35th Anniv. of CD in US

[Neb-Maat-Re]

I skimmed through, so apologies if this has been covered.

Does anyone else have CD player that has the Indexing functionality? Not track numbers, more like chapter points within a track. I think it was intended for long classical pieces. I never owned a CD that actually had index points built in.

 

[Perp]

I think it was designed primarily as a theft deterrent. I didn't keep a single one.

I did read earlier in the Thread that a theft deterrent was the main reason but you have to admit that the larger artwork on the box came closer to matching a vinyl cover than the included CD booklet. And, I remember a time when I could reeeeead that small printing. Oh, how I miss those days.....

 

[privateuniverse]

I skimmed through, so apologies if this has been covered.

Does anyone else have CD player that has the Indexing functionality? Not track numbers, more like chapter points within a track. I think it was intended for long classical pieces. I never owned a CD that actually had index points built in.

The first player I owned had that function, but it's been ages since I've seen a player that did. The first pressing of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here that I bought in 1984 had side one of the original LP as track one and side two of the original LP as track two. Index points were used to indicate the individual songs.

 

[Snood]

I bought my first CD player in 1984. I was a college freshman at the time and certainly didn't have the money for such luxury items. A basic player was $500. But I had to have one so I cashed out my meal plan for the entire semester so I could buy it. (I hope my dad never reads this, LOL.) The store that I bought the player at had a selection of CDs from the Sony family of labels. I bought Pink Floyd's The Final Cut & Wish You Were Here as well as Billy Joel's The Nylon Curtain. There were so few titles available on CD at the time and I was so psyched that these three existed. At the time, they were three of my all-time favorite albums. Thirty-four years later, they still are.

On the subject of long boxes, for some odd reason I have held on to a few. One curious thing to note.... If you look at the ones on the right, you will notice a symbol on the bottom left corner of the long box. As long boxes were starting to be phased out, record labels would put this symbol on long boxes to indicate that the CDjewel case inside the box was sealed in cellophane. That way retailers who preferred to stock CDs without long boxes could discard of the long box and still have sealed CDs to put on their shelves. The industry and retailers initially resisted getting rid of long boxes. Retailers liked them because the larger size meant that CDs were more difficult for thieves to sneak out of stores. However, many environmentally minded artists began to protest because of how many millions of the things were filling up the garbage dumps. When Peter Gabriel released his Shaking the Tree CD in 1990, he became the first major label artist to insist that a CD be released with no long box. It cost him some sales as several retailers refused to carry the disc, but within a few years everyone fell in line and the long box was a thing of the past.....

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Hey Private So you are a Michael Penn fan tooooooooooooooooooo Love that guy - Snood has all his releases some awesome stuff, wish he would release more :howl

 

[privateuniverse]

Hey Private So you are a Michael Penn fan tooooooooooooooooooo Love that guy - Snood has all his releases some awesome stuff, wish he would release more :howl

Love Michael Penn! Yeah, it's been ages since his last album, 13 years since Mr. Hollywood Jr. I guess he's been concentrating on film scores more recently.

His stuff could sound great in 5.1!

 

[markshan]

I think it was designed primarily as a theft deterrent.

I'm pretty sure it was done for retailers to be able to convert from vinyl to CD without having to buy new fixtures. Two rows of longboxes would fit in a single LP bin.

 

[Snood]

Love Michael Penn! Yeah, it's been ages since his last album, 13 years since Mr. Hollywood Jr. I guess he's been concentrating on film scores more recently.

His stuff could sound great in 5.1!

Troooooooooooooo dat!!!!! :banana:

 

[jdmack]

I skimmed through, so apologies if this has been covered.

Does anyone else have CD player that has the Indexing functionality? Not track numbers, more like chapter points within a track. I think it was intended for long classical pieces. I never owned a CD that actually had index points built in.

My memory is that the first issue of "Hemispheres" by Rush had index points for the named sections of the title song.

 

[Doug G.]

My first CD player, in 1985, was a Fisher (Sanyo) and it had a little window in the front and you could see the disc spinning in there.

One of the noted CD player reviewers back then, thought it made a player look cheap but I laughed at him when it proved to be a useful feature when one of my discs was skipping and otherwise playing unreliably. When I looked through the window, I could see the disc wobbling badly. I removed the disc and there was flash around the edge of the hole. I scraped the flash out, put it in the player, saw that it was spinning evenly, and it played perfectly.

Sometime, I'll tell you all about how the same player could "fix" CD's. And, it had indexing capability, too.

Doug

 

[JediJoker]

Some appropriate nostalgia:



Due to an accident of birth, I missed out on the U.S. launch of CDs, but benefited from my parents' large collection growing up. My own collection is not inconsiderable; I'd guess it's somewhere north of 200. Some of my favorites/reference recordings remain early discs. In fact, it doesn't get much more O.G. than "the first non-classical recording to be released in compact disc format:"

If you were buying a CD player from a hifi dealer in 1983 (or anytime in the mid-'80s), chances are good that they had this disc in heavy rotation. Unfortunately, it's long out-of-print, along with (I believe) the rest of the DMP catalogue. No discs, no downloads, no streaming... Nothing. I highly recommend seeking out a copy.

 

[Quadly McQuadmeister]

I skimmed through, so apologies if this has been covered.

Does anyone else have CD player that has the Indexing functionality? Not track numbers, more like chapter points within a track. I think it was intended for long classical pieces. I never owned a CD that actually had index points built in.

My Late '80's/early 90's Denon DCD-1520 and 1560 had it. But they're both out in my workshop with Laser Alzheimers. I have replacement lasers (not the mechanism, the laser itself), but I'm not sure I've got the steadiness of hand to change 'em out. I've got a left shoulder injury/C5-C6 neck plate thing going on and it's one of the relatively few places I really feel my age. (I'm left handed...)

Others MIGHT have it, but I've never noticed it before. I guess that means I don't miss it.

 

[depeche76]

Some appropriate nostalgia:

[video=youtube;_Tx6TYnPat8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Tx6TYnPat8[/video]

Due to an accident of birth, I missed out on the U.S. launch of CDs, but benefited from my parents' large collection growing up. My own collection is not inconsiderable; I'd guess it's somewhere north of 200. Some of my favorites/reference recordings remain early discs. In fact, it doesn't get much more O.G. than "the first non-classical recording to be released in compact disc format:"

If you were buying a CD player from a hifi dealer in 1983 (or anytime in the mid-'80s), chances are good that they had this disc in heavy rotation. Unfortunately, it's long out-of-print, along with (I believe) the rest of the DMP catalogue. No discs, no downloads, no streaming... Nothing. I highly recommend seeking out a copy.

I really liked the part in the video where the presenter says....dont laugh.....when talking about putting music into a chip......i remember those days when cds were like magic.....i couldnt believe the pristine sound coming from that silvery shining discs......and also they were also out of hand.....only for rich people (at least in Mexico) i remember that my family bought our first cd player late 1988.....and we only had 4 or 5 cds.......my first cds were "appetite for destruction" and white lion's "big game" (this last one was bought because the price sticker was wrong....it cost like 1/4 of the actual price)

 

[TVB]

I still remember the very first CD which I purchased (before I even had a player), Moody Blues "The present". If i remember right, I got it a store called Musicland which has long been defunct. I believe it was in a long box. I sadly never saved any of these boxes, which seems pretty stupid as I look back. I do have two long boxes that came with the prerecorded dat tapes (cinemagic and glen miller -in the mood). When I finally got the cash to buy a player, I bought Yamaha's 2nd gen player (I'm pretty sure it was a Yamaha CD- for $600). The cheapest CD's I have ever purchased came from pawn shops which were practically giving them away. One pawn shop had a bunch of them and wanted $5 for a whole stack, just to get rid of them. 3 of my all time favorite cds were purchased like this from a pawn shop...Linda Ronstadt "Feels like home" ("after the goldrush" is amazing), Moody blues "December" (by far the most beautiful Christmas CD ever made and I find myself listening to it at all times of the year) and Mac Mcanally "Word of mouth" (check out "the way it goes"-wow). Since high res streaming has become available from the Neil young Archives and Tidal, I've found CD's take a backseat to these streams.

 

[Quad Linda]

I've had more long boxes than most people have had CD's. Nearly all were tossed. Any I may have are still packed away in an "archive" box. I never had longboxes for many titles, since they often came out first in Germany or Japan.

By '84, they had their own room, only to be relegated to the basement in '85 when my son was born. I needed to move the shelving with the CD's, since one entire wall of the basement was floor to ceiling shelves of vinyl.

Back in the days, I had friends at record stores, labels, etc. They would ply me with promos and exchange LP's for CD's 2 for 1, so long as the title was still in print. Voila! Instant CD collection. In return, I'd give them gear at employee price and replace cartridges for them for free. We had 2 AT models that we bought in sufficient quantities to get them at $4 and $6. I could afford to be generous.

As to what to listen to, I've had racks of favorites, new releases and 5.1 albums in the living room and/or rec room. Beyond that, browsing can revisit both old favorites and the "i've only listened to this CD once" titles. I figure that if I live to be 120 and don't sleep, I could conceivably listen to everything once more before I check out.

 

[markshan]

My biggest memory of the longbox is that they put the Sgt Pepper cutouts on one. You were getting ripped off if you bought the jewelcase only version.

 

[John Svensson]

I do recall the long boxes, guess I had a bunch, but I think the first cds I may have bought were gifts given to my brother of "CD Singles" in 1985? Remember those, with maybe 3 or 4 songs on them?.

 

[milt]

Bought a few CDs before I bought my first player.
Lucky timing got me the original Toshiba EMI Abbey Road. Got Dark Side at the same time.
$22.99 each at Tower on 5th & Mercer, Seattle. Neither was in a longbox.
At that time the CDs were in the Classical side of the store in a freestanding double-sided rack about 3 feet wide with maybe 3 or 4 rows.
One side was Classical the other side was everything else.
Seems like the next one was Infidels. As I remember most CDs were $18 back then.

Bought a Sony CDP-610ES shortly thereafter. It was a 2nd gen player.
Also had the original Discman which I sold later to a friend who still has it.
I regret selling that.

 

[dr. simple]

Also had the original Discman which I sold later to a friend who still has it.
I regret selling that.

At the risk of throwing things slightly off topic, I still have a Sony DAT machine from that era.

 

[DuncanS]

.......and me I have a Sony DTC-690 and a Sony portable TCD-D7 (which has just gone off for repair!)

At the risk of throwing things slightly off topic, I still have a Sony DAT machine from that era.

 

[dr. simple]

.......and me I have a Sony DTC-690 and a Sony portable TCD-D7 (which has just gone off for repair!)

That portable player looks cool! I think my DAT is the 700; I can't remember exactly and I'm not home right now to look, but it looks identical to your 690.