Onkyo FR-B7
by Polymemnetic
My bookshelf unit, also my primary home playback device. I imported it from Japan about a year ago, when I was still in my GAS(gear acquisition syndrome) phase. When it comes to MD in North America, that can’t really be avoided if you want the good stuff at a reasonable price. Since it is a regional exclusive, you’ll need a step-down converter to use it in North America, but those are readily available.
This unit was originally sold with a matching set of speakers, and has a good complement of inputs and outputs for era appropriate audio devices including a Line In, Tape in and out, CD Recorder in and out, and an output for a powered subwoofer, if you chose to add one to the system. Note that this unit does not have any optical in or out, while the higher spec FR-B8 does. It has AM/FM radio, but due to band differences, it’s not very useful in the West unless you listen to a lot of AM radio.
My personal unit didn’t come with the original speakers, but I had a set of Onkyo speakers that are from roughly the same era, and pair nicely with the unit. As such, I can’t speak to the quality of the included speakers in the unit, but I can say that the sound production of the unit is good to my ears, with no noticeable deficiencies. I’m not an audiophile, so anything beyond that is not something I can give any degree of insight into. Plus, we’re talking about MD, which is already a good, but lossy audio format.
My particular unit needed some TLC when I got it, coming with an MD drive that didn’t eject properly. Easily fixed by pushing the door lever back into place, thankfully. It had a surprise MD in it as well, which is always a bonus. The CD drive has never worked properly, not opening reliably, and always skipping and cutting out somewhere around 6 minutes into a disc. Some maintenance needs to be done, yet.
Which brings me to my first real downside for this unit. There isn’t a service manual for it available, and nothing that tells you how to disassemble the unit to do maintenance work on it. As of yet, I haven’t been willing to risk it for a MD drive that has a 1 in 25 read error on MDs and a CD drive that I never use. Some day, I’ll take the time to figure it out and document the process, but today is not that day. I’ve already had it apart to fix the door, and the further disassembly wasn’t obvious to me after some looking and poking, so I passed on it for now. All things in due time, after all.
Of note is that it doesn’t support CD-Text. So, when dubbing from a CD to a MD, it won’t copy track titles over. But in the era we live in, many people who are using MD have access to a NetMD unit of some sort, making track labelling a breeze with a minimal effort. And let’s be realistic, the number of CDs that people encounter on a daily basis that actually have CD-Text information is pretty slim. The death of physical media, which I am personally doing my best to stave off, has only magnified that problem.
Dubbing a CD to MD with this device is reasonably quick, I think on par with a 2x NetMD recorder, but because of the aforementioned issues with the CD portion, I’ve never confirmed this. Everything in the Japanese manual says that it dubs at 2x, so I choose to believe it.
The HI-MD section of this device is somewhat restricted compared to its bigger brother FR-B8, in that it only dubs at 44.1khz. Fine for CD, but the extra resolution gained by using PCM would be wasted on this device. Otherwise, it’s perfectly usable, and has no real downsides that aren’t carried over from the MD portion, or issues inherent to the format. I didn’t picture myself making much use of the HI-MD features of this, and so far, I haven’t. Self fulfilling prophecy, I guess.
Overall, would I recommend this device? Yes, I would. As a device solely to power some bookshelf speakers and play minidiscs in an office or bedroom, it works flawlessly. It has the capability of pushing plenty of air, if you want to test out your bookshelf speakers. It’s fairly cheap and available, in terms of a MD device.
Just… beware this little guy. He's bright. Turn it off at night, lest you bathe the opposite wall in a blue glow.
