Ah, the early days of the CD. Read this.

My fiancee found two hi-fi magazines from 1984 at her parents' house and gave them to me this morning. They make for a very interesting read. One is the October 1984 issue of High Fidelity and the other is the October 1984 issue of Stereo Review. Not surprisingly, both magazines devoted a lot of space to CD players and CD software, as the technology was relative new. Note the following write-up in the "Audio/Video Currents" section of the issue of High Fidelity:

Compact Discs Today: Going for Mass Appeal

* CD Prices Start to Tumble

If you've been holding off buying a Compact Disc player because of the high cost of software, we have good news for you: CD manufacturers are slashing their wholesale prices. The Warner-Elektra-Atlantic family started the ball rolling by announcing an across-the-board wholesale price of $9.81 per disc, down from $11.64. Polygram responded quickly, lowering its prices to $10 for pop and jazz recordings and $11 for classical releases on the Deutsche Grammophon, Philips, and London labels. CBS is down to $10 per disc, which RCA is matching for its pop titles. (RCA's Red Seal releases are slightly higher at $10.75). And Denon is marching in step with the majors, dropping its dealer price to $10.

What will this mean on the retail level? J&R Music World, a major discount record chain in New York City, has already lowered its price to $12.99 for most pop and classical titles. According to Allan Peller, J&R's record manager, the downward spiral has just begun. "As soon as record companies get behind simulataneous release of new recordings on LP and CD, the format will start to generate the kind of numbers that will make it possible for prices to come down even more."


* Gearing Up

While the giant Japanese and West German companies have been busy expanding their Compact Disc production capacities to keep up with growing demand, little Nimbus Records in England has been quietly footing the bill for the construction of its own digital mastering and pressing plant. By the time you read this, Nimbus should have its Monmouth factory up and running, with an expected production capacity of 80,000 discs per month by the end of the year.

That figures palls, however, in comparison to Polygram's. A recent report pegs its Hanover, West Germany, plant at a daily total of 80,000 discs, making it the largest CD manufacturing site in the world. (For the record, Polygram claims to have pressed more than ten million discs to date.) With such a huge output, has quality suffered? Not in the least, says Polygram. It expected an average defect rate of 0.3 percent, but says that only one-third that many flawed discs (one per thousand) actually are leaving the plant.

Curiously, CBS/Sony has been rather mum about the expected completion date of its domestic CD production plant. The Terre Haute, Indiana, facility was scheduled to go on-line in August, a deadline that has come and gone. According to an unofficial comment by a Sony spokesman, unexpected delays in the delivery of mastering and pressing equipment have caused the postponement.


* The Digital Truth

Though the Compact Disc is a digital medium, savvy music lovers have been quick to realize that not all CDs are created equal. Those discs that have been converted to digital from analog recordings can be accurate copies, but the word "digital" on the CD packaging does not mean that you're getting all the potential benefits of a fully digital product.

To clarify the situation, Polygram has devised a three-letter code that will appear on the back of its CD packages and has recommended that other manufacturers adopt it as well. The first letter of the code tells whether the original recording was done with a digital (D) or analog (A) recorder. The second D or A denote the kind of mixing console used, and the last specifies digital or analog mastering, presumably meaning the process used to create the two-track stereo master tape.



I love the history in these three passages! It reminds me of the growing pains we are experiencing with SACD and DVD-Audio, though today's growing pains are complicated by the fact that there are two competing digital formats. Note in the last passage how there is a tone of superiority that is to be expected from all-digital recordings (DDD). Anyway, I hope you found this information entertaining. The two 1984 hi-fi magazines are great. I am enjoying the articles on old CD players and ads for VCRs, Betamax machines, and cassette decks. These two magazines are definite keepers!

 

Thanks for this thread!

I have a bunch of old Stereo Review, Audio, and High Fidelity mags from the 80s in storage. I like to thumb through them every once in a while to remind myself of where we were before and after this digital craze started. The part about the article that caught my eye is the mention of falling CD prices. It didn't really happen until the early 90s when remasters started making their apperance, and older reissue titles were being dumped into the stores at great discount prices.

Also, during the early 90s, many companies went mad remastering everything they could. Why did it all slow down? It's like the windfall came to an end around 1996 or so.

Getting back to the topic, there was an amazing trend towards cassette recording with almost every type of recorder out there. And most machines did sound quite good. Reel-to-reel was still going strong, and many people were worried about how to capture the dynamic range of the CD onto cassette tape. Oh, times have changed! Now they are trying to find ways to reduce the dynamic range!

 

Great article. It shows how the greedy Record Companies kept prices high all these years when their costs went down.

We should be paying 7.99 retail for Pop Cds, not 18.99!!!!!

 

Remember CD Review, which became CD Audio when Stereo Review sued them? I still have their "yearbooks". They are fun to look at now.

Yes, $18.99 is a joke. All of those Musicland owned stores are nuts selling at that price. As someone once said, if they can buy 100 blanks at SAMS for $9 after rebate, why should the labels charge $19 per disc?

:-jon

 

I bought a $400. Sanyo-made Radio Shack CD player in 1985. The only thing that ever bothered me about the sound was the edginess, or shrillness of the sound. It was one-dimentional. I didn't know any better, though. LPs sounded that much worse to me because I had been led to believe that CD was more accurrate. Had I had someone around to point out the truth, I would have either sought to upgrade my gear or gone back to vinyl, and waited. Of course, we now have the internet with the pros like Steve in the business telling us about the truth. We now have the benifit of audiophiles' opinions that are not connected with audio magazines. We now have better digital gear, too. Too bad mastering has gone backward. as far as playing the loudness game is concerned.

 

But, don't forget the costs that are involved in the making of an album. Marketing takes a big cut, as does retailer markup, and after royalties and fees, greed takes the rest.

 

Grant said:

And how. That's the problem. This is why I love buying CDs from BMG and Columbia House. They have great deals, though I understand that my savings are at the expense of royalties lost by the musicians who make it all possible. As unfortunate as this is, I will try to save money on music wherever possible. Just recently, Columbia House had a special of buy one CD at full price and get three free. With shipping, I got eight great CDs for just $50. I would have paid over $100 for the eight CDs in the stores.

 

While this is true in most cases... not all. My Virgin rep told me the Stones get $12 for every copy of "40 Licks" shipped.

That is a mind blowing figure....

 

lsupro said:

That explains why Forty Licks is a bit more expensive than most of the recent two-disc compilations of other big-name artists (e.g., Fleetwood Mac, Aerosmith, Elton John). I have often seen Forty Licks in stores for $30. However, amazingly, I have seen it on sale at Best Buy and Circuit City for just $20.

 

Yea, Like they need $12.00 a Cee Dee....

 

Mike, I hear you, but every little bit helps.

 

Yea, It seems we get the little bits and they get the big bites...

 

I remember the controversy that persisted back then about regarding
the NR of the music.

Audiophiles began to contest the sales pitch that the Compact Disc camp was using to promote the new format. Cleaned up masters didn't equate to better sound.

 

Gary, I have a handful of Sony's old Columbia Jazz Masterpieces CDs (e.g., Miles Davis Kind of Blue and In A Silent Way and Dave Brubeck Time Out), and there is no hiss. It seems as though these titles were no-noised to death. In taking away the hiss, they robbed the music of life. The sound on these CDs is closed-in. Fortunately, the remastered CDs are much better, though the hiss screams on them. The SACDs are better yet. Anyway, I'll gladly take the hiss if in doing so, I get a detailed, three-dimensional sound.

 

WCI Record Group

Just wondering if anyone knows who or what the "WCI Record Group" was?
Many of my early Warner/Reprise and associated label CD's have the WCI Record Group credit, "CDD Pre-Mastering by WCI Record Group".

One of the latest ones I have is Madonna's True Blue, Warner/Sire, disc Made in Japan by JVC, credits in the booklet say "Originally mastered at Future Disc, CDD Pre-Mastering by WCI Record Group". I purchased this disc in 1986 when it came out.

I do not recall seeing any discs after 1986 with the notation about the WCI Record Group; after 1986 if mastering information was listed it gave the name of the mastering studio and mastering engineer.

Anyone know about this?

Paul

 

The Gordon Lightfoot CDs of Gord's Gold, Summertime Dream, Sundown, and If You Could Read My Mind all have the WCI credit as well. I only have the vinyl of Sundown but do know this for a fact as I do have the CDs of Gord's Gold, Summertime Dream and If You Could Read My Mind. To be exact about Gord's Gold, the CD has the Pre-mastering By The Record Group and CD Remastering by Lee Herschberg.

 

But you had a lot of other audiophiles crying out for the use of NR, anything to get the old analog masters clean clean clean!