The one PCM adaptor that everybody remembers... but that nobody bought. Or almost.

Thanks to Heitaro Nakajima, Sony was the leader and remained so from the very beginning of the research and the beginning of the consumer possibilities with the PCM-1. If otherwise, it would have been somebody else doing CD with Philips.
So the proportion of sales between Technics' SV-P100 and Sony's PCM-F1 + SL-F1 (the Beta recorder) probably was of around one to....... never mind. And the Sony was really portable, too.

Not as fast as Alpine and its (slightly later) DAT-8200 tentative, Technics also quickly abandoned its own integrated PCM recorder based on the RS-1500 series, as well as its tentative of a studio recording system, much like the one Victor was producing then. Both systems were produced in small quantities but not nearly enough to make a dent in Sony's market shares (consumer and professional).
And when Sony unveiled the PCM-3324 series, the writing was on the wall for everybody else, including Matsushita. Before CD arrived, Technics tried to fit PCM into a micro-cassette (like Aiwa at the same time) but to absolutely no avail.

The SV-P100 was originally planned in silver colour, quickly going back to the "professional" black. A Matsushita VHS mechanism was inside, along all-Matsushita converters and ICs. The rest is basically what all PCM adaptors/recorders had : composite video terminals and some editing functions. Technics added the possibility to jump/edit one marker. The enormous LCD meters (not Sony's 1978 system) were a nice and helpful touch.

However, Technics (as everybody else but Sony) stuck to the 1976 EIAJ recommendation regarding sample depth and the SV-P100 is a strictly 14-bit recorder. You can thank Sony for having imposed 16-bit right from the PCM-1 and then again to Philips in 1981, otherwise CD would have become a 14-bit format. But then maybe SACD would have happened earlier and thus have had more success ;-)

At 14-bit and 21kg when Sony's equivalent unit was 16-bit and weighed 4,5kg... it was obvious to spot the winner.

Here are a few useful links :

- Ricardo Mondaca, foremost Technics collector in Chile owns an SV-P100 (and service manual !)

- a little rewind from mixonline.com

- the audio-heritage.jp and K. Nisi pages on the SV.