Happy Birthday, Compact Disc!!

[soundboy]

Happy Birthday, CD!! You're 37 years old.

On October 1, 1982, CD became available, for the first time, to consumers to purchase. Fifty titles were released by CBS/Sony of Japan; official introduction of CD in Europe and the US didn't come until 1983.

 

[JonUrban]

I remember leaping on the CD bandwagon, driving all around trying to find record stores that had them, and feverishly reading CD Audio/CD Review, subscribing to ICE, and waiting patiently for favorite titles to come out. The big deal when the Beatles albums came out in those black long boxes. Hard to imagine at that time that I'd live long enough to see them go out of favor. Shocking.

Although I imagine they would have gone away eventually, I feel that the greed of the labels in charging $18 list prices for something that cost far less than an LP did to make finally caused the revolt that led to Napster and the iPod and the end of the record store as we know it.

 

[4-earredwonder]

Happy Birthday, CD!! You're 37 years old.

On October 1, 1982, CD became available, for the first time, to consumers to purchase. Fifty titles were released by CBS/Sony of Japan; official introduction of CD in Europe and the US didn't come until 1983.

Die Compact Disc....DIE ☠.... You've outlived your usefulness with your 16 bit 44.1 capacity in an age when 24 bits and more are the NEW standard and in an era where a comparable 5" disc can hold hours of LOSSLESS audio [BD~A] and 4K video you're woefully lagging behind.

And don't let the DRAWER hit you .... on the way OUT!

REQUIESCAT EN PACEM

 

[LennonCobain]

I still love CDs.

 

[ubertrout]

I've actually been collecting some of the very earliest classical CDs released on Varese Sarabande and others - usually Soundstream recordings. The quality is actually really good.

 

[Audiowannabee]

I still love CDs.

I love them too...long live physical media

 

[soundboy]

I was a high school student when CD came out, but I can't afford them. I prayed for the creation of the Columbia House CD Club and the RCA Music Service CD Club, where I can get 7 CDs for one penny. My prayers were answered 2-3 years later and I still have some of those early CDs.

Back then, the ability of accessing another track in almost near instantaneous time was as shocking as the pristine sound. No tape hiss, no Dolby NR to switch on, no clicks and pops, no Side A and Side B, etc....

 

[milt]

Absolutely nothing wrong with CDs.
Like any new technology, it took awhile for the studio staff to learn how to get the most out of it.
The loudness thing was far more detrimental to CD sound while not being an inherent fault of the format.

Any way you look at it objectively, CD\Digital is far superior to Analog.

People seem to forget that there were a lot of audiophiles bemoaning the limitations of vinyl playback for years.
Now in certain circles, vinyl\analog is looked upon as the superior.

I bought a Sony 610-ES in 1983 & never looked back.
Taking proper care of vinyl is a PITA. Playback is a PITA. Totally responsible for the rise of cassette.
I also always felt that having vinyl playback that was as revealing as CD cost a sh!tload more money.

I have many CDs that sound every bit as good or better than SACD or DVD-A.
The obvious limitation is multichannel. No one anticipated that.
As has happened many times before, the film industry & Dolby Labs led the way.
Unconstrained by the limited foresight & dogma of audiophilia.

 

[jdmack]

I remember leaping on the CD bandwagon, driving all around trying to find record stores that had them,

In late 1989 and early 1990, I had a job as a sound technician for a touring show. In every city where we performed, I hit the Yellow Pages to find the record stores, and picked up a lot of the hard-to-find import CDs that I couldn't buy where I lived. Fun times!

 

[timbre4]

I didn't have any CDs of my until I starting working at Pacific Stereo part time in October 1985. Rush - Power Windows [DDD] was a great demo CD as some people hadn't heard dynamic range like that. Fun to watch their faces. Lately I've been on an obsession of replacing CDs that I sold off before I switched from 128 to 320kbps in the iTunes library. Many are so cheap now, I cannot resist. Crossed 54,000 songs now but that is another story...

 

[Ranasakawa]

I love CDs but my main concern today isn't the CD being no longer made. My main concern for CDs is the quality of the manufacturing and materials being used in making CDs these days. Recently I have had more problems with faulty CDs and Blurays than in the past 30+ years

 

[par4ken]

The original Red-book standard allowed for Quadraphonic sound, it was never implemented and latter dropped from the standard. Opportunity lost! The introduction of DTS CD's for surround sound showed a lot of promise for a while thanks largely to Brad Miller, he died and the DTS CD died as well. The music industry was hell bent on shutting down Napster, which was a big mistake. I for one downloaded a lot of music that I hadn't heard before and much of it I really liked and so bought the actual CD or the LP if the CD was not available. Today you can download almost anything in Hi-rez if you look hard enough, and for free. Over the years CD's thanks to the loudness war became almost unlistenable. Some DVD-Audio titles share the same fault, Alanis Morissette comes to mind. I used to think that CD's should of been made a bit larger, say 7 inch, that way they could hold more music. I suppose they wanted to keep the size compact for portable and mobile use. Now with formats like Blu-ray Audio we can have our cake and eat it to. Downloads and streaming might be the future but being old school and a collector I'll always go for physical media.

 

[ar surround]

No tape hiss, no Dolby NR to switch on, no clicks and pops, no Side A and Side B, etc....

Which just goes to prove what I've been saying for years...you get a lot more for your money with vinyl...all those clicks, pops, noise, wow and flutter that you don't get with digital. Vinyl is especially a bargain with surround sound decoders which are prolific at taking clicks, pops and noise, reading them as out-of-phase information, and then routing and amplifying them in the rear channels. Crinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnge.

 

[4-earredwonder]

I've actually been collecting some of the very earliest classical CDs released on Varese Sarabande and others - usually Soundstream recordings. The quality is actually really good.

I will say that jazz and classical music normally doesn't suffer from the over compression that a lot of Rock/POP albums do and in some instances do sound GREAT. But if the album IS offered in a higher res format, I would opt for that format instead.

 

[J. PUPSTER]

I will say that jazz and classical music normally doesn't suffer from the over compression that a lot of Rock/POP albums do and in some distances do sound GREAT. But if the album IS offered in a higher res format, I would opt for that format instead.

Exceptions to that also Ralph, like The Rolling stones GRRR! in BD (horrible) compared to an early Sticky Fingers RBCD. But you're right, it's only Rock n Roll!

 

[4-earredwonder]

Exceptions to that also Ralph, like The Rolling stones GRRR! in BD (horrible) compared to an early Sticky Fingers RBCD. But you're right, it's only Rock n Roll!

BTW, Pupsta , Grrr sounded pretty damn good on my system......

 

[François]

I used to think that CD's should’ve been made a bit larger, say 7 inch, that way they could hold more music. I suppose they wanted to keep the size compact for portable and mobile use.

For a long time during its development at Phillips, the CD was in fact planned to be smaller: 10cm in diameter, for a duration of 60 minutes. Those engineers and their round numbers! Then, as the story goes, the CEO of Phillips asked if the longest Mozart symphony would fit on one CD. And so it had to be made larger at 12cm to fit 72 minutes of music.

 

[winopener]

For a long time during its development at Phillips, the CD was in fact planned to be smaller: 10cm in diameter, for a duration of 60 minutes. Those engineers and their round numbers! Then, as the story goes, the CEO of Phillips asked if the longest Mozart symphony would fit on one CD. And so it had to be made larger at 12cm to fit 72 minutes of music.

Beethoven Ninth, not Mozart.
Quality-wise, when i started with cd in dec.1982 i had a analog rig that was excellent, but the playback was always a PITA on maintenance (Shure V15 IV stylii were very expensive, especially when you had to change it every year for wear...), not to say also the noise floor and so on. CD done right are very ok, the only real need is a decent DAC.

 

[ubertrout]

Beethoven Ninth, not Mozart.
Quality-wise, when i started with cd in dec.1982 i had a analog rig that was excellent, but the playback was always a PITA on maintenance (Shure V15 IV stylii were very expensive, especially when you had to change it every year for wear...), not to say also the noise floor and so on. CD done right are very ok, the only real need is a decent DAC.

Also it was Akio Morita, CEO of Sony. He was a serious classical fan and didn't like having to change discs for the Beethoven 9th.

 

[Hamilton59]

I remember being so excited that they were talking about digital music. No more cleaning albums, warped disk, scratches & pops, rumble, stylus changes etc great news and then I found out that this digital media still involved moving parts to read the media, Oh Nooooo. Moving parts caused so many problems with audio reproduction and not with just albums, tapes too... I was so disappointed! I thought we’d just stick a disk into a reader and get out audio. I started repairing CD players in ‘85. I thought people were crazy installing them into cars! The worst environment for delicate electronics. And there was soo much circuitry inside those players. I remember opening the Sony car CD players and having to pull out and unfold these plastic circuit boards that were folded back and forth like an accordion and had the fragile consistency of film negatives. This plastic would bake in hot cars and become brittle and stiff. The poor units would be full of dust and the laser head assemblies would get filthy.

Ahh but when they worked, they sounded spectacular and were so easy to keep in pristine condition. Prior to CDs, every payday I would go to the Record store ( Turtles or Peaches anyone?!?) and buy a new album. I’d take it home, clean it and record it straight to cassette and then put the album away for safe keeping. Some day I need to go take a look at those albums and see what albums I’ve forgotten about after all these years...