Compact disc story (1998)

[acomjean]

I remember seeing my friends dad’s first cd player. Huge jazz fan and it did sound great. Especially the quiet parts (No tape hiss or record pops) and easy to use. He bought a couple of cds of rock and man they sounded good.

Every other media at the time required some maintenance to sound good. Records would scratch, those tape pinch rollers would need to be cleaned. Nothing was easy, cds were (skip forward with a button push). Cassettes still were the only way to record, better for portability and sounded pretty good (we did some a:b testing cd vs cassette as kids).

Late 80s, cds were everywhere. I stopped buying records. At my highschool radio station someone got a ton of great records from his neighbor who was replacing with cds.

My friends dad who liked jazz did lament that a lot of the jazz he had in record form would never be re-released as cds. Not digital so a lot of music lost to time and a format change.

[WillAdams]

Early CDs were labeled as to the processes used, a 3 letter code As and Ds, so:

AAD == Analog recording, Analog mastering, Digital media

ADD == Analog recording, Digitally re-mastered, Digital Media

DDD == Digital recording, Digitally re-mastered, Digital Media

This is known as a SPARS Code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_code

Your dad's friends should have imported from Japan --- they were big on Jazz, and a lot of my Jazz CDs have spines labeled in Japanese on one side and English on the other.

[jcynix]

> At my highschool radio station someone got a ton of great records from his neighbor who was replacing with cds.

History repeats itself: right now you can now buy loads of CDs for cheap on eBay.

[javier_e06]

I was one of the bozos believing that the dimensions of the CD had to do with Beethoven 9th symphony. :(

Yes I did went and paired up a CD with a cassette this morning OMG!!! Is true.

I could not afford the $300.00 USD Sony Portable CD but I friend of mine did.

First CD he let me listen to: Genesis "Genesis"

First DDD CD: Peter Gabriel "Security"

That last one probably the most influential music in my upbringing.

Funny though, I have hundred of CDs but I don't have those two.

I guess I have to go back to my friends house to listen to them.

[Projectiboga]

I heard Bob Weir on a Desert Island Discs broadcast with the Dead. He said the song Shock the Monkey was the song that got him willing to start using MIDI and digital tech, which the rest of the group had already embraced. Hearing how one artist I loved pulled another artist into a new direction really clicked for me as a music lover. I can't figure how to search their archive or whether it was an American copy with a slightly different title like desert island albums or songs. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr/episodes/player

[mixmastamyk]

> First DDD CD:

I remember listening to Donald Fagan’s Nightfly. Still sounds fantastic, though to nitpick perhaps a tad harsh. Amazing thought to have recorded that at approximately the same time as the debut of the primitive original IBM PC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nightfly

[VerifiedReports]

Similar story! The first disc (and song) I heard was "Let's Dance," David Bowie.

I have hundreds of discs, but only have Let's Dance on vinyl.

I also have the second pop digital recording ever, The Nightly by Donald Fagen, only on vinyl. I use it to show people how good records can sound.

I'm glad I bought and kept so much music when I did, because now the labels have destroyed everything with dynamic (not data) compression. It's disgusting. Now that everyone has dirt-cheap access to pristine recording & playback technology, music sounds like absolute shit because some suits thought it needed to sound "louder."

It's possibly one of the biggest but least-understood crimes against art in all of history.

[werdnapk]

For a thorough breakdown of everything CDs, here's Technology Connections playlist on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv0jwu7G_DFWBEyCKt4tK...

[encom]

I'm getting blocked by ClownFlare.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180208182825/https://www.resea...

[VerifiedReports]

Got that too. But then when I hit Back, I somehow ended up on the page.

WTH.

[jeffreygoesto]

A Philips engineer visited our chair end of the 90s and told the same about the size "the cassette could be handled with one hand, let's keep that". He also told us they designed their delicate test equipment so that it would fit on a 1st class seat but not 2nd, so when they had to sit next to it during the flight (much too sensitive stuff to check in), management had to book them 1st class flights to Japan. ;)

[iggldiggl]

If you can read German, somebody also wrote a whole dissertation on the subject of the CD's development history:

https://publications.rwth-aachen.de/record/95066

[WillAdams]

One of the cool/obscure things is that the center hole exactly matches a then available coin because it made the development and testing easier.