Happy (?) 30th birthday to the compact disc

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The discussion centers around the 30th anniversary of the first commercial CD release, Billy Joel's "52nd Street," highlighting the evolution of music formats over the decades. Participants reflect on their personal experiences with CDs, including the transition from vinyl, 8-tracks, and cassettes to CDs, and the ongoing shift towards digital formats. Many express nostalgia for CDs, noting their significance as an iconic technology, while acknowledging the trend towards digital music and streaming services. There is speculation about the future of CDs, with some believing they may become obsolete in the next decade, similar to other formats like DVDs. The conversation also touches on the practicality of physical media versus digital storage, with some participants still purchasing CDs for lossless audio quality. Overall, the thread captures a sense of nostalgia for past formats while recognizing the inevitability of technological change in the music industry.
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The first commercial CD release was 30 years ago yesterday, in Japan: Billy Joel's "52nd Street."

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/28/tech/innovation/compact-disc-turns-30/index.html?hpt=hp_bn5

I waited two and a half years before buying my first CD player, for prices to come down a bit and a decent amount of my favorite listening material (classical music) to come out on CD. In spring 1985 I bought a Technics CD player for about $300. I think it was the first one to hit that price level. I was living in upstate New York at the time, and made a special trip to New York City to buy that player at J&R Music World, across the street from City Hall.

I think my first two CDs were Glenn Gould's then-new recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations on Sony (or was it still CBS then?), and a Sibelius symphony conducted by Neeme Järvi on the Swedish label BIS.
 
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Happy Birthday lil buddy! The CD is iconic technology for my generation. I will be sad in 10-15 years when it's obsolete.
 
I have struggled through so many format changes. LPs, the 8-tracks (yes, I did buy some, because 8-track players were available for cars), then cassettes, then CDs... It has been a long road, and I have paid the record companies for multiple formats more times than I care to remember.
 
Greg Bernhardt said:
I will be sad in 10-15 [STRIKE]years [/STRIKE] weeks when it's obsolete.

Fixed :)
 
Pengwuino said:
Fixed :)

LOL, that's about the size of it. You never know though, they might hang in there forever surviving on the margins like the floppy drive.
 
wuliheron said:
LOL, that's about the size of it. You never know though, they might hang in there forever surviving on the margins like the floppy drive.

They still sell them in stores, so it's not obsolete :D
 
turbo said:
I have struggled through so many format changes. LPs, the 8-tracks (yes, I did buy some, because 8-track players were available for cars), then cassettes, then CDs... It has been a long road, and I have paid the record companies for multiple formats more times than I care to remember.

Turbo, what media format did you use back in the Neolithic era?
 
I've listened only a few CDs "directly" during the last two years, because I now do all my normal listening using lossless files streamed from my Mac to an Apple TV which is hooked up to the audio/video system in the living room. But I still buy CDs when I can't download the albums in lossless format. Just a couple of days ago I sent off an order for some CDs, in fact.

Whenever I want to listen to something from my CD collection, I rip it and load it into iTunes first, and store the ripped CDs in shoeboxes in the closet (for now). Eventually I'll be able to reduce the CD racks that are scattered around the house.

I suspect vinyl LPs will last longer than CDs because some people like their sound better, whereas lossless files should sound just like the corresponding CDs if the digital data is converted to analog and played back on the same hardware, e.g. by feeding it into the digital inputs of an A/V receiver.
 
Drakkith said:
Turbo, what media format did you use back in the Neolithic era?
stone tablets
 
  • #10
turbo said:
stone tablets

Excellent. Rock on.
 
  • #11
turbo said:
stone tablets

Something like this, maybe?

 
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  • #12
jtbell said:
Something like this, maybe?

:-p
 
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  • #13
700mb for data storage isn't enough in the age of 500gb hdds. Back when my HDD was 850mb, a CD-R did just fine. I got a 50pack spindle for $4.99 3 years ago, and burned only 10 thus far.
DVDs are obsolete as well as you can't even play them in CD players. I am moving to BDs, and as main back-up use a 500gb portable, and am getting a 3TB for $129.
In fact, a 25 spindle of BDs is $28.75; but are 5.3 higher capacity than DVDs.

As for music, yes, it's all going digital. in 5 years no cars will be sold with CD players.
 
  • #14
I remember there was a brief period of time before the iPod came out when 200+ CD changers were very popular (but expensive). My friend had one. I was jealous. Then like a week later I discovered Napster (back before anybody really cared about Napster).

In those days I had a 4GB harddrive. Today I could fit that entire hard drive into RAM, twice.

Things go obsolete really fast these days. I think the very notion of portable storage media is on its way out, given the pervasiveness of fast internet.
 
  • #15
Gomar said:
As for music, yes, it's all going digital. in 5 years no cars will be sold with CD players.

Not to sure about that; a 2010 Lexus was last to equip a Cassette Deck.
 

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