Very early CDs/digital audio - what still exists?

An interesting thought crossed my mind today. Pictured here are two CD prototypes, circa 1979.





I was wondering, if one were to somehow acquire this disc, would it still be playable today in a CD player?

What is the earliest available example of digital audio, in which the bits/samples are those as originally created by the vintage digital process? Are there any files floating around online?

While with analog media, playing a recording much older than this is completely ordinary, it strikes me as fascinating that a computer or DAC could technically still process/play back the original data of a digital recording as created decades ago. It would be neat to have some 1970's era PCM as a WAV or FLAC just to hear what the early digital sound was like!


The oldest cd I personally own, for what it's worth, is still 30 years old, so. Still pretty neat.

 

As long as that disc follows the red book standards, it would be playable on today's equipment. I don't recall if Phillips produced early discs that were not red book. I suspect there may have been discs produced using different formats prior to the red book standard.

 

I believe some earlier prototype discs were 14 bit (maybe still readable via PC trickery?), and I believe up to the end of the 70's even after the push to 16 bit the discs were about 1 cm smaller prior to the redbook standardization, although this of course wouldn't be an issue with certain cd transports, especially those with a snap-on locking mechanism.
This is of course assuming these discs haven't all oxidized at this point and are readable by a device at all - I have no idea.

 

Slightly off topic, but recently I was reminiscing with a pal about computers we owned in the past. He asked me if I remembered the experiment we conducted around 1998 when he recorded an audio message in WAV and sent it to me via the Internet as an email attachment. We both were fascinated by that experiment and swapped several messages back-and-forth. I had long since forgotten about those messages, but had no recollection of ever deleting the emails. So then I logged into the yahoo email server and scrolled backward through thousands upon thousands of emails, and lo and behold I found those messages we had swapped nearly two decades ago with their WAV files still attached, and yes they still play perfectly!

As far as digital audio disks are concerned, if the laminate remains intact and the metallic layer does not oxidize, they should play fine long after we've turned to dust. Speaking of vintage data storage, I found this neat news article from the early days of compact disc. Incidentally, my oldest compact discs date back to the mid-1980s, and they play just fine.

 

Dutch Wikipedia (Philips is dutch) says this about the first disc:
"De eerste cd ter wereld werd gefabriceerd op 17 augustus 1982 door het Philipsonderdeel Polygram te Langenhagen en was bedoeld voor de Japanse markt. De eerste cd bevatte het album The Visitors van ABBA"
in short: first disc produced 17th august 1982 (by subsidiary Polygram in Germany) and it contained ABBA's The Visitors album.

Here's a 30 min. dutch (no subs) tv documentary about the compact disc invention

 

I own one of those Abba discs, both the disc & jewel case both look odd.

 

I can't say I have that copy of The Visitors - and from what I understand it commands quite a premium. That said, I do have a lossless rip and good scans, which is the next best thing it's kinda fun being able to experience 1982 like that. It's the closest I'll get considering I wasn't there.

 

You also need an old CD player, the 34 year old discs played in a modern player sound much more natural than the same disc in a 1st or 2nd gen player.

 

Didn't we have laserdiscs by the end of their run, that were 10" wide, or 8" or some other odd size? (I know that has nothing to do with a redbook CD, but the existence of such without at least bringing it up, could confuse a few people in this discussion)

And then there were the (all European, if I recall correctly?) CD's that offered a few audio cuts, and also included a couple-or-more videos in mp2?
I think I still have one with the Jerry Fisher lineup of B,S & T on some German rockshow TV series...

 

The disk on the second picture should be playable in today's players as it already has the "Compact Disc" logo meaning it is Red Book compliant.