30th Anniversary of the Compact disc

[Daddydavek]

I came across an interesting article on compact discs. I have about 500 of them and started buying them in 1983 from BMG. Today most people use iTunes, Amazon or other digital downloads, nevermind just browsing over to youtube....

 

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/gadgetbox/30-years-ago-cd-started-digital-music-revolution-6167906

[Andy78]

Wow, 30 years old!

 

I never really got into CDs much, I was more of a vinyl fan.

 

As a child, I can remember going to my local music store on Saturday morning with my pocket money and rummaging through all of the 33s and 45s for sale **hands up any GA member under 30 who knows what a 33 or a 45 is (clue - they are not calibres of bullets) **

 

I had a huge collection as a child - I had over two hundred 45s, and about a hundred 33s.

 

The cheapest 45 I ever bought was Spitting Image's double A side which I bought in 1986 for 12.5p

[Andrea]

Wow, 30 years old!

 

I never really got into CDs much, I was more of a vinyl fan.

 

As a child, I can remember going to my local music store on Saturday morning with my pocket money and rummaging through all of the 33s and 45s for sale **hands up any GA member under 30 who knows what a 33 or a 45 is (clue - they are not calibres of bullets) **

 

I had a huge collection as a child - I had over two hundred 45s, and about a hundred 33s.

 

The cheapest 45 I ever bought was Spitting Image's double A side which I bought in 1986 for 12.5p

 

28 here and while I only own a few albums on vinyl, I spent my childhood surrounded by my mother's music collection from the 60-80s all on vinyl. In fact, I think I may buy her a new record player for Christmas...

[MikeL]

Wow, 30 years old!

 

I never really got into CDs much, I was more of a vinyl fan.

 

As a child, I can remember going to my local music store on Saturday morning with my pocket money and rummaging through all of the 33s and 45s for sale **hands up any GA member under 30 who knows what a 33 or a 45 is (clue - they are not calibres of bullets) **

 

I had a huge collection as a child - I had over two hundred 45s, and about a hundred 33s.

 

The cheapest 45 I ever bought was Spitting Image's double A side which I bought in 1986 for 12.5p

 

Ah, another trip down memory lane. I grew up with 78rpm records...

 

 

I can remember when they were made from shellac, before vinyl...very fragile.

 

No one has mentioned other record media such as cassette tapes and the venerable, but short-lived, 8-track cassettes.

[Daddydavek]

When CD's came out I was ready to replace my LP's and cassettes most of which had been played to death.

SO CD's were a gift for me. Of course when PC's came along I loaded them all on my hard drive. So now I

have about 3500 songs in my iTunes library....BTW many of the recordings are of classical music.

[MikeL]

Don't know how many tracks I have. It's 22.5 GB of mp3 files...a pretty eclectic mix.

[Andrea]

Don't know how many tracks I have. It's 22.5 GB of mp3 files...a pretty eclectic mix.

 

I have 76.84 GB on my iPod, about half of my music library. 9% of my iPod library is classical. Yes, I ran the numbers.

[Zombie]

No one has mentioned other record media such as cassette tapes

 

It's also a significant anniversary for these - 50 years since they were invented by Dutch company Philips in 1962 and you can still buy 'em.

 

Personally I like owning the physical recording. It's nice to handle something, you get the design cover and the leaflet / booklet often tells you interesting and useful stuff about the artists and recordings and you own it for ever, which you don't with the likes of iTunes - when formats change you'll have to buy it all over again [bruce Willis is threatening legal action against Apple cuz of this] and Spotify isn't a total solution cuz you won't get a broadband connection when you're treking to Everest Base Camp

[The_Round_One]

I've got almost 138GB of music on my iTunes (thanks to the library!!) and lots of musical podcasts. I like a lot of those because invariably they're not promoting acts that already have enough promotion behind them, but rather the "unknowns" or at least the "unknowns" to many people.

 

Sadly, I've got unplayable "stacks of wax" at home, including 33s, 45s, and 78s. It's hard to find a record player anymore! Makes me really regret the boxed sets of classical music I bought in Germany in 1983 for a fortune. Oh well...

[Zombie]

Sadly, I've got unplayable "stacks of wax" at home, including 33s, 45s, and 78s. It's hard to find a record player anymore! Makes me really regret the boxed sets of classical music I bought in Germany in 1983 for a fortune. Oh well...

 

There's loads on eBay e.g.

http://www.ebay.com/...r-/330794579245

Yikes, now you've got my inner geek all excited about retro kit ...

[Bill W]

Why hasn't anyone mentioned how the CD helped to replace the limited floppy discs? I think that had much more impact than the CD over vinyl.

[Daddydavek]

CD-ROM was a big deal and a parallel development. However, digitalizing music on a reliable medium (remember digital tape?) was the engine that made it all profitable and cost effective. We have certainly lived through some interesting times from a tech POV.

[Bill W]

Think about it! Say a guy has been locked up in prison for 30 or 40 years and gets released. How does he possibly function with all the technological changes that have happened since he was first sentenced?

[Daddydavek]

Windows 95 was the first PC operating system that went mainstream for home and office use. When MS was about to release it, the joke going around was that it would take 95 floppy discs to just to load it onto a machine. (Direct downloads on an 8 baud modem was out of the question at the time!) It did come out on CD-rom and floppy disc (fewer than 95 but a sizable number!)

 

So even someone who was put away 20 years ago would be in an alien tech enviroment. Smart phones are another whole new technology. I can remember when my family got it's first black and white television in November 1952. We've come a long way!

[The_Round_One]

Imagine how many disks that actually flop that would amount to!!

 

Despite my iTunes/digital music collection, I do tend to favor older technologies. For example, I dearly want my father's rotary dial phone whenever he decides to give it up. That, and the first and only calculator he's ever had. It does the four arithmetic functions and maybe square roots. It's almost an inch thick, 5-6" long and 3" wide. I love it!

 

I'd love to be able to get more upset about the loss of sound quality with the move to digital (as written about in an NPR article on the same theme), but with my hearing, I really can't. I guess it really is convenience over quality though.

[JamesSavik]

When I was in 5th grade I inherited a lot of stuff from my older brother went away to college.

 

I've got first editions of the Beatles, Doors, Who, Jimi Hendrix and lot's of other stuff. My brother got disillusioned with rock after Jim Morrison's death. He kept the jazz. I got a treasure.

 

Took me a while to appreciate what I had. I started noticing that I had a lot of the best stuff that was on the radio.

 

My first group was Rush. I wore out copies of 2112.

 

Then the Cars...Led Zeppelin... Pink Floyd... ELP... Yes.. the Eagles... Supertramp...

 

 

By the time CDs started showing up, I had quite an investment in vinyl. It took me a while to make the switch.

 

Part of that switch was keeping the vinyl. I bought a Techniques direct drive turntable and a couple of replacement needles when they started getting scarce.

 

I have ~260 vinyl albums and over 600 CDs now.

 

CDs have a good sound but it's only as good as your electronics. A few things you'll want to watch:

 

1. Clean the CD lens regularly. You'll save yourself from annoying skips and lengthen the life of your gear.

 

2. Handle your CDs with care. Scratches will kill them. Wipe them down with a cotton cloth and store them in a sleeve or case.

 

3. ProTip: rip your CDs to MP3s on your PC, store the original.

 

4. Speakers are the weakest link. The material ages and wears out. If your rig sounds bad, look at the speakers first.

[Y_B]

What is a..com...compack...compact? disk?

[Ashi]

What is a..com...compack...compact? disk?

 

Have you heard of an 8 track? Same thing.

[Zombie]

Have you heard of an 8 track? Same thing.

 

You are a bad boy Ashi. Very very bad

[hh5]

Yeah!!! Congrats!!

Now how many of those CD made it to 30 years or died of CD Rot before its time?

 

Samsung brought back the vacuum tube "New Home Theater System with Vacuum Tube & Digital Amp (HT-E6500W)"

 

But still the CD lack the quality of LP records ... you will get the analog sound but also the lack of LP quality

 

The really low low and high highs are not supported by the CD n digital formats

The argument that variable sampling prevents poorly captured music that has a lot of detail vs. the fix sampling rate doesn't.

In soundtrack\symphony music you can hear it. Sometimes the bad thing in selecting a certain digital format is that you may not realize that you lost some instruments playing just because you want the file as small as possible and have sold your CD collection because digital files are convenient,

 

Supposedly there is a DVD and Blu-Ray Music format support but that's not embraced by the industry

Only CD n Digital Formats are supported.

 

Any one wanna bring back?

 

LOL looks like a spy device from the old james bond or mission impossible

Does it still have the self destruct smoke??

Edited October 4, 2012 by hh5

[Slytherin]

30 years - wow.. I remember the first CD I bought - it was Erasure "the innocents"

[Daddydavek]

hh5 wrote:

 

Yeah!!! Congrats!!

Now how many of those CD made it to 30 years or died of CD Rot before its time?

 

I still have all mine except 2 that my son lost. Of course I did not leave them in a car out in the sun and took care of them. They sound great!

[hh5]

I lost one or two due to CD rot ... its disheartening when its a rare CD.

 

question is can blu-ray have that problem?? 25gb vs 0.63gb that's a lot to lose.

 

any one lose a CD due to tray decapitation? lol

 

hh5 wrote:

 

Yeah!!! Congrats!!

Now how many of those CD made it to 30 years or died of CD Rot before its time?

 

I still have all mine except 2 that my son lost. Of course I did not leave them in a car out in the sun and took care of them. They sound great!

 

[Zachary McGinness]

Been that long huh?

[layla]

Wow, 30 years! I still have my first 2 CDs. They were Guns N Roses Use Your Illusion 1 and 2. It was also the first time I ever had to have a parent come with me to buy music because they had the parental advisory sticker on it.