It's funny. In 1992, I had more cassettes than anything else. For awhile, I thought I would replace them all with CDs, but that felt like it would cost a lot and take forever. Meanwhile, used LPs were getting cheaper and cheaper. I found that it was much more economical to get CDs of the albums that really cared about and replace my other cassettes with used vinyl (or not at all). There are great records that I still own that I bought for anywhere from 25 cents to two dollars. Today, those economics have reversed. I found out a long time ago that I am format agnostic. All things considered, the CD is the most reliable format, following by the digital download, and the vinyl LP. One too many cassettes with sticky shed syndrome or azimuth issues got me to get rid of most of them. I never loved the 8-track. Despite the "a 2-record set on 1 specially-price compact disc" corporate vandalism on the front cover, the original CD of Deep Purple's Made In Japan is an absolute joy. No flipping/changing the record after every two songs. No resequencing like on the cassette and 8-track. Just a continuous flow of Deep Purple's finest live document with stellar sound. How can you not love it? I would be shocked if more than a few Allman Brothers fans still listen to Fillmore East and Eat A Peach on vinyl. Why would they? What does the vinyl offer them that they can't get from a CD?
As far as marketing slogans go, "Pure, perfect sound forever" is not that far off from what the CD could actually deliver. If the CD were mastered from the original tapes by a mastering engineer who knew their stuff and cared about the end product, the sound from a CD can be off the charts amazing, and while things like CD rot do exist, they're relatively rare, meaning the longevity of the disc is secure because playback doesn't degrade the disc itself. Now, does that mean all CDs come from great sources and are well mastered? I wish, but obviously that is not the case. However, for CDs that are from great sources and are well mastered, the "Pure, perfect sound forever" slogan isn't too bad!
....and just to prove the companies can sell anyone anything, they're now reselling records (or "vinyls" as they seem to call the platters now) for people who are t throwing out their CDs - how's THAT for marketing??? Boomers, gen X-ers, whatever group you want to categorise....no one's immune.
Anyone notice the OP never returned after his initial post? That’s very unusual in threads like this.
I think that these views are too cynical. Philips certainly didn’t do it for the money (only). Yes, they were/are a company in a capitalist systems, but in the 70’s they were also a big group of nerds, trying to make life better. Back then they were a company where, working from NatLab, inventors and engineers ruled. (By the end of the 80’s the MBAs got in control and the company is on a downwards flight since. From 412.000 employees and hundreds of products and services in the 70’s, to 79.000 employees and only a small set of health products today.)
Ultimately, they replaced cassettes for the most part for a decade or two, much more so than vinyl but that hype from the early days in the OP's post sure was enticing for a brand new format.
No noise or distortion added by the format itself. No surface noise or hiss. But if the source has it, of course the CD will keep it.
Quad mixes like Mike Oldfield's Boxed set were issued on CD, and since the matrix was encoded into the stereo signal, it could still be decoded and played as a 4-channel recording. So there were in fact quadraphonic CDs. They just had the same ugly limitations of their original vinyl incarnations.
Lets analyse that statement. It depends what you mean by perfect. If perfect means a carbon copy of what the mastering engineer produced up to 22.05 KHZ, massive dynamic range, no noise floor, then it's true. The only issue with the statement "Perfect sound forever" is CD's scratch if not handled correctly. They certanly kicked LPs into oblivion. The resurgance of LPs has nothing to do with better audio quality. It's the hipster/nostalgia factor.
The first CD i brought back in 1985 'Hounds Of Love - Kate Bush' still plays perfectly so a Big Ups to the magic of Compact Discs.
CD's are just a more convenient to use format for encoding low noise audio and playing it back quickly and easily with very little maintenance. Can't think of any other audio delivery format that does that better. Can't play a vinyl record in your car but you can with a CD. And when I had cassettes you can't do this to a CD... That little piece of sh!t
I'm sad to say that the only reason I got a turntable again in 2018*) had to do with sound quality. Although LPs and vinyl do have flaws, since the loudness wars there are a number of albums that have a better (read: more dynamic) mastering on vinyl. Of course I'm ripping them as fast as I can, and mostly stream them from my iPhone when I listen to them. It's pure about the sound, and has nothing to do with hipsterness or nostalgia. When the LP and the (SA)CD are using the same mastering, I still prefer to buy the (SA)CD. Perfect sound forever, you know. *) dumped all of my approx. 400 LPs in the early 90's and fully embarked on the CD bandwagon.
Hey I'm not anti- ads, I love them! STILL buy them, have around 9 thousand to them. They ARE superior to vinyl in many ways. It always makes me chuckle when vinyl junkies complain about the pops and clicks they are forever trying to eliminate when CDs are the obvious solution! I'm just calling out the original hype when they were first released- any new technology is always over sold ans=d promoted as the solution to all of our problems!
It's horses for courses- the sensible person lives in a multi format polyglot musical environment where there is space for all the formats to coexist peacefully and where they all have strengths and weaknesses that we can tailor to our needs. Too many people feel the need to go all in on a single format to the exclusion of all others and then denigrate those who do not follow or agree with their choices.
Not just on this forum. I see plenty people around here who have jumped on the "vinyl" bandwagon because it's trend and consider CDs as trash
Digital playback media developed in the wake of digital recording technology. In the late 70s people were making albums on digital equipment, and it was said then that pressing them on conventional vinyl was losing sound quality. To press digital-standard vinyl would (it was said) mean equipping the pressing plants with completely new machinery, with vastly higher standards of cleanliness and quality control. It was easier to invent a new medium for playback. But just from a technical viewpoint, transferring analogue recordings to digital playback media was an afterthought, almost an irrelevance. In another world, CD might have become a niche product, used almost exclusively for live recordings made with little or no post-production - the standard for classical, something rock artists dabbled in occasionally. Vinyl might have remained the norm: people bought it, the plants were all there to produce it, the engineers knew how to master it...
Nope. Folks who realise there are many recordings that sound better on vinyl, buy vinyl. I'm guessing you don't have a turntable?
I call BS. That's not the CDs fault. Had the loudness war never happened vinyl would still be in the scrap heap of history. As the petat melum over MoFi has shown, even so called audiophiles can't tell when there is a digital step in the mastering chain.
I glad you have somewhere to voice your opinion but you aren't taking into account that analog ages. These master tapes aren't getting any younger. There will be a time in the not so distant future that the only way that all analog will be possible is from needle drops. And how much analog recording equipment is being made these days? I'm sure this was taken into account even in the early days of digital. This isn't even mentioning the convenience that digital recording affords and the drawbacks of the vinyl format that are real and still extant. You are more than welcome to your pipe dream, Sir. Just don't expect others to smoke from it.
Oh, come on. That's about one of the grouchiest and most negative statements one could make. Like it was done just to rip people off and sucker them out of money. I'm still a bigger fan of LP than of CD, but the CD was a great revolution and I'm grateful for it.
