Remember when you heard a CD for the first time?*

We all know the first time in ours lives. What did you honestly think when you heard your first cd? I remember listening at a local store when the first players came out. I don't remember the music or player. I think the speakers were Martin Logans. But I remember the salesman saying "I don't think you like it." I asked him why he thought that. He replied that I was sitting with my arms crossed. And he asked me what I though. I replied it was paint buy numbers. He asked me why I said that. I remember seeing and hearing the music like a flat painting with heavy brush outlines. Flat, no depth. And all edges with little fullness. It was impressive with a big powerful bass and t it was all in pieces, no flow. I could see the edges of the notes but I though the meat of the music was weak. It agitated me. It certainly has changed since then, of course. What about your first time? And I do mean cd.

 

My first time was in the backseat of a 68 Chevy Impala station wagon... oh wait, I don't remember the first time I heard a cd.

 

Great thread idea. Remember well the first time and the event. Thought 1) WOW, no noise, then 2) WOW2 can select any track without lifting the needle, then 3) where do I get the money to buy one?
Now have roughly 5k of them and have starting listening to vinyl more and more. With a high-end system, vinyl makes the timbral and waveform advantages of record obvious to those used to the flat CD timbral quality.
Still, from the 90s forward the CD offered some exceptional recordings -- particularly like the DG 4D releases.
Good thread, bluenosens.

 

Oct 1982 at the Anaheim AES Show. It didn't sound all that great to me but it seemed surreal that it actually worked.

 

I had been living in Italy for some time, but at Christmas I had gone back to my parents' house in Holland.
my brother had just taken the first Philips cfp (101, I think ...) he made me hear it with some CDs. my only amazed comment was: "WOW! without tictoctoc ?! without background noise!"
it must have been 1981 or 1982. a few months later, I also jumped, the second CDP of my region was sold to me. Love at first sight. Pardon. at first listen ... ... ...

 

I remember complete silence before the music started, unlike a Record.

My fist CD player was a Yamaha.

 

I think I first heard a CD on a Sony player
In very early Jan 1984 at my local HIFI Store I was 18 years old and blown away by the sound at that time.
I think the salesman had Japanese import cds and some sort of demo disc but it was enough for me to want one.
Lucky I add had my 18th birthday the year before and I had some Birthday cash about
£300 a lot back then. Also my granddad leant me £250 so for about £549 I got a
Sony CDP101 player and about 5 CD's which I still have to this day.
Wish I had the Sony cd player but I sold it to a mate in 1989 for £150.
But I remember that I first heard a classical piece of music on Compact disc but can't remember what though.

 

I was about 13 years old at the time. My older brother had just bought a Kenwood rack system with Sansui S-81U towers. The CD was Maynard Ferguson, Body & Soul. I was honestly blown away. I don't know how much was the CD and how much was the Kenwood/Sansui combo, but the sound was so real, life-like, I felt like I was in the front row watching/listening to Maynard rip out double high-C's live. That's the day the hi-fi bug bit me hard.

 

I have mentioned this a couple of times, using the same words; it was like magic hearing the music come out of total silence. Like I said before, while I had a considerable amount of records, 1) I did not know anything about proper care 2) My vinyl system was crappy - one of those all in one jobs, a Zenith with tape deck, turntable, and separate but included in the system speakers. 3) Went from that to a fairly decent CD system - did not hesitate, left vinyl behind and did not comeback until the recent vinyl revival. However, current vinyl system is decent, and learned about proper record care - what a difference!

v

 

Sorry, I don't remember hearing my first cd, or buying my first cd. I do remember the first 45rpm I bought.

 

I heard the first CD player right when it came out in Canada (1982 or 1983). I sat listening in the Sound Gallery, in Burnaby, BC and heard it playing through a pair of Mirage 750 speakers. I listened to a record on a nice high end Luxman turntable and then heard the same recording through the first CD player (Sony CDP 101?).

I wasn’t impressed. The vinyl was full bodied and three dimensional and I remember telling the owner Peter Morris, that CD sounded like a ghost compared to the flesh and bones of a real human being. The sound didn’t fill out and sound lifelike, like good vinyl.

It got way better, but on that day I thought why spend money on inferior sound?

 

I do not remember hearing my first CD at all, but I do vividly remember talking to a girl in high school that I had been chatting up for months telling me she had a CD player in her room and it stopped me dead in my tracks and I immediately asked her "how does it sound, is it as awesome as people say it is?" I no longer cared if she would go out with me but more importantly how her copy of the Joshua Tree sounded!!!
I can't even recall her answer, but knew right then her family must have been millionaires!!! LMAO

 

I remember it vividly, I heard my first CD in the summer of 1988. I was visiting my Uncle Jack in Florida, he had what I thought was an epic stereo system, a big rack of separates, my parents had a receiver as did the parents of my best friends. On our first day there, my Uncle decided to put on some music, I watched as he pulled that silver disc out of its jewel case, then the little tray came out of the CD player and he placed the Best of The Four Seasons onto the tray. Several seconds later I heard Sherry coming through those speakers very loud and very clear, now my Mom & Dad are big Golden Oldies fans, it was pretty much all they would listen to in the car, so I had heard most all of the songs on this disc dozens of times, but that was the first time I was able to hear what I had been missing from these songs. Now then, a lot of the credit is due to my Uncles’ stereo being so much better than my parents system, but I’m sure the clarity of that CD was on display as well. Music changed for me after that, I won’t say that was the day I became an audiophile, but that was certainly the first day that I realized how much more was there on the records and tapes that I wasn’t hearing and my stereo odyssey began that Christmas when I received my own first stereo, with a CD player!

 

1983, Lubbock, Texas, Hi-Fidelity of Lubbock, high end room in the back. Delos 3006 Carol Rosenberger, Les Jeux d’eaux a la Villa d’Este by Liszt on a Bösendorfer piano.

I remember hearing sustained piano notes fade into black without hiss or the slightest pitch undulation. Money started going in the piggy bank that day.

 

First time was in 1982 at a Magnavox service meeting. All the techs were amazed at the vast improvement in sound quality and dynamics of the new format. My first player was a Sylvania CDP-101 purchased at dealer cost. Too bad most new material was classical music. Had to drive to Radio Doctors in downtown Milwaukee as they were the only ones selling the new CDs. They were very expensive initially ($20) when vinyl was selling for a little over $3 per album. The clearance came about a year later. I remember buying albums at Target five for a dollar when they were being dumped.

 

I remember rushing to Sams and getting all the Queen reissues. I had already picked up all the Stones reissues on vinyl. It was heady times.

 

1986 I went in to buy a pair of Klipsch Chorus, and the salesman played Flim & the BB's Tricycle over them and instead I bought a pair of Forte's and a Denon DCD-1100 with the Flim cd included. I still have and use all three in one system or another. I wonder how many stereo components that album sold!

 

I was eight years old when I first heard The Dark Side Of The Moon CD in 1987. I remember it being so silent and smooth in its presentation. It was impressive indeed.

 

I'm replying to myself to add one more thing.

I came back later that month and bought both a CD player and the Rosenberger CD. Today, the CD player is long gone, but the Rosenberger CD is still on my shelves, pristine, in its smooth case with raised "Patent pending" on the back.

 

It was at Listen Up in Denver (hi fi shop), the CD was Sade's Diamond Life so must have been 1984.
I recall a few sales guys being flustered that some preferred the vinyl sound despite the cool factor they were showing off...

 

I know it was around 1988 or so. The first CD I heard was Tracy Chapman's debut, which was being played as a demo for the CD player that JC Penney (I think) was selling. When I finally bought my first CD player the first disc I bought was Dark Side Of The Moon.

 

The change from vinyl to CD had at least some qualities that were sonic improvements (see above) but consider the change from CDs to MP3s -- at first, a free, illegal format (=Napster), then, part of the streaming revolution where you get it all, just not in very high quality.
Sign of the times? Remember when you heard your first MP3 file?

 

It would have been spring of 1986 a friend of mine who was working in a large accountancy firm spent his quarterly bonus on a very nice Sony ES stack. That night was the night that I realized I was going to need a university education to afford the kind of hi-fi I wanted.

 

1986 My roommate had a Kenwood CD player, and he played The Beatles Abbey Road (black face Toshiba). I felt like my teeth were going to grind themselves flat. To much shrill and sterility.

 

The summer of 1985, in an audio shop on 57th Street west of 5th Avenue, I was working nearby. The salesman played Rickie Lee Jones debut, so it was Chuck E.’s in Love. I recall the speakers were a Mission bookshelf model, and I liked how it sounded and wanted, but couldn’t afford the speakers. I purchased a Yamaha player for $285, it was only about 14 inches wide and lasted many years. I next stopped at Sam Goody down the street. They had a small CD section on the upper level. I purchased the RLJ disc (a target), David Bowie’s Tonight, and Robert Plant’s Principle of Moments.

When I got home and played them on my system it sounded harsh and clinical. I’m sure the room acoustics had something to do with that, but I had crappy no-name brand speakers which didn’t help matters. My receiver was a lower end Pioneer SX series, can’t recall which one. Over time I got used to the CD sound, but never gave up my records, though I had a long period of buying only CDs, and have 4000+. I still have two of those first CD purchases, having sold off the Bowie disc tears ago. I recall really hating the sonics on that one. When I picked up the Ludwig mastered vinyl LP a few years ago it was a rather different experience!