I just dug out my very first CD: Carmina Burana performed by Ray Manzarek, recorded in 1983. It still sounds very good!
I bought a Magnavox (rebranded Philips player) in the company store in early 1984. dual 14 bit dacs with lots of deglitching capacitors. Sounded absolutely terrible until I replaced the original Philips ceramic caps with film capacitors. (There was an article in Audio Amateur about improving this model.)
I was highly skeptical and much more so after the acquisition of my first CD player.
It was more than 3 decades before I heard digital that was as compelling sound quality wise as good vinyl on whatever TT I had at the time. These days I mostly stream Tidal and local library using Roon, play very little analog despite two TD-124s, good arms SG or LOMC cartridges and a Studer A-810.
Interestingly even the very early CD releases I have in my collection sound very good on modern equipment, so I conclude that the problem was really with the players.
I was highly skeptical and much more so after the acquisition of my first CD player.
It was more than 3 decades before I heard digital that was as compelling sound quality wise as good vinyl on whatever TT I had at the time. These days I mostly stream Tidal and local library using Roon, play very little analog despite two TD-124s, good arms SG or LOMC cartridges and a Studer A-810.
Interestingly even the very early CD releases I have in my collection sound very good on modern equipment, so I conclude that the problem was really with the players.
I still do it! 😉
One of the last one was Time Fades Away by Neil Young who I no longer remember the reason he didn't want to publish it on CD and did it just recently.
Not skeptical, but uncertain.
Also because they did not come cheap and could only be a commercial operation...
However, thanks to their high dynamic and low background noise they at the time caught the desire to listen to classical music and lyrics and then I bought many of them.
Good times! 🙂
And it was terrible. Earlier, at the same time i was taking a graduate level sampling course, i read the SONY white paper and suggestted sampling would need a 4x resolution increase. But given the huge amount of progress made, a lot of 44/16 sounds just fine.
Bought my first CD playe rin about Y2K.
dave
Bought my first CD playe rin about Y2K.
dave
It was 40 years ago, in March 1983, that the audio Compact Disc was first introduced to Europe.
It's arguably the most successful music replay format in history, and players have been getting better in line with evolving DAC technology.
I prefer the physical medium of CD which is 100% reliable, whereas the internet is not. Besides, I need the exercise that getting off-the-sofa provides!
I was a fairly earlier adopter of the medium, spurred on by the gift of a Dire Straits Brothers in Arms CD, which was released in 1985.
I remember when the Moody Blues albums were first released in the CD format that they sounded noticeably inferior under A/B comparison with my copies of the original 1960/70s LPs. I put that down to poor transfers rather than any inherent fault in the CD medium.
It's arguably the most successful music replay format in history, and players have been getting better in line with evolving DAC technology.
I prefer the physical medium of CD which is 100% reliable, whereas the internet is not. Besides, I need the exercise that getting off-the-sofa provides!
I was a fairly earlier adopter of the medium, spurred on by the gift of a Dire Straits Brothers in Arms CD, which was released in 1985.
I remember when the Moody Blues albums were first released in the CD format that they sounded noticeably inferior under A/B comparison with my copies of the original 1960/70s LPs. I put that down to poor transfers rather than any inherent fault in the CD medium.
My first CD Player was Philips CD104, to which I soon removed the 2 cables of analog signal that came out from the inside (because 2 ends of them were welded directly on the main board by design!) and mounted a couple of RCA sockets for using a couple of "normal" cables with 4 RCA plugs: those were the days!
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I got an AKAI CD-D1 in 1986. 1.000 Deutsch Marks (DM). About the price of a used VW Beetle with 2 years road approval. A lot of money for a student. It had a quite analogue sound, not this clinical reproduction of many later models.
Analog record player and stuff around it got a huge quality boost from the new CD. The industry knew what was coming and tried to keep the record alive. They took all the good stuff out of the drawers and put it on the market.
The price performance ratio of phono pickup's suddenly got fantastic. Audiophile record players got affordable. People realized the had to spent at least ½ of the money on the pickup. Before the CD most people thought the pickup was something unimportant.
The two way speaker became a serious thing for high quality listening. Before the CD most two way's where a cheap substitute for people that could not afford a 3-way speaker. I'm talking about the majority, not studio use and audiophiles.
I had a friend who shared may DIYS speaker building hobby. As I did mobile disco to earn some money on weekends, I was more a practical guy. I was booked because my gear sounded better than others and not because I talked nonsense about high end stuff.
I realized that the CD was the future in commerce. Even as not all CD productions where as good as a very good analog recording, played on a decent phono with a MC system (moving coil), but the CD kept it's quality.
If we are honest, a record degrades every time it is played. Dirt is collected and after a while you have to clean and play them wet for a good sound. In different locations feed back can became a problem.
We did a lot of audiophile A-B testing, switching inputs, while playing the same record and CD in parallel. My CD had a variable line out, so level matching was easy. At that time any successful music was released on record and CD.
The CD did not win all the time, results depended. Very often the sound engineer seemed to care more for the record than the CD. Morons. Not any CD remaster did a good job.
My friend later moved on to CD, too, but as he had a very good analog player, he needed more time to convince him self.
He was not this typical ideological idiot, that repeats the BS he has heard or read, while not even having a good set of speakers at home, but many of his records where simply not available on CD.
So yes, everything changed with the CD, for the better, quality wise.
Analog record player and stuff around it got a huge quality boost from the new CD. The industry knew what was coming and tried to keep the record alive. They took all the good stuff out of the drawers and put it on the market.
The price performance ratio of phono pickup's suddenly got fantastic. Audiophile record players got affordable. People realized the had to spent at least ½ of the money on the pickup. Before the CD most people thought the pickup was something unimportant.
The two way speaker became a serious thing for high quality listening. Before the CD most two way's where a cheap substitute for people that could not afford a 3-way speaker. I'm talking about the majority, not studio use and audiophiles.
I had a friend who shared may DIYS speaker building hobby. As I did mobile disco to earn some money on weekends, I was more a practical guy. I was booked because my gear sounded better than others and not because I talked nonsense about high end stuff.
I realized that the CD was the future in commerce. Even as not all CD productions where as good as a very good analog recording, played on a decent phono with a MC system (moving coil), but the CD kept it's quality.
If we are honest, a record degrades every time it is played. Dirt is collected and after a while you have to clean and play them wet for a good sound. In different locations feed back can became a problem.
We did a lot of audiophile A-B testing, switching inputs, while playing the same record and CD in parallel. My CD had a variable line out, so level matching was easy. At that time any successful music was released on record and CD.
The CD did not win all the time, results depended. Very often the sound engineer seemed to care more for the record than the CD. Morons. Not any CD remaster did a good job.
My friend later moved on to CD, too, but as he had a very good analog player, he needed more time to convince him self.
He was not this typical ideological idiot, that repeats the BS he has heard or read, while not even having a good set of speakers at home, but many of his records where simply not available on CD.
So yes, everything changed with the CD, for the better, quality wise.
All my early CDs sound excellent and much better than the vinyl version (I do not have many albums in vinyl and CD because I refuse to pay again for something I already own). The ones I have that sound terrible were all released during the Loudness Wars the worst ones being Iggy's own remix of Raw Power and something by Green Day. The original David Bowie mix of Raw Power is quite good and luckily available on my streaming platform of choice.
Actually this was my second CD. The first was Time Is The Key, performed by Pierre Moerlen's Gong in 1979. Not bad either, even today.
I did get to her it until 83-84 sometime, At 19-20 I moved to Naples Florida in June of 1983 and got a job fixing TV's in a local shop C.B.S Electronics ( I did that for 4 years), Our shops was the Very First shop in all of the area to have one.
My boss Carl did sales and warranty work for Phillips and a few others, so Phillips sent us one to sell ( and he got the Bought the First one 😉 ), and once the word got out people Flock for Miles to our shop to here this thing called CD!!
About a year later, a carshop just down the street got in the New Alpine CD player system and had it setup complete with the Phillips Car stereo speaker, the ones that had 2 4-4.5 inch square Alu Drivers.
I had Never Ever heard anything like that before in my life and have yet to hear something that good in such a small package for cars eversince.
The first CD I heard was the new Yes album (84ish) and WoW!!!!
Since then me desktop ESL tops this and CD suck, but at the time it was soooo amazing, and still is with the right system and material.
Right from the git go I always thought it made cymbals and such sound like trash can crashing together, but since then a lot of this has been solved by using 24bit data now and that is Good enough for me !!
I never did get my on 2 pair of those phillips like I wanted too but they are what inspired me to build my desktop esl in the First place !! 😀
Cheer's everyone.........
What an Era that was and I was at the Right Place at the Right Time and I survived Naples for 20 years. He,he,he
jer 🙂
My boss Carl did sales and warranty work for Phillips and a few others, so Phillips sent us one to sell ( and he got the Bought the First one 😉 ), and once the word got out people Flock for Miles to our shop to here this thing called CD!!
About a year later, a carshop just down the street got in the New Alpine CD player system and had it setup complete with the Phillips Car stereo speaker, the ones that had 2 4-4.5 inch square Alu Drivers.
I had Never Ever heard anything like that before in my life and have yet to hear something that good in such a small package for cars eversince.
The first CD I heard was the new Yes album (84ish) and WoW!!!!
Since then me desktop ESL tops this and CD suck, but at the time it was soooo amazing, and still is with the right system and material.
Right from the git go I always thought it made cymbals and such sound like trash can crashing together, but since then a lot of this has been solved by using 24bit data now and that is Good enough for me !!
I never did get my on 2 pair of those phillips like I wanted too but they are what inspired me to build my desktop esl in the First place !! 😀
Cheer's everyone.........
What an Era that was and I was at the Right Place at the Right Time and I survived Naples for 20 years. He,he,he
jer 🙂
I have a whole bunch of early CDs that get beat quite easily by the copies I have on vinyl, but most seem to be mastered in Canada.
jeff
jeff
Thing I love about CD more than anything is that it makes for a reliable second hand purchase. Around 60% of the CDs I own have come second hand.
I recall the buzz while in college in 80. I was super anxious to get one and plopped down around 900 in I think dec 83 when the sony cdp-101 was first available in the US. The dealer was the one I dealt with in college and had them. I carried it back to LA where I was working on the plane. I think I had 5 precious cd's that I bought with the player. Titles were few and far between back then. All were classical. To the credit of philips, those CD's still play flawlessly after 40 years. I was so amazed at the technology. Today we take 16 bit dac;s as cheap toys but back then 16 bit/44KHz dac's were quite the achievement at the price point needed. Even handling the 1.5Mbits per second was something. The laser system, the ECC, it was all super impressive back then. Today of course 1.5Mb is trivial. But back then 10Mb ethernet was something. And of course, coding theory really shines these days on HDD's and archive tape.
OMG I did live through that.
I started uni in 1982 and joined the Audio Society. This was in London UK, and a fellow member happened to work at K. J. Leisuresound on Oxford Street. I forgot his name. But he managed to smuggle one of the first players into our club listening room, one afternoon.
We had never heard CD. We were used to the state of the art at the time: Naim amplifiers, Linn record players and Linn speakers. The Rega Planar 3 was respected too and the Creek 4040, and a few others. Sound quality was all that mattered. Plenty were not welcome, including the Quad amps and electrostatic speakers and almost everything Japanese (Japan was the China of those days). And for some reason I recall a turntable and pre-amp by Pink Triangle - quite good and very intriguing. The future founder of Roksan was one of our members and he was especially interested in this promising replacement for the turntable.
We waited with huge expectations as the CD player was plugged in to the best system the club could muster that day. We had read all the ads in the magazines by then, of course. What was the slogan: "The nearest thing to the original sound"? Something like that. And the really valuable benefits of low noise, no scratches, no dusting (remember those high-tech, anti-static carbon fibre brushes?), perfect timing (turntables could have wow and flutter!), relatively indestructible (Was it on Tomorrow's World TV show where they drilled a 2mm dia. hole in a CD and it still played as if nothing had happened?), used sexy lasers, and...yes...it was much more compact than vinyl. Fantastic!
The first few notes emerged. You may have already guessed what happened.
It was a brand new innovation by clever people who were not audiophiles. Not quite new if you count video laser disks.
I think it was about 15 years later when I bought my first CD player, the Mark Levinson No. 39.
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Yes! In 1983 a friend of my dad's played this (Owner of a Lonely Heart) for us on CD over some large white clothed Bostons, and it was amazing, like a rock concert. WOW!
But before we heard CD in person, my dad and I already had high expectations, as he had a Revox RTR and we had heard PCM digital and also the DBX Expander on that one BeeGee's LP. But it seemed some CD releases were inferior for some reason, so if it wasn't the source tape or the master, then it must be the D/A converter! But Consumer Reports said all the players were perfect and sounded the same, so that settled the issue.
I'm collecting CD's today faster than ever, thanks to trading them in the mail on swapacd.com.
We have some kind of a permanent flea market pawn shop, where people offer their stuff. CD's are between 1€ ond 3€ each. I buy all the good music I do not have in my stash. The funny thing, if I got a new bunch, my 22 years old daughter is the first to check and audition them. Even if we grow old, our music still is pretty young.
For some reason I have a problem with streamed music, it get's more and more uncomfortable, the more I hear. For the money I had to pay for some premium service, I prefer to buy 5 CD's a month.
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To be fair, Jeff, even old CDs make attractive, silent wind chimes. The sunlight glints off them in vivid rainbows.
We embraced it, especially as Philips were pushing for a 12 bit system to get an early release but thankfully Sony held fast. By the early 80s record companies had become complacent, pressing plants were using stampers well past their sell by date and vinyl quality was generally poor. Early CD players were rushed to market but quickly improved and have resulted in some stunning machines. Interesting how the recent vinyl revolution has shown what the CD could have been up against if the record companies has stuck to their business.
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