noted in news - CD 25th Anniv

[LCHIEN]

I noticed a news article the other day, that the 25th anniversary of the CD is here. Yes, 25 years ago the CD was introduced by Phillips and Sony jointly, i think the anniversary has to do with the first commercial release of a recorded CD.

How many of us can remember the days before CDs, I recall buying my first CD player for $425, a Sony. MY daughter is 25...

Anyway, they were lamenting that CDs are on the way out, sales peaked out a few years ago and are on the way down. But its been a pervasive techonolgy.

[bmyers]

Ipod and devices like it are part of the decline of CD use. When re-usable media like SD/Compact Flash/MiniSD got up into the gigbytes, a 670 mb 5 inch coaster didn't seem so appealing.

Once hi-speed internet gets to a similar critical mass on small devices, even DVDs at 4 or 8 gigz won't be that interesting.

25 years go by fast doesn't it?

What was your first music CD?

Mine was Zep 1.

Bill

[gsmittle]

My first CD was Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of He!!, preceding Dark Side of the Moon by about 10 seconds.....

g.

[stormdog74]

I think me first cd player was about $350 - you can roughly double that to get a feel for the cost in today's dollars. My first cd was Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited.

I still buy cds (usually used - and less expensive than downloading), but they just get uploaded onto my computer and put on my ipod - don't remember the last time I actually played a cd.

[Alex Franke]

Ipod and devices like it are part of the decline of CD use. When re-usable media like SD/Compact Flash/MiniSD got up into the gigbytes, a 670 mb 5 inch coaster didn't seem so appealing.

No kidding -- I recently got a 1GB MicroSD card for my phone for $8. (My first "big" memory purchase was 16K for ~$200.) I used to like the look, feel, and sound of vinyls, but now I like the look, feel, and sound of CD's. I suppose it's just a matter of time before I like the look, feel, and sound of thumbnail-sized media that can store my entire collection. =)

[Knottscott]

Sigh....I remember seeing a t-shirt at a CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in the late 80's worn by a highend audio manufacturer that said something to the effect of, "Compact discs improved on the flawless sound that transistors created"....which was fairly well understood "inside" joke to the highenders, who typically sported expensive analog front ends (aka turntables) and vacuum tube amplification...they were getting unbelievably lush sound from their ancient technology that made the best CD players sound like boomboxes.

I fought the good fight but eventually I succumbed to the convenience and techno-glitz of CD's and even sold my turntable after years of non-use. Last spring we bought a cheap plastic SONY turntable with a cheapy cartridge for the basement to play some records we had cleaned out of the crawl space.... I was blown away by the resolution we heard even on old rock recordings played on a very mid-fi receiver and speaker system. One of these days I'll have to hook it up to my main system and mourn the death of high resolution sound.

I will say that if digital is here to stay (seems it is after 25 years!), CD's seem archaic compared to the latest non-mechanical devices that store thousands of songs in a player the size of a cell phone.

Photography is undergoing a very similar tranformation away from higher resolution in favor of convenience and boosted colors.

C'est la vie!

[LCHIEN]

...What was your first music CD?

Mine was Zep 1.

Bill

good question. Breakout, by the Pointer Sisters.

[mschrank]

What was your first music CD?

Mine was Zep 1.

Bill

Dark Side of the Moon-Pink Floyd