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

I think the feature wasn't used on many CDs to begin with, few players supported it, and these days it's not used any more and players don't support it.

 

Yes, I don't recall that they said that about the players either. But they did say a lot of illogical things about the discs and the SQ. They said that the discs were close to indestructible, and that they SQ was independent of how the recording had been made

 

Oh no! So it couldn't be used as a portable. I guess that's why they didn't call it a Walkman.
I think by the 90's they had come up with the 3 second RAM buffer. My first Sony minidisk player (Jesus...Mother Mary weeped!) in 2000 had a 3 second RAM buffer which was good for bus or subway riding but not for jogging. And then two years later I got my Net Minidisk player that had a 40 second RAM buffer. That thing NEVER skipped.

 

But, but, but.....Indexing was good. It Made navigating through the last movement of Bethoven's 9th real easy. Think about how useful it used to be on sound effect records. Or those long-ass Rush songs like: Fountain of Lamenth, 2112 and Hemispheres. Song 1 on 2212 and then 6 index points. You could program your own short version of 2112 or Fountain. I want the index back or else......Or else I will knit my brow. Here I go......(Fat, lazy and overmedicated ex-audio engineer knits brow menacingly.)

 

Ahhh.....mmmm....My Uncle Dave used to sell audio and video equipment at The Hudson's Bay Trading Post (Sorry, I meant Company) back in 1982. He used to throw a CD on the floor, step on it with his shoe, pop it back in the player and hit play. And of course the CD would play thereby impressing the customer. He would make a sale at that point. Now I do make some stuff up.....But not this story.

In the beginning they were selling the CD as PERFECT SOUND FOREVER. Those Nibus tests that predicted a CD would only last 8 to 10 years were still years away. And they were bogus. I have a Jackson 5 CD from 1988 that still plays perfectly 32 years later. Does anyone have a CD from 1981 or 1982 that still plays perfectly?

Do you remember the DAT claim? Apparently they took a DAT tape and digitally copied it to another DAT tape. They did this back and forth 250 times! And the claim was that the 250th copy (made from copy 249) sounded just like the original. I wonder what Steve thinks of that?
I bet they didn't use the same two tapes each transfer.

 

I don't even last 100 years! LOL

WOW.......I think the claim was made of the disks and not the player.

 

"Tink" Damn, that is scary.

 

Interesting story. Thanks for sharing it. I didn't get to hear a good (non-harsh) CD palyer until 2005. $1000 CAN dollars for the Arcam. It had a 24 bit converter. Two analog outputs and two digital outputs plus CD text. And great audiophile sound.

But the Sennheiser HD500 would have tamed all those harsh CD sounds for you. Did for me. Even my brother's cheap Sony CD changer was no match for the HD 500. Everthing sounded good through those cans.

 

I think one of my friends had one and it may have been one of those miniature CD singles of the early Beatles releases. I thought it was neat but I don’t remember being “wowed” by it. For Christmas of ‘89 my dad (or my mom for my dad) finally caved into buying one after years of stubbornly refusing to get one but in our area you simply couldn’t find many if any new releases on LP anymore. The first CD we played was Doolittle by Pixies and I was floored, more by the music than the CD itself. After that I think what drew me most to the medium was the concept of bonus tracks and the first one that I bought for myself was The Stone Roses reissue with Fool’s Gold (already owned the LP so it was my first double dip ever). After that I didn’t really go back to records until 1994-1996 and then again circa 2013. My dad NEVER went back. Although, I gotta tell ya, even early on I had misgivings about CDs because I had Automatic by The Jesus and Mary Chain on LP, got the CD for a penny through Columbia House for the bonus tracks, and was surprised at how cold and sterile the CD sounded compared to the record. A lot of albums seem that way. I even prefer Megatop Phoenix by Big Audio Dynamite on LP even though it was recorded digitally.

 

I was never much of a headphone guy. I only used my Sony MDR-7506 studio cans for editing and other detail work.

In 1990, I bought a Sony 5 CD carousel changer. I'm not sure how much I paid for it but I bought it from a now-defunct audio electronics store. I don't remember the name of that place either, but they were based in California. They went out of business somewhere around 2005. No, it wasn't Circuit City. But, I did buy a second Sony Carousel in 1995 when that player up and died.

Now that I think about it, I also bought a new receiver before the first CD player upgrade so it's hard to say exactly how much that Sony player improved the sound.

 

It said so in the newspaper. But it is more likely that the journalist misunderstood something when he was at IFA Berlin where he first saw this new CD thing.

 

Joan Baez "Greatest Hits" on a Sony CDP-101 at a Charlotte, NC stereo shop in 1983.
I was/am a fan of Baez, but not how she sounded there. At that time, my new LP
purchases were immediately taken to a favorite hi-fi shop (NO CD players there)
for Keith Monks cleaning and Last treatment. Playing many of my LPs,
anxiety would increase just before anticipated ticks and pops.

When I went to graduate school that fall, my SME Thorens and LPs were left behind.
Waited for Magnavox's FD-1040 release, ordered by mail unheard.
First CD purchased and played: Dire Straits "Making Movies".
I replaced very few undamaged LPs with CDs;
little bases for comparison, since mostly different mixes.

 

Toronto, where I live has the famous Bay & Bloor Radio. They boost the largest headphone section of any store. Or use to. So we had a lot of choices for cans. My Father hated loud music so cans became a necessity. I didn't really have speakers until 1989.

 

My first CD was a Q Magazine compilation around 1987.

I had a Toshiba player which I'm told was a copy of a Philips. It still works today.

The sound was great. Not wishing to open an old wound, I think there's been a bit of revisionism recently about the sound of CD versus the sound of vinyl, with people who got into CD now saying vinyl was better all along. People forget that, with the mastering of the late '80s, CD really did sound better than vinyl to most of us back then. What changed was mastering and the loudness wars. To me nowadays the issue isn't a case of CD v vinyl, it's largely a case of the mastering of the individual recording as to which format sounds best.

The price of CDs in the UK made it a middle class hobby for the first few years - the average man couldn't afford £15 a disc. I remember going on holiday to New York in the early '90s, finding a branch of Tower Records near The Lincoln Center and bringing back an entire suitcase full of CDs due to the prices in the US being about 50% lower. Happy days.

 

I was late to the party hearing a compact disc player for the first time in 1985 at ‘House Of Stereo’ in Jacksonville Florida where I was invited into a listening room with several other visitors. I recall well that the room was dead quiet and produced NO room echo whatsoever! The proprietor shut the door behind us and then explained the basics of CD technology. He even went into what the sound floor was and why we wouldn’t hear it. Instead, during quiet passages of the recording we were about to experience, we would hear the soft whir of air circulating through a pipe organ. He instructed us to remain absolutely silent during the demonstration, during which we heard ‘Carillon De Westminster’ from this CD. Widor*, Vierne*, Simon Preston - Symphony No. 5 / Carillon De Westminster. It’s a compilation of recordings made of organist Simon Preston at the West Minster Abbey Church organ. I was positively stunned at the realism of the sound and taken aback by the immediately obvious absence of surface noise and distortion. We were also treated to a full digital recording of Maurice Ravel’s ‘Bolero’. I had never heard recorded music with such high fidelity! I was sold! Compact discs are amazing, but sadly it’s the fault of sound engineers and their screwball mastering styles that many recordings, especially pop releases, sound so bad since the late ‘90s.

 

Dark Side Of The Moon and Brothers In Arms on a Sony D5 Discman in 1985. The clarity blew my mind.

 

No argument there. Most of us (me!) cheap plastic Japanese turntables under $250. Mine was a $120 Dual purchased in 1983. I didn't even have an elliptical Stylus! When I finally heard one in 1985 it was like, BABY, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE?

Now I suppose if I had had a Lynn table and a MM cartridge with a line contact stylus and a all tube phone preamp and a Nitty Gritty cleaning machine the CD would have been a let down. But I didn't have all that cool audiophile record playing stuff. I just had a super-crappy Dual. The CD was my saviour.

 

"Screwball mastering styles." That is tee-shirt material. No doubt. LOL
Yea, and unlike vinyl the CD can good go down to 5 hz. ** Assuming the engineer didn't stop it. A 16 hz church pipe organ bass pedal (c0) is no problem for the mighty compact disk.

Vinyl can sound bette than CD.....$3 000 later.



** If you actually own a subwoofer that can go down to the infrasonic frequencies of 5hz let me know. I will not be moving onto your street. That would be bad-ass though.

 

Yep...
Pink Floyd`s The Wall
Played through Klipschorn`s powered by an Apt Holman amp/pre amp combo to clipping levels in a smallish demo room when CD`s were just getting started.
Don`t remember the CD player used.

 

Probably Christmas of 86 for me. I would have been 14 at the time. My uncle had gotten a smallish one and several CD's for Christmas, by chance he and his family were heading out of town so he set it up with my (tiny) system for me to play with for the two or three weeks. I don't remember much of what he left for me to listen to with the exception of Peter Gabriel's So, The Police's Every Breath You Take, and Simply Red's first album. I want to say it was a Sony.

Now he was responsible for a lot of my musical education, he made me tapes of music and even took me to my first concert. About a year later be brought me his turntable and entire album collection to take care of. I had just started buying a few vinyl albums, and my system really wasn't the best. I had an all in one receiver, turntable, and non working 8 track player, and a Technics dual cassette player, which I still have to this day (although not hooked up). My main source for comparison were my cassette tapes, so to me the CD's that I was hearing sounded incredible (it was still several years before I began getting my own decent entry level system).

 

No argument there. Although some people complained that the sound was bland.

Back in 1984 the British Pound was double what our Canadian dollar was worth. Pretty much the same for buying power. A £ 15 CD in the U.K. would be $30 for one here. Oouch!! Whereas now I get a Classic Doctor Who Region 2 PAL (superior 720 x 576, 25f/ps) DVDs for $12.50. When HMV was around our "made in Canada" Doctor Who NTSC DVDs (inferior NTSC 720 x 480, 30f/ps) were going for $33.95. What gives??!?! And I ain't paying (and didn't) $750 for an OOP NTSC DVD copy of THE WEB PLANET. Mary Mother weeped! That is $800 including tax!!

The only way they will ship from the U.K. (from this music/ TV/video chain) is by Royal Mail. What the Hell is Royal Mail? No Express or RUSH shipment of any kind. Why? And why is my DVD shoved in a cardboard envelop with no bubble wrap on the inside? My Father said London in the 60's was like Toronto in the 30's. Both my Father and Mother had immigrated to England in 1961. My Mother worked in a London office getting £ 10 per week. Around the same time (1963) Carrie Ann Ford was getting only £40 a week for her acting performances in Doctor Who. In 1964 my Mother got $56 a week working in a Toronto office. And according to Mommy that was when the Canadian dollar was actually worth more than the British Pound. Even back in 1961 £10 a week was next to nothing to live on. I assume that by 1982 the U.k. was now on par with America. Funny, in 1993 when I went to Cambridge, England to take my sick girlfriend home; cable T.V. was a new thing over there. No one made calls in the morning. My Aunt told me the morning calls were way too expensive. I would pop in a Pound coin in the phone both and three minutes later my talking time was up. I was like, "WHAT THE FUDGE!"
It is all different now. And those super cool Post Office Accounts. I was in England back in 1993. I loved the country, culture and the people.

How did it take for the compact disk to become affordable? Curious. What did Blu-ray disks cost when they first came out? In Cananda both the HD DVD (720p HD , LOL) and Blu-ray disks were $50. Then they dropped to $36. And finally to a normal DVD price.

 

Huh?! The Klipschorn had a SPL of 126 db. That means that it only took 5 watts per channel to drive them to a good level. Even a 30 watt per channel amp pushed all the way would produce concert level volume.

No doubt you were hearing some kind of distortion but it wasn't the amps. With a SPL of 126 there is no need for anyone to overload their amps. Did you see that the volume of the amp was all the way up to max?

 

In the late '90s, as all of the so-called remasters CD series were coming out, the price of the original versions was cut to around £7.99 and from that time onwards a stream of "midprice" CDs and bargain bins came along. I'm afraid I never got into DVD so I don't know about that.

Cable TV was a revolution. Overnight we went from four channels to about 50.

 

Your speakers were probably too good. That is where the thin sound came from. Replace your true audiophile speakers with some Cervin Vega speakers with those 15 inch woofers. You won't enjoy your music but it won't be thin anymore.

 

You mean £7.99 right? I was in Cambridge back in 1993. I was at my Uncle's house when this guy came (door to door salesman) to sell cable T.V.
Did you get any American channels?