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

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by bluenosens, Apr 21, 2020.

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  1. clhboa

    clhboa Forum Resident

    I was at Radio Shack circa '84/'85 and they had one set up for demonstration. The salesman asked me if I would like to hear one? They had a demonstration sampler that included "Couldn't Stand The Weather" by SRV. I picked that track and was underwhelmed by the sound. Took a few years before I thought cds sounded that great. My Dad won a contest and got a Sharp cd player that he rarely used so I borrowed it off and on until I finally bought a Teac 5 disc changer at Sam's Club after moving to Santa Fe in '95. Had a couple lower end Sony cd changers since then. I still like vinyl but in recent years I prefer to buy the cd instead of the lp due to cost and poor quality control issues.
     
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  2. The Curator

    The Curator Forum Resident

    I remember that MTV2 was included since it was all I watched. There was a sudden explosion of low-rent British channels that faded very quickly. Sport, especially soccer, seemed to be the main driver behind the expansion. Most American channels came along with satellite, when Sky came onto the scene a few years later. All of a sudden I could watch Regis and Kathie Lee (at least, in-between commercials).

    Linked to DVD, and continuing the CD price story, with the rise of MP3 and DVD the space allocated to CD in shops like HMV began to recede and 10 or so years ago a lot of stock was on sale offers, like 3 CDs for £10 kind of thing.

    Most of the CDs I buy now are pre loudness wars, especially Japanese.
     
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  3. Tim 2

    Tim 2 MORE MUSIC PLEASE

    Location:
    Alberta Canada
    LOL
     
  4. fogalu

    fogalu There is only one Beethoven

    Location:
    Killarney, Ireland
    I don't know how common this AB indexing is nowadays, but my Yamaha S300 does have it.

    I bought my first CD player, a Pioneer, in 1987 and the first CD I played was the mono "A Hard Day's Night" album which had been issued the year before. I had a very good turntable back then and I immediately compared the CD to the vinyl album.

    The record was about 20 years old and had been played to death on a number of turntables - including a cheap Dansette - so I was surprised and disappointed to hear no great improvement when I listened to the CD. However, I was impressed with some classical solo piano works - mainly because of the absence of surface noise, rumble and clicks.

    I was never quite happy with the Pioneer CD player and it wasn't until I could afford the Phillips 850 a few years later that I became fully converted to CD.
     
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  5. Joint Attention

    Joint Attention Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gig Harbor, WA
    I think the first time I heard a CD was in late 1987. I got a Fisher CD player for Christmas that year and I convinced my mom to let me try it out a couple of weeks early to "make sure it worked."

    I listened to disc 1 of New Order Substance, which was the only title I owned at the time. I listened on headphones and I was pretty impressed with the dynamics and low background noise, but I was mostly used to listening to cassette tapes on a Walkman at that point. I remain a big CD fan.
     
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  6. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    First time I heard a CD was from a tape a friend had made for me of a bunch of tracks. I was listening with headphones and thought "Wow not one tick, pop, crackle or anything!"
     
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  7. When I first heard CDs from the likes of Massive Attack, Portishead, Goldie, Tricky et al I thought "Brilliant!" :doh: Let's add vinyl noise as sound effects.
     
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  8. SCM

    SCM Senior Member

    Location:
    Fl
    It was super LOUD !
    I remember seeing the salesman grinning and seeing red flickering on the face plate of the amp :agree:
     
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  9. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    I have told you time and time again to bring your Realistic SPL meter with you! (Hits member over the head with a rolled up news paper.) :) LOL

    Who was this sales fool? What was the point of his demo? To prove how stupid stereo sales people are? I I guarantee you suffered some hearing loss that day. 5 lousy watts per channel is all they need for a good volume!.... 25 watts per channel would have blown them at way beyond club volume. I don't get it..... Most efficient speakers get about 90 db SPL. Every time you raise the SPL level up three db it is like doubling your amp power. For example say you had a speaker that had a SPL level of 90 db. And your amp was 100 watts per channel. Your new speakers have an SPL level of 93 db SPL. Now you can get the same volume level with only a 50 watt amp. Increase the SPL to 96 db and only a 25 watts per channel amp is needed. Ad infinitum. Those Klisphorns were an abomination before nature. As big as a 24 inch cubic fridges. Apparently they were designed to go in corners. Let me explain: Put them up against a wall and they were flat down to 40 hz
    But put them in the corners and they rocked down to 30hz flat. Or so the manual said. My only regret is that I never purchased the nasty things. (Sniff! Sniff!)

    Member asks, "Would would design a speaker that requires you put it in the corners?" Don't look at me! Forget about using those for a 5.1 system. Although a friend a mine did in 1998. He got sucked into a wormhole and was never seen again.
     
  10. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    No one was happy with the Pioneer CD player.
     
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  11. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I have one but don't know where the hell it is. I'm sure it's ruined by the battery drained in it after a couple of decades.
     
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  12. SCM

    SCM Senior Member

    Location:
    Fl
    j morris.....You must be confusing me with somebody else I`ve never talked to you before, sorry :)
     
  13. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    Ahhh, I screwed up again. Forget it.
     
  14. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    But when CDs came out every CD player had indexing. It was one of the bonus things about the compact disk. The selling points were this:
    (Drum roll please!)

    5 - 20 000 hz +-0.5 db
    100 db dynamic range
    Unmeasurable wow and flutter
    1/10 000 th % of THD
    RANDOM ACESS TO EVERY TRACK
    INDEXING.
    The 1st and 5 000 plays the disk will sound the same.
    No pops, ticks, surface noise or pops. (Not talking about CDs playing in a optical drive.)
    Never wears out
    74 minutes per disk.
    Programmable/ random shuffle.
    CD TEXT (the song title would appear on the CD screen.)


    You can talk about depth, and soundstage, and detail all you like but vinyl didn't stand a chance against that. And if there was no Loudness War I believe vinyl would have stayed dead. One of the big promises of the CD was that the average consumer would be able to hear the full quality of the master tape. And with the CD you heard nothing else.

    This was a big deal to people like Uncle Jack. He said back in 1981, "No more vinyl compromises. What I mix they will hear. Every low to every high... Every thud pumping bass line. No more bottoming out the bass for sissy vinyl. Imagine. Everyone will hear the master tape as is.. This a new beginning ......A new age...." That Christmas party of '81 was captured on Aunt Josephine's Beta camera. She had the footage copied to Super-VHS in 1994. And then transfered to DVD a few years ago. He was pretty drunk at that party but he had high Hope's for CD.

    Sure vinyl can sound good after you have spent $2000 or more to do it.
     
  15. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    I keep telling you time and time again but you never listen. And what is this I hear about about 16 mm film copies of Marco Polo in a storage locker of yours? Mmmmm?! I just hope you have all 7 episodes.
     
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  16. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    Not even as a joke. No please no. I hate that.
     
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  17. Encore

    Encore Forum Resident

    Please, let's keep this a thread about the first time we heard CD and what we thought. I appreciate your background info about the early days, but we should be careful not to turn this into another vinyl vs CD thread.
     
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  18. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    (In the voice of a little kid trying to get out of trouble) Well, it jumped...like that! It jumped and it got lost. I looked and looked and it's just gone.
     
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  19. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    Good idea.
     
  20. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    I have not heard a good (O.k. John now shut up about index markers) reason for the dropping of the index. Who wouldn't want to program out that boring III Presentation from "2112"? Or get rid of Geddy's love ballad in "Fountain Of Lamenth" Or imagine "The Abbey Road Medley" with index markers. Or perhaps even index "I've Seen All Good People" (Such a kick ass song, damn!) Or Index markers for "By-Tor & The Frozen Cat." Or better yet index markers for "The Necrmancer."

    They should have gone further and added Sub-indexes. Who agrees?
     
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  21. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    I will never forget hearing the CD of Eldorado coming from my headphones for the first time. It was....Perfect. I did feel like I was hearing the master. I wish I could go back to those days. It was like being on a drug. Then I got Past Masters Vol 1 and 2. WOW!!!!! I had never heard The Beatles like this. The only version of "I Feel Fine" I had heard up to this point was my mono Australian Help! EP version and the echo soaked mono mix off the U.S. red album. I remember thinking - this is too much detail! Hard right was TOO hard right and hard left was TOO hard left. And I could hear every little thing. Too much.
    Wow!!!
     
  22. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario

    Curious. How much did you pay for the Pioneer and the Phillip's? My 1988 Sony 5 disk changer was $529 (including tax) which was really a bargain back then.

    I remember in 1988 when traveled downtown to look for new records and found next to nothing at Sam The Record. I was gonna get a new table and cart. But when I saw that vinyl had almost disappeared - that was it. I gave up and said aloud, "I guess I will have to buy a CD player." I
    Went right out and purchased the Eldorado CD. Sad. Then I went looking for my first CD player.
    They SEEMED all the same. If I had gone to an audiophile store I suppose it would have been different, but at the time it was like perfect digital sound. Why pay $1500 for a player? Needless to say I got smarter as the years went on.
     
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  23. DrZhivago

    DrZhivago Hedonist

    Location:
    Brisbane Australia
    Around 1986. I didn't consciously care about sound quality so much back then (I was only 14). I do remember being impressed by the absence of SN/clicks and superior navigation and programing options. I didn't get a CD player until early 90's. I remember being more excited getting the 1987 Beatles CD remasters for it.
     
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  24. fogalu

    fogalu There is only one Beethoven

    Location:
    Killarney, Ireland
    Gosh - we're talking 1987 - long before the euro. I think the Pioneer was around 300 pounds sterling then - and it was completely basic - no remote control. I don't even think it had shuffle. I sold it after a year and bought and traded in a couple of others but all of them were mediocre.
    I managed to get the Philips 850 four about 400 pounds in the early 90s (which was quite a bargain back then) and for the first time I was happy with CD - and have remained so. That mighty Philips died only about two years ago and I'm still in mourning. ;)
     
  25. Alan2

    Alan2 Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    There was a Philips machine being demonstrated in a music and audio store. It sounded terrible, so I guess it must have been an early player. The music had the effect of being forced through a synthesizer or something. Some time after that I went to an event where they talked about a machine and demonstrated it. They played about 2 minutes of a selected classical disc and the rest was hype, hype and more. 'This is the future of music' etc etc.
    I would have been more interested if they'd played a variety of music and said less.
     
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