the last coherent ES series which started in 1994/95 with the TA-FA7ES then with the TA-FA70ES in 1997.
As the for the previous Darwinistic evolution from TA-F800ES > TA-F830ES > TA-F870ES > TA-F808ES, the ultimate FA777ES has the same basic formula as the original FA7ES but is an ultra-refined version to say the least - the ultimate. You can compare at hifi-do the inside views of the FA7ES with the one shown here of the FA777ES : close siblings indeed but a very different sound quality !

It should be noted that, besides circuit and hardware upgrades, Sony added a little souvenir from gone-by days with the TA-FA70ES : the tape monitoring switch which is the basic same design as that of the TC-880-2, PCM-F1, TC-K777, TC-K777ES, TC-K777ESII, TC-KA7ES, DTC-1500ES, DTC-2000ES and a few others. Whenever you see that little circled metal switch, you can be sure that you are facing a Sony component that was particularily well studied, engineered and built. Its absence doesn't mean you're faced with a lemon (case in point : TA-F7B and just about everything else in Sony's top lineups up to 1994), but the high-fidelity separates named above have all extremely well stood the test of time. Like all of Sony's high-end audio output, since 1965.