April 2023 ertonline.co.uk


Pictured: Esoteric Right: The Grandioso T1 Turntable


continually


Fast-forward a few decades, TEAC was receiving


regular worldwide


recognition – including two Emmy Awards for its digital multi-track recorders. The DA-88 is an eight-track recorder that uses Hi8 video cassette tapes; the transport on the DA-88 is the same as the one used on NASA space shuttles! And today, after 70 years, the company is


still pioneering in the home audio and music industry. During the pandemic, TEAC launched an exclusive vinyl album called “Recording Tomorrow”, giving six talented artists a unique chance to showcase their music. It was a content for singers, songwriters and bands from all over the world to provide samples of their music to appear on the album – copies of which were distributed at IFA last year. TEAC is exclusively distributed by Aqipa


in Europe. After a price adjustment for the Reference Series, the entire line-up is even more competitive, and the brand believes


there should be no reason for a well-sorted Hi-Fi-dealer not to stock TEAC. Hiroshi Oshima first joined the company back in 1985, occupying various roles in his time, including Director of the Australia branch and more recently Business Unit Manager of the global Consumer Product Division. He is currently the President of Esoteric Company – a subsidiary of TEAC Corporation. Here, Mr Oshima talks to ERT Editor, Jack


Cheeseman, about how the brand is celebrating 70 years in business, and his thoughts on the future of the home audio sector and how TEAC will play a part in its development.


Q&A


Q: So how are things at TEAC and how’s business been? Hiroshi Oshima: Business in general has been good in last two years during the pandemic. Especially our desktop audio system of the so-called Reference Series in our TEAC audio line-up – offering compact but rigidly built high quality digital systems. These are doing extremely well.


I guess this is because the work-from-home movement created consumer demand for high quality desktop audio systems to enjoy music with better sound. The growth was also seen in our high-end brand, Esoteric, which offers audio components for the more serious audiophile surpassing the £60,000 mark for the flagship T1 MagneDrive Turntable, with high earners as the target group.


The founder Mr Tani and his first Reel-to-Reel deck in 1953


Then, since last Summer, the entire business became a bit slower much like many other business sectors. However, whatever the circumstances may be, we constantly invest in new technology and products both in the premium and high-end audio markets; we particularly have had a few strong new products in mid-level digital music streamers and digital or analogue amplifiers.


Q: How are you celebrating Teac’s 70th birthday this year? HO: We will have several new products this year. And among those new products, we have a new CD-player that is the VRDS-701 and its transport version VRDS-701T which will be our 70th anniversary models! Why CD-players you might ask? Besides that these are important models in our history, although the music experience has moved to digital streaming, there are two reasons. The first one is that this new model employs our legendary exclusive VRDS technology with the Vibration-free Rigid Clamping System, which clamps the whole CD disc to read out digital data precisely without any jitters created by fluctuation of the disc rotation. This technology has been developed and matured over the years because TEAC has been one of the major leading companies of Mechatronics in both the consumer (TEAC and Esoteric) and the professional audio (we have another brand called TASCAM for professional musicians and studios) as our core competence technology. The second reason is that we would like to


offer once again a serious listening experience to the end user for CD playback of maximum 70 minutes, just like people enjoy listing to music with vinyl with its playing time of about 40 minutes for a whole album. We understand that people will find the real intention of the artist when they created the album – rather than simply listening to music piece by piece with a streamer. >>


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