Electronics 1978
Optonica
The Dream Deck
FROM THE PRINTED PAGEOriginal ad copy
OCR transcription from the archived page. Scanning and reading-order errors may remain.
THE DREAM DECK The Optonica® RT-6501 computer controlled cassette deck. The first intelligent machine that plays music and wakes you gently from your dreams. The new Optonica RT-6501 cassette deck has a mind of its own: a microprocessor, or mini-computer containing about 20,000 semiconductors, a memory bank, and a central processing unit. You can easily program it to perform an endless variety of musical programs. Just imagine the possibilities, using the microprocessor to control the deck for program search, zero rewind, section replay, counter search, pause, electronic tape counting, second counting, and even timed automatic on-off switching of your entire high-fidelity system. That you can do so much with the Optonica RT-6501 is due to its high I.Q. That your music will sound so rich and brilliant, however, is due to its high S/N ratio (64 dB, Dolby on), its low wow and flutter (0.058% WRMS), and its flat frequency response curve (30-17,000 Hz ±3 dB, with FeCr tape). One of its most amazing feats is unattended timer-activated recording, playback and shutoff, guided by its own quartz digital clock. You can even program it to wake you gently with the sound of your own voice. Hear the Optonica RT-6501 at an Optonica High Fidelity dealer; then take one home and see how you like waking up to a dream. OPTONICA THE OPTIMUM. 10 Keystone Place, Paramus, N.J. 07652
Commentary
I looked for the cassette deck and found it only after passing a sleeping woman, a reclining man, and two sheep. The gray illustration occupies almost the entire page. Its theatrical curtains, columns, and rounded clouds put the reader somewhere between a bedroom and a dream stage. The little product photograph below has an unusual job: it must explain how this improbable scene relates to a machine.
The answer is waking. The RT-6501 can run timed recording, playback, and shutoff, and can even wake its owner with a recording of their own voice. The sheep turn the familiar business of counting oneself to sleep into an image for programmable audio. Other functions—search, rewind, replay, counting—could have produced a stern control-panel advertisement. Optonica instead gives them a domestic destination. The machine’s intelligence should make rest and waking more agreeable.
The copy’s inventory of roughly 20,000 semiconductors, memory, and a central processing unit is striking beside the dream. It treats the microprocessor as something that deserves introduction and explanation. The sound specifications then separate intelligence from fidelity: a high “I.Q.” explains the operations; signal-to-noise ratio, wow and flutter, and frequency response explain the audio claim. Automation alone is not allowed to stand in for sound quality.
The offer also records a change in the value of scheduled media. Here an unattended recording is a notable feat requiring a clock and a prepared tape. Today many listeners can call up a program after its original transmission. The machine’s work has shifted, but the appeal of arranging a pleasant morning without attending to equipment remains easy to recognize.
For beginning copywriters, “Dream Deck” compresses a desired object and an object that participates in sleep. “High I.Q.” and “high S/N ratio” share a grammatical shape while explaining different benefits. That paired construction is a useful technique: introduce a complex product in familiar language, then preserve the distinctions that matter to an informed buyer. The dream image earns attention; the specific functions must earn belief.
Optonica was Sharp’s premium hi-fi identity; a surviving Optonica catalogue documents its connection to Sharp. Sharp continues in consumer electronics and business products, rather than this page establishing a current RT-6501 offering.
The durable promise is technology that handles repetitive tasks around a human routine. Cassette searching and FeCr-tape measurements are specific to this deck. The more portable advertising insight is the decision to sell an automated function through the moment of life it changes.