Happy Birthday - Compact Disc Turns 25

[admin]

With so much in doubt about the future of the CD it's easy to overlook that on Friday the Compact Disc format will turn 25. In Germany the world's first CD was pressed, belonged to Polygram – the recording company not-so-coincidentally owned by Philips. The first CD to be manufactured at the plant was "The Visitors" by ABBA. Yeah, baby. CDs were introduced on the market in November 1982 with a healthy catalogue of around 150 titles - most of which feel under the category of classical music.

Discuss "Happy Birthday - Compact Disc Turns 25" here. Read the article.

 

[stratman]

And my love affair will continue with it, with all the DRM crap going around and i-Tunes, forget it I'd rather have something tangible in my hands that I can copy as many time as I want.

 

[obscbyclouds]

And my love affair will continue with it, with all the DRM crap going around and i-Tunes, forget it I'd rather have something tangible in my hands that I can copy as many time as I want.

Amen to that brother! Happy birthday CD! Although that does make me feel old....

 

[Rock&Roll Ninja]

For all the concern of digital piracy its still impossible to find a copy of the Japanese pressing of Dark Side Of The Moon (with the black triangle).

 

[Adam]

For all the concern of digital piracy its still impossible to find a copy of the Japanese pressing of Dark Side Of The Moon (with the black triangle).

Would you want something like this?

 

[edmcanuck]

For the record, "The Visitors" being the first CD ever has, I think, become pretty established as an urban legend. While it was amongst the first, when Sony was releasing the original CD player, they also released a catalog of 50 CDs to the market which all comprised the first CD releases as a group. "52nd Street" by Billy Joel is commonly cited as the first of those to ship and is more generally thought of as the first CD ever available to consumers.

 

[Seth=L]

YEAH, CD 100, ROCK ON!

I still have two mid-80's Magnavox disc spinners with SPDIF output and CDM style transports (non-linear drive).

 

[jeffsg4mac]

I remember my first player. It was a little square sony cube thing. I hated the form factor but loved the player. I had at the time about 150 LP's and I sold them all but a select few within 2 months. I wish I could remember what my first CD was. It Might have been Spyra Gyra.

 

[Seth=L]

I remember my first player. It was a little square sony cube thing. I hated the form factor but loved the player. I had at the time about 150 LP's and I sold them all but a select few within 2 months. I wish I could remember what my first CD was. It Might have been Spyra Gyra.

My first CD was Heart Little Queen, I still have it in faily mint condition. It is one of my finer recordings as well.

 

[Lady Phoenix]

Amen to that brother! Happy birthday CD! Although that does make me feel old....

Me, too! Back in my day...

But seriously, it seems like CDs haven't been around for that long. It's probably just that I didn't jump on the CD bandwagon until they'd been around for a while.

 

[stratman]

I hope they stay around for another 100 years, these things have turned out to be "bulletproof", I have over one hundred from 1983 that are in excellent, mint condtion, no rot and no drm.

 

[hemiram]

I have a bunch from the early days too, almost all of them play, but sadly a few of them (Almost all of them Telarc CDs) have issues on some players now, so I have to copy them on a PC before I can play them in my truck.

My original Magnavox/Phillips player that I bought in '83 is long gone now, but all the ones I've bought since then still work ok. A friend of mine and his brother still have their first players, Sony and Technics vertical front loaders that sound..horrible. I'm glad I didn't listen to their players before I heard CD the first time, or I never would have bought my player when Highland Appliance ( I miss that place) marked them down to less than dealer cost in an attempt to get rid of the tons of them they had at every store. The Magnavox name made them very hard to sell. I think I paid $249, and the list was $899, and the floor price was $499 just before the final price drop. It worked great for seven years or so, then the laser tracking motor got weak, so I retired it, replacing it with a semi hi end Sony "lazy susan" 5 disc changer that was on closeout too.. Still sounds great.

 

[Dolby CP-200]

Yes it was 25 years ago that new revolutionary sound format would change the way we listen to music forever. Hit CD’s like “Chariots of Fire” by (Vangelis).

 

[Buckeye_Nut]

I thought I bought my first CD player late in 83, but according to this link...it wasn't made until '84...LOL Maybe CD player sales are like car sales?

My first player was a Technices SL-P8.
http://www.thevintageknob.org/DAD/SLP8/SLP8.html
Shockingly, I even found a photo of one. (mine was black)

In fact, I was the first person I knew who owned one I still remember the horrid disc selection of the early years, and the average disc price was $16.99-18.99 in 1984 dollars!! I really don't remember what I paid for the player. Just guessing, it was about $400. That was a lot of coin for a HS kid to plunk down!!

 

[Buckeye_Nut]

or I never would have bought my player when Highland Appliance ( I miss that place)

Oh my God....

I bought stuff from Highland Appliance in Toledo back in the 80s. There.... and Sun TV in columbus

 

[Dolby CP-200]

I didn’t buy my first CD player which was a portable until around 1993 my first CD I brought was 1992 Star Trek VI.

 

[MDS]

The first CD I ever bought was '70s Preservation Society Presents: Disco Fever'. What's funny about it is that it has a copyright date of 1979 (no production date) and yet the first CDs weren't available until late 1982.

I actually still have it and it plays flawlessly not to mention that I ripped the tracks from it perfectly too.

 

[Dolby CP-200]

I’m going to play a few compact discs today and the odd Dolby and dts 5.1 versions and make it loud!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6950845.stm

 

[Dolby CP-200]

Just be give "Gladiator" a spin in Dolby Pro-Logic with SW-EQ active for the JBL 4645 and the low end is down at 25Hz The Battle its real frontal assault classic that slams into the room with all the might of the Roman Empire. Yeah 0db is funky.

 

[fmw]

Yesterday I rejoined the BMG Music Service for about the 4th or 5th time. Keep those CD's coming. I'm not going for the downloaded highly compressed MP3's most people buy today. I've ripped about 900 CD's so far to computer so I can listen to MP3's on a computer any time I want. And my 320 MP3's sound a bunch better than what you get on I tunes. Long live the CD.