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Vintage Audio- CD players I

JamesSavik

Entry posted by JamesSavik

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CD players arrived on the scene in the 1980s and quickly supplanted vinyl as the dominate audio-media. Unlike cassettes and LPs, CDs are a purely digital media. They reproduce sound with complete fidelity.

 

Compact Disks (CD) are optical disks which are read by IR laser. Data stored on audio CDs follow formats defined by the Rainbow books. Prior to 1988, the audio standard was defined by the Red Book. It was superseded by the Red Book in 1988 and by the Orange Book in 1990. There have been other standards but they deal with other CD technologies more applicable to data applications.

 

The first generation of CD players were very much like cassette players. They played one CD at a time. They connect to the amplifier by a pair of RCA cables.

 

pioneer-cd_zpsd0174441.jpg

 

This old Pioneer unit is ~ 20 years old and still working. Its operation is very, very simple: put in the CD, play, pause, track forward or back.

 

pioneer-cd-2_zps8de91ec2.jpg

 

Note the simplicity of the back. There is a power cable and a hookup for a pair of RCA cables. That's it.

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6 Comments

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methodwriter85

methodwriter85 5,313

Posted

It's funny when you think about how records are actually doing pretty good business as opposed to CD's, at least in terms of indie stores.

Zombie

Zombie 13,383

Posted

It's funny when you think about how records are actually doing pretty good business as opposed to CD's, at least in terms of indie stores.

 

Vinyl will still be around when CDs are consigned to history -

 

Analogue  - 1

Digital       - 0

 

*that's an in-joke btw :lol:*

 

First time I believe an old technology will have seen off its "replacement" :P

Daddydavek

Daddydavek 42,290

Posted

MP3's and 4's are digital too and last I heard 

i-Tunes and Amazon and others were doing just fine.....

Zombie

Zombie 13,383

Posted

True, but when CDs came out in 1982 they were an alternative physical medium specifically intended to see off vinyl - and thirty odd years later it seems likely vinyl will win out in the end.

 

As for MP3 and the like, such formats are much more recent and as a non-physical medium - although also digital - the vinyl / CD comparison doesn't apply :)

mickey1952

mickey1952 216

Posted

Vinyl is still my favorite. Beyond that, anything that came along later was better than 8 tracks! Crap!! I can't believe I just admitted to remembering that far back.

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