(1982-08-17) 1st CD Manufactured

[kfbkfb]

Of course, I have to ask - when was the first time you listened to a CD (maybe DS or CS encoded) in surround sound?

https://www.discogs.com/release/5126255-Various-Sample-Surround
I tried this DS encoded CD in 1991 when I first set up a quad system w/2 Pioneer SX-2300 receivers & 4 identical speakers, my home built (no logic) matrix decoder & my Magnavox FD-3030, IIRC, the Flybys sounded pretty good.

(I guess nobody told the album producers that DS encoding filters out most of the bass from the surround channel, the Cannon Fire demo track - boom from L, C, R, pop from S)


Kirk Bayne

 

[The Rang]

first cd player was a Yamaha. dont recall model. It was 1984. first cd was - yup, Brothers In Arms ( still have this CD BTW ). 1986. The Yamaha started to act up. So enter the Denon DCD - 1500 of which I still own and still play

Probaby the CD1 below , that was their first player, my CD-X1 was the second

 

[winopener]

My 1st CD, ©1983 which came with the Magnavox (Philips) FD 1010 top-loader swing arm dual D-A converters player I bought on sale at Bloomingdales in '84 for $299. Sold the player to buy a front-loader Magnavox which was troublesome. Sent it to a Magnavox service center in Atlanta and it got damaged on the return trip. NAP sent me a check to pay for it. I proceeded to buy a Denon DCD-1500 II which served me well, over 15 years.

View attachment 82653

Funny thing about the early Philips samplers NotForSale: here's Sampler USA (which i have) has the first ever digital release of Lipps Inc. Funkytown and another Sampler, Pure perfect sound forever vol. 2, has the first ever for Lipps Inc. How Long. While Funkytown quickly made the commercial digital way, How Long remained only on this sampler for a decade. Talk about demo tracks...

https://www.discogs.com/release/1863358-Various-The-Pure-Perfect-Sound-Of-Philips-Compact-Disc-2
BTW, this Philips sampler also feature another track that IIRC is still, 40 years later, not available on another digital physical media: could you spot it?

 

[kfbkfb]

https://manuals.plus/sylvania/scd305-cd-player-walkman-with-FM-radio-manual#axzz7e4Kxh1EA
Out of curiousity, I bought this yesterday at Family Dollar ($12), sound quality is pretty good, the Dollar Tree AA batteries last for about 6 or 7 CDs (appears to have a time aligned stereo output, will try it later w/DS encoded content).


Kirk Bayne

 

[QuadEyes]

Technics SL-P8, my first too...

https://www.hifiengine.com/images/model/technics_sl-p8_silver_front_panel.jpg

My first,too. Doesn't work, but still have it because it was the First!

 

[Sal1950]

My first,too. Doesn't work, but still have it because it was the First!

How about your first lover, same deal there ?

 

[madscot]

My first ever player was a Fisher model, no idea of the model number, have had at least 10 players since then, my current player is a cambridge audio transport

 

[Methuselah’s Grandpa]

In the late 90s I remember the first (I think) portable CD burner boom box came out, it was a Phillips, …my brother owned one and one of the features I noticed it had was a line-in connection.

I was playing music at bars at that time and I had recorded songs before on cassette tape either at home or plugged into the soundboard when we played out and I couldn’t help but think, ‘wouldn’t it be cool to have a digital recording of us playing/singing?’ …so I rigged up a Yamaha PA system to input the guitar/vocals and had the 1/4”output reduced to a 1/8” and I fed that directly into the CD burner’s ‘line-in’. There were no do-overs because once it was recorded, that was it. It took a couple of songs to get the recording level sorted out but after that it was fantastic! It recorded our songs right on the fly, straight to CD & I was blown away by the sound quality because all I had ever heard was us played back from cassette tapes. We ended up recording an entire CDs worth of songs that night and I still have them today preserved as lossless files on my PC.

 

[kcrimson]

My first CD player was a NAD 5200 in about 1983. I had heard a demo of CDs at the local stereo store (Carston Studios in Brookfield CT) back when they were one of the best audio stores around. The only song I remember from the demo was The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel. I was hooked due to ease of use, lack of surface noise, and signal to noise ratios that vinyl could only dream about. I was just about to start college then in 1981 and made a goal to start amassing CDs for a future CD player. Of course, you could not buy any CDs for awhile after that, and then when CDs first appeared, I was living in Washington DC area, so Kemp Mill records became the place to go for LPs and then CDs. My first purchase was Pink Floyd - Meddle, which I still have in my collection. When CDs first came to stores, very few people knew what they were and even less people actually had a CD player to be able to be able to play them. As a result, CDs were priced at $20 or so each when they first went on sale, at a time when vinyl was $3.99 for a single album. I waited until the prices dropped to $11.99 for a CD and then started buying CDs. I got to about 60 or 70 discs before I bought the NAD CD player, which I think was about $500 at the time. The CD player and my Nakamichi tape deck were my sources for music all during college and for awhile afterwards. I don't buy as many CDs as I used to, directing most of my collecting to multichannel music these days. I still have about 4000 CDs, and they are all ripped via EAC and flac/lame to my NAS and played back via Sonos. It has been quite a journey collecting the music, because I used to search out music stores in each new place that I visited to see if they had anything interesting. So 45 years later, I am still amassing titles and enjoying them when time permits. I just surpassed 1400 multichannel titles on my NAS and always looking for interesting new material. I also just bought an Apple TV 4k to stream multichannel, due to Traffic / Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys not available in any physical format.

 

[par4ken]

it was quite a surprise to see quad mentioned in a 1981 brochure.

That didn't surprise me at all. What did surprise and disappoint me was that it didn't happen!

 

[JohnN]

JVC first player. Broadsword West German CD first.

 

[par4ken]

In the late eighties CD's were coming into their own. I remember being wowed by the rock solid bass that they produced. On the other hand the high end often sounded mechanical or artificial. A friend of mine purchased a player before I did, I remember "Tubular Bells" by Mike Oldfield being one of the first discs demoed. At that time CDs were selling for (Canadian) $25.00 each, they were all pressed in Germany or Japan.

I started purchasing a few discs. If you think that it is odd to purchase CDs before the player look at it this way, CDs are less expensive than the player so it makes sense to build up a small collection before even getting a player. I did the same with my reel to reel, purchasing tapes first. I would on occasion borrow my friends player to make copies of my CDs (and of his) dubbed to my reel to reel using my Sanyo Super D noise reduction system. The tapes sounded great! I would also make cassette copies mainly for the car.

Back about 1987 I purchased my first CD player a Denon DCD-800. At that time my friend and coworker had his audio system stolen. His insurance company sent him to a "high end" dealer who at that time was working out of his basement. Unlike others he really cared about quality audio. Myself and my friend purchased the same player. The Denon didn't have that mechanical sound!

My player eventually died. I had accumulated a couple of other players, two from another audio dealers "garage sale". I chuckled when one of the players just had the transit screw locked, It worked after unlocking the screw that but did die shortly thereafter. DTS CDs started to appear so I purchased a Pioneer DVD player with a digital output and connected the Millenium DTS decoder to it. That worked well enough until I purchased the Pioneer Elite DV-45A. The DV-45A worked well for me until I found that some of the newer DV SACDs weren't being read.

 

[barfle]

Our first CD player was a changer, although I don’t recall make or model. It was connected to a dying Altec branded compact stereo made in Japan.

The first device in my “theater” that couls play CDs was (and is) a combo LD and CD player. It’s still in the “needs work” pile. These days I use my Oppo 105.

 

[TVB]

I really enjoy reading these early cd stories. As I have mentioned before, My first cd was moody blues "the present". I bought it before buying a cd player and it was in a long box. I remember hearing my first cd in a high end dealer in san antonio (bjorns) with my brother. They were playing Abbas "super trouper". I had never heard bass that powerful and it was amazing. Bjorns was a macintosh dealer and their totl systems were not affordable to the common man. My first cd player was yamaha's 2nd gen model. I paid $599, a considerable price drop from the previous models. CD'S are so cheap now i get them hand over fist. Just purchased these at a goodwill-GRP spyrogyra collection, take that "nobody else, Joni mitchell "mingus", christopher cross "window", bob seger "ride out", fleetwood mac "say you will" and steve winwoods "about time" (all discs I've never heard of before)

 

[stoopid]

View attachment 82587
My first CD player, Yamaha CD-X1, circa 85/86


First CD, Yes 90125, a target

View attachment 82588

I remember hearing 90125 on CD for the first time after having it only on cassette, and thinking how great 'Changes' sounded. It was the perfect disc to highlight the strengths of the digital format.

 

[stoopid]

My first ever player was a Fisher model, no idea of the model number, have had at least 10 players since then, my current player is a cambridge audio transport

Until this post I couldn't for the life of me remember the brand of our first cd player.

 

[GOS]

I think my first player was a TEAC, though I'm not 100% certain. Or maybe Technics, come to think of it. I can picture it....

 

[DuncanS]

This got me thinking, I bought my first player in 1985. I'm fairly certain it was a Philips CD115 as pictured below, some years later bought a Sony and gave the Philips to my brother, he had it for years, I think I then gave him (or my other brother) the Sony when I bought a Denon DVD-2930 CD/SACD/DVD-A player

 

[Kyle Friesen]

I first read about the Philips compact disc system in Popular Science magazine, October 1979, page 111 (see image). I showed the article to a friend during a university lecture and said "that is the future - digital sound". I first auditioned a CD player in 1983 but didn't buy one until 1986. It was a Yamaha CD player that was defective out of the box. The replacement was excellent and served for many years.

 

[Sal1950]

For those of us into music and HiFi, these early days were such exciting times.
To finally have a perfect copy of the master tape at hand, something we
all had dreamed about for years. And then not to long later, access to discrete
quad recordings, WOW.
I know we were all saddened when not to long later the whole multich thing fell apart.
But now thank God it looks like we're back on track and,
The future so bright I gotta wear shades. LOL