How the CD lost its sheen - a 30 year tale of rise and fall

The problem with CD isn't CD--the music's all there--it's the below par performance of the average D/A conversion (DAC).
Stereophile wrote at length once Mark Levinson released their separate two piece CD player / d/a converter back in 1991 or
'92, that "Philips & Sony, the developers of the Compact Disc, were just about right with their 16/44 standard...." CD is like
the internal combustion engine, where as, the potential is all there and you and I will be there waiting when they unleash a
suitable technology that'll allow us to get closer to our most beloved, oober-repurchased musical performances, as in, with
modern technology the average vehicle should be getting 100+ miles to a gallon, and as per CD, we should be getting chip-
sets costing nothing in the average CD player capable of bringing Keith Moon and John Entwhistle back to life and from the
dead, literally into our living rooms aurally when listening to Who's Next or Tommy or Who Are You or Quadrophenia, but
oddly, like the internal combustion engine, we get better machined hardware and yet the same ho-hum specs / performance
to choose from.... C'mon GM / Ford / all others along with Sony / Philips / Samsung / LG / Panasonic, let's get a 75mpg
Ford F-150 along with analog D/A converting chips in our disc players that'll put bands in real aural space into our waiting,
aural open arms for God sake living rooms....

Pick up a vinyl LP and all of the music is there if you're up to getting a top-shelf needle and maybe phono-pre amp..... Take
such thought and send it digital's way, so all CDs in all types of stereo systems bring the artist aurally into your listening
room, in a most affordable fashion........ "Redbook CD has that upper midrange/treble glare..." No shoes, wthe DAC chip in
your & my CD players are cheap garbage only capable of bland aural results. Anyone know where me and my keen hearing
are coming from out here on this forum...??

 

I have bought thousands of CDs over the past 25 years but now only really listen to them in the car. I use spotify on my phone to listen to music while I am at work and vinyl for when I am at home. To be honest I am unsure of what to do with all my CDs as they take a lot of space around the house and with our first baby on the way space is at a premium.

 

Yep. If you have a well-mastered cd and a good player, then you get the most out of what you have, same as when you have a really good pressing of an LP on a decent turntable/amp combo.

Good, well-mastered CDs through a decent setup sound great. Good, well-mastered LPs through a decent setup sound great.

I've been listening to CDs on my DVD player through the Marantz. It seems to have a better audio converter than the early 90s Panasonic that replaced the Marantz CD player I had.

I'd like to get an awesome Music Hall or Marantz, something with a really good DAC. Any suggestions??

People also overlook their speakers - A LOT, both in quality and condition.

 

I take donations

 

Lovely article....very illustrating was the description of the 'boom'-era in the '90s when the cd sold by the gazillions, production costs decreased, prices got higher. I think in this era the manufacturers could have spend serious money to improve on the product, but they didn't and went for the nice high profits and surfed along until the wave of succes started to lose its momentum. The SACD was/is promising, but never had a proper promotion....

 

I can't even begin to understand this type of comment. It's going to be hard to convince me that those Telarc cd and those Flim & The B.B.s cds from DMP weren't "close to a record".

The fact is, there was fantastic cds in the 80's, and there was garbage. But guess what, there was garbage LPs in the 80's also.

For most consumers, the fact is, it's much easier and CHEAPER to get "very good" sound from a cd and cd player. To get something comparable sounding in an LP format, it will cost much more. $400 would get you a good cd player, while a good turntable/phono cartridge setup would be much more, In addition, there is work to keeping the stylus clean, and it'll eventually wear out or break. CD players made good audio possible(and more appealing) to the masses. (keep in mind that us SH forum members AREN'T typical consumers).

 

I used to think that too till I got a good vinyl setup.No question vinyl as a physical disc right now cost much more than CDs but is also much more musical.In other words at lower prices vinyl sounds better,cd on the other hand takes much more $$$ in DACs/players to get to that level of musicality/ease

 

It's all about the mastering, vinyl doesn't inheritly sound better than digital.

 

Better than 16/44 it does.Most of the time

 

Yes. Although physical media is becoming somthing only a serious music lover and audiophile is purchasing. In that context, the subject is relavent to the conversation.

If vinyl isn't taking away some of the cd market, hi-res music files certainly are. The idea that the cd is the best posible format for sonic quality is quickly losing favor.

 

I agree, for the same price or lower i would rather have 96/24 or 192/24 than redbook. I like cds being a physical thing with nice booklets and such. If SACD would have taken of like it should i would much rather be collecting those.

With HDTracks, Pono and others suplying hi-res (often better mastered) i see no reason to buy new stuff on cd anymore. Why would i buy into that old format when the content sounds about the same or worse than the hi-res?

It's not like any care goes into cd manufactoring these days either, except for Japan releases.

 

I guess in technical terms, if you do not play the CD, but copy it onto computer, then copy onto ipod, or Fiio, or such device, you no longer are using the CD as a physical format, only as a storage format. IMO, moving the file onto a player that has no AC power supply, or electric motor, fundamentally changes the quality of the playback, if you are using uncompressed files. Resolution higher than 16/44 could be good, I haven't had the chance to try it. Removing many of the noise inducing components out of the signal chain has led me to an greater appreciation of the Nyquist sampling theorem, though. Especially when many of the CD's I've been listening to will never be put onto good vinyl or hi-rez. And still, the mastering makes the greater difference.

 

I just love that people feel compelled to completely abandon one musical medium in favor of another. I picked up a lot of cheap vinyl in the 90's and now I'm doing the same with CD's. Perhaps one day the masses will realize that it's okay to have LP's, CD's and Downloads and that it doesn't break any laws to enjoy all three. Until then though, feel free to keep those cheap CD's coming.....

 

Lol you know what i mean another vinyl vs cd thread, but we can change that path.

Hi rez files are still only a niche. Perhaps popular in the States but not world wide.

ITunes thats World wide.

 

The play side of my CDs are bright. I gotta wear shades.

 

Agree completely.

 

I'm with ya.

 

Ah yes...but could you specify the early, uncompressed master of Love it to Death ? Or the 'secret' remaster of Rumours ?

Not sure...but does streaming allow a choice of masterings ? I have my doubts.

 

Oh, I agree with you, I want that level of control with my listening choices too. But, 99.999999% of the world doesn't give a $h!t. (As my family and friends at work remind me almost daily.)

I love CDs, and vinyl, and even cassette... I don't trust the "powers that be," especially after reading about the various schemes and megalomaniacal plots for maximizing profit at the expense of... literally... everybody else on the planet. I mean some of the schemes are just super-villain stupid... I heard about one company that wanted to embed codes in it's material so that every time you heard even a snippet of a song it would ding your credit card, even if you heard it being used in a movie, or TV, or just heard it from a booming radio as a car passed. Unfortunately, they concluded, technology just wasn't there, yet, but one day...

No, I want my own control. I don't want a fight between Taylor Swift and Spotify to dictate what I can hear, when I want to hear it. Dammit, I'll just go pull out my Taylor Swift CDs and listen anytime I damn well please. (full disclosure... I would NEVER EVER actually listen to Taylor Swift for any reason, and I'd NEVER EVER own a CD from her).

 

My CD's aren't going anywhere. If I'm on the go, nothing beats my iPod, but for sitting down and listening it's either CD or vinyl.

 

I'll go you one better....I'll say it's 99.9999999% of the world !

 

This article was brought to you by Spotify.

 

Thank you for the link! That was a good read.

Besides everything else in the article, I also found, thanks for mr. Castaldo, a crucial hint on why me and several of my friends were so reluctant even to consider the CD as a serious alternative to LP (of course, there already had been one alternative available, the c-cassette, and that turned out to be a rather classless one).

For us, real or wannabe academics/humanists/intellectuals/whatever, all the yuppie favourites were deemed to be banned.

 

I take the off your hands.

 

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