Chapter 323: Heart Not Dark Enough
If we want to come up with something at the briefing at the end of the month, we have to have solid content.
Where does Shirakawa Electric's dry goods come from? Of course, it's SIC.
"Brother Nakajima, are you sure this is okay?"
Baichuan Feng held the machine in his hand carefully, his expression full of doubt.
"Ahem~" Nakajima Heitaro said uncertainly, "It should be fine. If it's just for a press conference, it should be fine."
Should? After hearing what he said, Baichuan Feng's face became more uncertain.
This is something that will be presented at the IPO briefing, so there must be no mistakes.
Baichuan Feng decided to actually try out the performance of this prototype, so he held the machine with one hand and pressed the power button with the other hand.
With a swipe, a crescent-white "KITA" logo pops up on the bright black LCD screen. The crystal white display effect makes the black machine look mysterious and technological.
After waiting patiently for two seconds, as the interface finished loading, music soon came from the speakers on the table.
Well, not bad, the sound is bright and clear, much better than the tape machine.
Especially the clean sound, with no background noise at all.
The rustling sound in the background of tapes and vinyl is just noise in comparison.
As expected, digital music has huge advantages over analog music, and this will be the mainstream of future audio technology development.
That’s right, what Baichuan Feng was holding in his hand at the moment was the portable CD player of Baichuan Electric.
After almost a year of hard work, the previously large and bulky desktop CD player has now been successfully slimmed down.
The size is similar to the one Shirakawa Kaede defined last year, slightly larger than a CD box, and the thickness is about the height of 4 CDs stacked together.
Honestly speaking, looking back from the perspective of future generations, it is still not thin enough, it is too thick.
But in this era, being able to miniaturize a desktop CD player to this extent is already black technology.
However, the reason why Shirakawa Electric was able to miniaturize the portable CD player to this extent is actually suspected of "cheating".
Why do you say that? Just look at the other battery box in Baichuan Feng's hand.
This portable CD player is powered solely by an external battery box.
The working mode of a CD player is completely different from that of a tape player. It requires a laser head to irradiate light waves to read the information on the disc, and it also requires a motor to rotate at high speed to drive the disc.
In addition, the DAC chip inside the machine decodes the information and restores it to sound waves to output the sound through the power amplifier system.
There is no doubt that its power consumption and rated current requirements are much higher than those of a tape recorder, and ordinary No. 5 dry batteries cannot power it at all.
So in order to solve the power supply problem, Nakajima Heitaro and his team had to use larger capacity No. 2 batteries.
As we all know, No. 2 batteries are too thick compared to No. 5 batteries. They are just a little thinner than the No. 1 batteries in the flashlights we used as children.
The Shirakawa Electric portable CD player requires at least 4 No. 2 batteries to work properly, and only in this way can the machine retain sufficient battery life.
It is extremely difficult and impossible to integrate four large No. 2 batteries into a portable CD player.
If we insist on doing this, the current portable CD player will have to be even bigger .
Baichuan Feng looked at the thick CD player in his hand and shook his head. If that was the case, the so-called portable was just a name.
Therefore, the best option is to separate the electromechanical and electrical components and make an external battery box for the CD player, which will look much smaller.
Although it has an additional battery box like a power bank, it is still portable.
Look, Baichuan Feng takes it and walks two steps without any problem.
And considering the usage scenario, Shirakawa Electric also reserved a 110V AC power interface for this portable CD player when designing it.
In other words, you can use it by plugging it in at home, and if you take it out, you have to rely on the battery in the battery box.
Although it looks a bit sloppy, it is still much more advanced than Sony's desktop computers.
Baichuan Feng shook the CD player in his hand with satisfaction. Wow, it looks pretty good.
"Hi~" Suddenly the speakers on the table stopped working and no more music could be heard.
"Uh." Nakajima Heitaro next to him looked embarrassed, while Ogawa Hiroshi, who was a little further behind him, blushed.
Baichuan Feng was stunned for a moment, then quietly put down the CD player in his hand, and the moving music sounded again.
"Junior brother, the current model needs to be improved, needs to be improved~" Nakajima Heitaro's face turned red with embarrassment.
After all, the current CD player is too fragile and has almost no shockproof function. If it is moved a little, it might stop working.
Baichuan Feng shook his head. "We still have a little time to see if we can make some improvements. We must at least hold on until the briefing is over."
"Hai, we have been making continuous improvements." Nakajima Heitaro also had his share of grievances.
Because according to the plan, Shirakawa Electric's portable CD player was originally planned to be launched in October or November.
But in order to catch up with this press conference, the time was forcibly moved forward by three or four months.
Time is already tight, and now it has been greatly compressed, so some minor bugs are inevitable.
In fact, Shirakawa Kaede doesn't plan to release a new model in July.
He wanted to first show the finished machine to the outside world. As for the actual launch, he would still push it to the market in October or November as originally planned.
But now there is not even a production line for CD players, so if you want a finished machine, you can only rely on hand-making in the laboratory.
As you can imagine, this kind of handmade laboratory product is full of small problems.
But for this briefing, it was all I could do. After all, most of the time, plans can’t keep up with the speed of change.
"What are our costs?" Putting down the CD player in his hand, Baichuan Feng began to care about another issue.
“Because we haven’t officially started large-scale production yet, there will be errors in the calculation of specific cost details now.
But..." Nakajima Heitaro paused, "But judging from the current situation, the cost may not be optimistic."
Baichuan Feng frowned. The so-called pessimism must have put a lot of pressure on profits.
"Please tell me in detail where the cost problem is."
After getting his consent, Nakajima Heitaro immediately took a half-finished CD player from the table.
"Brother Baichuan, you see, many of the internal mechanisms are made of metal parts to resist earthquakes.
Their cost is much higher than that of ordinary plastics, and considering the anti-interference problem, the internal partitions are all made of copper sheets as the base material for signal shielding. "
Through the open back cover, Shirakawa Feng can clearly see the inside of the case, where there are many small modules wrapped in golden copper sheets.
Because CD players work on the principle of digital signals, unlike tape players, they are easily affected by external interference or even adjacent circuits.
In order to ensure the purity of the tone, each modular circuit has to be shielded individually.
The most common shielding method in electronic products is to use copper materials for enclosed protection.
But when Baichuan Feng saw this scene, he shook his head. "Brother Nakajima, this is too extravagant."
"Eh?" Nakajima Heitaro looked at him in confusion, not understanding the so-called luxury.
"Copper is a precious metal. Although it has a good signal shielding effect, it cannot be used like this."
Baichuan Feng couldn't help but sigh that the people who make products in this era are still too honest, and all of them are crazy about piling up materials.
"If it's just for anti-interference and signal shielding, we can use copper foil."
"Copper foil?!" Nakajima Heitaro was struck by lightning, and his shocked eyes seemed to have discovered a new world.
"Of course," Baichuan Feng nodded without hesitation, "Taking a step back, even using aluminum is more cost-effective than using copper.
Even more daring, you can use aluminum foil instead of copper foil.”
"This...this..." Nakajima Heitaro was stunned.
Can we still play like this?
How could Heitaro Nakajima, who has always been making products honestly, have ever thought of cutting corners like this?
In fact, it's not just him. Most Japanese brands now use very conscientious materials.
Otherwise, how can a service life of twenty or thirty years be guaranteed?
Design is one aspect, but materials play a bigger role.
Before today, no one had ever told Heitaro Nakajima that costs could be saved in this way.
After all, the design style has been formed over the years, and everyone is accustomed to it and thinks it is natural to do so.
In this era, Japanese brands generally attach great importance to the reputation of their products and never think of tampering with the materials used.
So one can imagine how much of a shock Nakajima Heitaro felt at this moment after hearing Shirakawa Kaede's method of reducing costs.
"Junior Brother Shirakawa, is this really okay?" Nakajima Heitaro could not hide his worry in his eyes.
The method is a good one and the effect is absolutely immediate, but Nakajima Heitaro feels that his conscience is somewhat against him.
"Brother Nakajima..." Baichuan Feng looked at him helplessly, "From your professional perspective, do copper foil and aluminum foil have the ability to shield electromagnetic signals?"
"Of course, but the effect will be greatly reduced..."
Baichuan Feng waved his hand to interrupt his worrying, "Brother Nakajima, what we are making is a portable CD player.
The so-called portability is actually a simplification of a desktop computer, which means that its performance is weaker than that of a desktop computer in some aspects.
Using copper sheet as shielding substrate is fine for desktop computers, but not for portable CD players because their positioning is different.
Desktop computers are priced at more than 100,000 or 200,000 yen, which means they are luxury items among music players.
It is reasonable to use sufficient materials on luxury goods, but portable CD players are different. Their target audience is young people with average purchasing power.
For them, a cool look and sound quality that is clearly superior to that of a tape recorder are enough.
The most important thing is that the price must be low enough so that our CD player can become a mass consumer product."
After listening to Shirakawa Kaede's argument, Nakajima Heitaro felt very conflicted.
He knew that from the company's perspective, Shirakawa Kaede was right, but as a designer, he wanted his work to be perfect.
However, cost is ultimately the primary factor in determining the product. Nakajima Heitaro sighed, and he knew what he should choose.
"Let's try it this way." Baichuan Feng patted the senior brother on the shoulder.
It is still rare. The means of shielding electromagnetic signals in later generations basically rely on metal foil.
It would not be like now, using pure copper sheets, which is too luxurious.
"Oh, and the same goes for the internal mechanisms. If plastic can be used, use plastic. As for shockproofing, we'll consider it later or for the next generation of products."
Hearing this, Nakajima Heitaro, who was already a little conflicted, gave a bitter smile.
Or your heart is not dark enough.
No wonder others can become founders of listed companies while I am still buried in the laboratory.
