The Compact disc is 30 years old today

I'll go by my local used cd place today and most likely they'll have another huge stack of traded in cd's I'll have a pick of.

Even if they quit making 'new' ones, there are SO MANY folks out there that'll continue to trade in their old collections that I'll have great picks for a long time to come, no doubt.

Since 95%+ of what I acquire nowadays is VG+ or better used stock, I'm happy with those who don't see any value in their stuff anymore !

THANK YOU !!!!

 

So can I have all your CDs?

 

They "made you"? Did the CDs start talking to you or hold you at gunpoint or something?

 

I think I'm going to celebrate by buying some more CDs today. Who will join me?

 

As an avid record collector I hated the idea of the compact disc however in 1985, I gave in and purchased my first player a Magnavox. During the first month I bought over 50 discs’ I was sold with the convenience. During the next 6 years there was a parade of players and modifications in an attempt to make CD sound musical. It wasn’t until the start of the nineties when I moved up to a Theta transport and DAC that I was somewhat satisfied. Without the CD and a rush by companies to reissue music that was long out of print I wouldn’t have been exposed to many great long lost albums of the sixties.

Sadly while I still buy CD’s, they are played once as they are ripped to my hard drive. Until downloads are offered in full resolution format AND are significantly less expensive than buying the CD, I’ll continue to purchase them. I’ve never developed a love of the format from a collector’s standpoint like I have for LP’s. The artwork is too small, the labels don’t inspire the devotion I have for the great labels of the sixties (Island, Harvest or even a beautiful 360 Columbia), simply they are too plastic.

I don’t find the discrepancy between digital and analog sources that many here share. In fact I prefer digital, the less surface noise I hear the better, however the LP remains my favorite purely from an aesthetic point of view. I love the look, feel and smell of vinyl, it bringS back memories of my previous life.

 

Just ordered $200 worth of Zappa from Amazon!

 

I took me a few years to get over the LP thing. At first buying a CD was not the same experience for me as an LP. I've gotten over it...the LP is now only a PITA

 

That's as may be but it's part of the history of the CD. As I understand it, a lot of early CD's either used poor sources or indifferent mastering, which made some like Mr. Geller say, "What the heck?", while many others were just astonished at the no-background-noise phenomenon and took that to be "superior sound" in and of itself. And it's a damn shame that "the industry eventually figured out how to make CDs that sound much, much better" but apparently doesn't often use that knowledge. But that is a problem affecting any digital format, not just CD.

The CD was great, groundbreaking technology in the 80's and 90's but it was really only the first step in the digital music revolution.

 

Here is the first CD and CD player. I started collecting this stuff in 2002, when it was still ridiculously cheap and readily available. The Billy Joel CD in mint shape cost me a mere 10 bucks!

 

Let's hope lossless becomes the norm on iTunes, Amazon, etc. before this happens.

 

hip hip hooray

 

I remember the first CD I ever heard. My brother and I were visiting a high end stereo shop in Salt Lake City when CDs first came out. They put on the Telarc 1812 Overture and played it over a pair of Klipschorns. WOW! When those cannons went off, I could feel the repercussions in my chest. I never forgot that experience.

I was determined to buy into the CD experience but it took me another 4 years to do so.

 

Your post makes me want to buy that classical piece on CD just to hear it for myself.

 

I remember buying my 1st CD before I even had a player. I just had to check out what one of these new discs looked like.
It was ELP's Pictures at an Exhibition:

 

That was nasty of the CD. Which CD was it? They are very outspoken these CDs.

 

The Visitors by Abba and the Alpine Symphony by HvK/BSO were the first CDs.

 

My first cd player was the cheapest player offered at Circuit City, a brand called Multitech. It was slow to operate, and never could read Pink Floyd's Saucerful of Secrets properly.

My parents had to buy it for me on a trip to Charlotte, because I was working, and the electronic chains had not yet made their way to Hickory.

 

My first CD player came a year or so into the Compact Disc age, probably 1984. I remember them having demonstrations in the local Sam Goody and Wee Three Records stores, and noting that most of the stuff available in the format seemed to be either classical and mainstream pop-rock, mostly on the Columbia label. As such I wasn't enticed to be an extremely early adopter.

But by '84, browsing the stores, I noticed a lot more product in the format in the racks and encouraged Santa Wife to get a player for me for Christmas. Players needed product, and we also picked out that day a couple of discs - things we didn't have in any other format to justify their purchase. One was the SOMEWHERE IN TIME disc, another was a classical title.

I however, in spite of our pact regarding CD purchases, immediately began the relentless pursuit of upgrading the record library with these new digital wonders. Greatest Hits compilations seemed a good way to go and the record companies obliged by putting out tons of them early on. It was a way to get you interested in an artist and then later you'd have to purchase the album discs if you wanted more.

So my first purchase was CARPENTERS SINGLES 1969-1973. I remember taking it into the radio station and hearing parts of it on their new player, while at home my new player was awaiting Christmas, still months away.

The player we got that day is still here. It's survived two moves and still functions. It's a SONY CDP-302 and only has one operational flaw these days. Typical of Sony's, the mechanical drawer doesn't open smoothly - or even at all by itself. You have to assist it by hand.

But in honor of the Compact Disc's 30th, I've gotten it out, fired it up and she still plays.

Harry

 

You have more CD's than my local Indie Store!

I have that on LP! Bought it only a year back, after having the CD for 20+ years....

Same. Still love my CD's and, imo, as we hit the late 1980's / early 1990's they were really at their "peak" -- great sounding, but before the loudness wars.

I'd like to say I'm looking forward to 40 years, but honestly I'm probably not. I'm hoping that, in ten years time, high-rez is actually the norm but I guess we shall see. Still, CD's had / have a long run and they've been well worth buying.

 

I didn't get my first CD player until 1986 when the first quad oversampling players came out, but I did hear what was refuted to be the first CD ever at the 82 AES convention in Anaheim. IIRC it was a Japanese sampler and not Billy Joel. I'm not sure if it was a commercial release or just a demo for us AES members.

According to my records the date was Oct 23, 1982 so I'm not quite sure what to make of this. If the Billy Joel CD had already been released I'd surely have thought it would have made a much better demo than some Japanese stuff nobody had ever heard of.

Btw, I was amazed at the demo in that the disc actually played, but I thought it sounded awful. Of course I was not a fan of the sound of the early digital recordings, which up to that point I could only hear on records, but this CD seemed to have that sound in spades.

 

I have a great deal of affection for CD, as my family got its first player in 1985, right after I turned 15, and I was still discovering so much music.

My first CD was the Target of Phil Collins' "Face Value", and I used to love playing that on my dad's Denon with the headphones on. About a year later I managed to get my own CD player at Christmas. In the meantime I'd play the discs on my father's player and make cassette copies for Walkman use.

I never abandoned vinyl though... so as a result, we have a large collection of LPs and CDs.

 

I'm always amazed that people can remember what their first CD was.

 

Really? It was quite exiting for most of us I guess. Mine were Beethoven's 9th (Kurt Masur/Gewandhausorchester) and Pink Floyd's "The Wall", both on the day I bought my first player (Sony). I will never forget that.

BTW, both CDs still play flawlessly. Perfect Sound Forever!

 

Compact discs were created to sell new hardware (obviously) but mostly to fix a price problem with recordings.

Vinyl was the classic example of 'elastic' pricing. You raise the price, you sell fewer records. You lower the price you sell more records. Elastic, you see.

The record companies tried for years to raise the price of their product, but their plans always failed.

Then came compact disc. Prices went from about eight bucks for a recording to about twenty.

The damage done to the music industry by this soul-less, inferior format is impossible to gauge.

30 years later and people put on a record and go, 'oh my God, that sounds so much better'.

The cd may have made tons of money, but in the short term it was a disaster for music lovers and in the long term its deleterious effects on the recording industry are something we are still dealing with.

I don't think its an accident that popular music has been as Frank Zappa put it a 'sick puppy' for twenty years now.

When you put out an inferior, over-priced product it might be good for short term profits. But for music lovers it's a catastrophe.

 

I worked for a rather famous stereo company in the late 70's through the mid 80's. I was fortunate to have tested some of the very first players ever sent to the US. My circa 1982 Philips/Yamaha hybrid test player still works perfectly, though I use it very infrequently these days. I still have a handful of 1982-era discs... Billy Joel, the early Telarcs, and some sampler discs from Philips. They all work to this day.... even my beat-to-**** A Trick Of The Tail target plays without a blip.

I think the first few CDs I actually bought (instead of company freebies) was Paul McCartney's Band On The Run. I did get the Toshiba Abbey Road awhile later and a bunch of umm, grey-market live CDs that were pretty special back in the day. I recall our speaker engineer not liking the format all that much, but the Chief Engineer did... go figure!? I definitely miss those days - being involved in that end of the business by day and recording music by night. I don't recall sleeping all that much either! Ron