Posted on 07/09/2022 10:14:03 PM PDT by DallasBiff
When the first compact discs arrived on the Australian market in 1983, they ranged in price from $900-$1800. The price didn’t hold back the rapid adoption of the technology
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Now there is retro market back to vinyl LP's.
I guess the millenials and Z'ers will never the joy of being able to walk into a record store, buy a 12 inch LP and actually be able to read the liner notes, without a magnifying glass.
I remember the first CD player I heard. It was at the June ‘82 Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. “Funky Town” on premium headphones. It sounded great, and I didn’t even like the song.
I have sold a few laserdisc players for really decent money recently.
I should probably sell all my old cd players too.
I bought a Betamax in 1981 for around $850, as I recall. The movies it played looked great on my SONY Trinitron.
Sound engineers and audio producers will verify the CD is the crappiest audio medium ever. Vinyl is soooo much better sound quality wise. CDs are hollow and tinny.
I was fresh out of the Navy, and had saved up enough money to buy a good stereo, and I spent $700 on a turntable alone.
Then, I heard a CD. Used that turntable just a few times after that.
Heh, the first catalogue I got had something like ten titles, and the first one I purchased was Dark Side of The Moon...:)
I bought a Nakamichi Dragon cassette tape player in 1984 in Japan. Near top of the line tape player, with top of the line price. I think $800 for last years model, fresh from the factory warehouse, when they were going for $3000 in the states. When used with top quality cassette tapes, it was the equal of the early CD players, with the advantage of being able to record.
By the late 1980’s, though, it suffered by comparison to the newer model, much cheaper CD players.
I still remember the hype about the CD and the CD player, where one could put peanut butter on the CD, and it would still play perfect.
I’m glad vinyl is in vogue again. Maybe it will help young people appreciate albums, instead of just random playlists of singles. It’s good for people’s appreciation of music, and for their appreciation of the artists that pour their heart and soul into producing albums.
The boom in streaming and vinyl means I can collect used, and often new cd’s much cheaper than before, now that demand for them is less.
By the way Spotify streamed music sounds awful. As Neil Young says it’s only about 5 percent of the music. Even 128k streaming is terrible compared to cd, but Spotify has the worst fidelity of the prominent streaming services.
About the time the DAC technology had matured, it seemed like two things happened: (1) music compression for portable devices became popular (128 kbps - ugh!), and (2) music CDs were being remastered for a higher loudness level at a given volume setting.
The latter had the net effect of compressing the music and reducing the dynamic range as compared to the original mastering. Some collectors make an effort to locate the original masterings if they didn't already own them (or made the mistake of selling them when they bought the new "remasters").
Yes, but you need quality hardware, a good environment and a good ear to really tell the difference.
I used to travel a lot by car, so that's where I listened to music the most. A CD is good enough for the car.
Paint the edges (inner and outer) of your CDs green with a marker. So said “The Absolute Sound” at the time.
They made records small.
That's why vinyl LP's were great, they flowed from song to song.
The first to do this were the Beach Boys with "Pet Sounds", and the Beatles copied with "Rubber Soul" in 1965.
From what I understand, the early digital sampling cut off sampling sounds at frequencies both higher, and lower than the average human ear can discern...but although some frequencies cannot be detected by the human ear, the sound wave pressure can effect other parts of the body including the ear. So the sound is fuller on the old recordings. Also old recordings took into effect the whole studio sounds, including echos or reasonant sounds reflecting off of studio structures. I have read that the newer digital recordings try to include all frequencies and have tried to pick up ambient sounds
Even the mighty Nakamichi Dragon was never the equivalent of “early” cd’s. One of the first cd’s was MJ’s Thriller, and it was excellent. There were no cheap CD players at the time, but even the least expensive ones had a good enough d/a converter to outshine cassettes, especially since pre-recorded commercial cassettes were terrible, and user recordings were sourced from vinyl — inferior dynamic range, signal-to-noise ratio, wow & flutter issues, rumble issues, static electricity, tonearm resonance, etc.
Even my Teac 10.5 inch reel-to-reel with DBX was not technically as good as a cd, and it was obviously better than any available cassette and player, especially on high speed.
I used the reel-to-reel to record my virgin vinyl, then played the tape so I could preserve the vinyl album.
I considered getting a Dragon years later, after they were affordable, but since cars stopped coming equipped with cassette players there was really no point.
Yes, and cd’s even more so!
But I get what you mean — albums have themes, and a consistent instrumental arrangement that makes them flow. Think about some other great albums like Dark Side of the Moon, or Wish You Were Here, or The Wall. If some young person didn’t know these albums and was buying them as MP3’s online, they’d probably cherry-pick which songs to buy, missing out on the experience we’re referencing, or they might just take the easy way out and buy a “greatest hits” album.
I think you’re gonna see a slowdown in format changes now that the physical form is no longer germane to the conversation. Bitrates, codecs, etc. will still improve but that’s not such a big deal now that it’s just 1’s and 0’s flying through the ether.
CC
Yes, I know, I'm a modern day Luddite in this world Bill and Steve created.
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