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[Happosai]

In August 1982, the Compact Disc was introduced to the public. For those of you who like your music at a higher quality -- the CD is still as relevant today as it was in 1982. The technology of encoding compact discs was being tested as far back as 1976 and by 1979, engineers had managed to up to an hour of music on one disc at 44.1 Khz.

I want to hear from you NeoGAF. Look how the CD has benefited us. The majority of NeoGAF members are over the age of 25 and still remember growing up with CDs for music rather than digital (MP3, AIC, FLAC, etc).

Did you prefer music on CD? If yes, do you still buy physical music like CDs today?

This technology which was being pioneered by Philips and Sony also led to push gaming engineers to create consoles and PCs that would support CD technology instead of cartridges, cards, or floppy-disc. We're nearing a new generation of gaming with the XBOX X series and Playstation 5. Low and behold...both still have physical disc options for games. You have to appreciate that you can encode so much quality into a disc and continue making it better for so many years, now.

Last question. Will you stick with discs this next generation for games (PC or console), or will you go all digital and download?

For me, I share my written/recorded music via WAV/FLAC, but I only buy CDs for music. I like have a physical library of music and I feel the CD trumped other audio formats like: mini-disc, cassette, 8-track cartridges, and 33 rpm LPs. I don't feel they hold superiority for music over 45 LPs but they still tend to come out clearer in sound. I have many CDs which have never been remastered and were printed in 1982, 83, and beyond. I'm an audiophile and I've owned nearly every format of music but the only digital rival I've found to CD is FLAC.

 

[OmegaSupreme]

I just found my binder full of them. Its lucky I held onto some of them as they aren't available elsewhere. Anime soundtracks lol

 

[V2Tommy]

What's more amazing is the timeline of LaserDisc! 1978!

 

[bender]

My uncle took a cassette tape and slid it into his pocket as he told me, "you can't do this with a CD".

 

[V2Tommy]

My uncle took a cassette tape and slid it into his pocket as he told me, "you can't do this with a CD".

Wonder what he had to say about the MiniDisc, then.

 

[Nymphae]

Yeah I like CDs still. Not as much of a pain in the ass as cassettes, easier to store and more user friendly than vinyl records, can be easily ripped to digital formats or played on their own, you still get artwork and inserts that, while being smaller than vinyl records, are better than looking at PDFs or small image files on a screen.

 

[bender]

Wonder what he had to say about the MiniDisc, then.

I pulled out my Case Logic.

 

[Cunth]

I remember sitting on the back porch as a teenager, Fear Factory on my discman, brooding and cursing the world for all the wrongs it had done to me

 

[Happosai]

I just found my binder full of them. Its lucky I held onto some of them as they aren't available elsewhere. Anime soundtracks lol

If those are JP import soundtracks, they're worth something. I wouldn't sell those.


What's more amazing is the timeline of LaserDisc! 1978!

LaserDisc was awesome but limited. I used to buy concert LDs and anime. Flip to side B. Higher quality than VHS, though.

 

[Thaedolus]

I think the last audio CD I bought might be St. Anger. I don’t miss them.

 

[OmegaSupreme]

I think the last audio CD I bought might be St. Anger. I don’t miss them.

Mine was probably death magnetic

 

[12Goblins]

Those are good looking compact disc players in that introduction video. Damn

 

[#Phonepunk#]

I never liked CDs. They seemed like cheap plastic replacements for records. My first memory of a CD is my mom buying the Hootie and the Blowfish record and is having to return it because the disc was defective.

The industry got too greedy and raised the cost of music, despite CDs costing far less to produce than vinyl.

When they introduced CDrs the floodgates were open for mass piracy. People had been gouged for decades so you bet we saw nothing wrong with it. The industry did this to themselves with the format switch: while it is practically near impossible to copy a vinyl you can easily copy a CD.

Around 2000 I had several booklets of 300 discs or whatever stolen from my car, my entire collection, including rare Japanese imports, irreplaceable recordings made by friends, etc. That was kind of the last straw for me with CDs.

Meanwhile I’ve been buying used vinyl all my life and still even after 20 years I can find a listenable copy of something I really want for $5 or less. And vinyl lasts for decades. Quite the smart investment.

 

[Happosai]

Those are good looking compact disc players in that introduction video. Damn

Expensive to say the least. My Dad is also an audiophile and no longer buys CDs (he switched to digital in like 2008). I remember him having bought one of their large stereo systems Sony and one of the first anti-skip Disc-mans. I remember it being literally decades before they remastered the Beatles' albums and him telling me that he purchased most of their albums on CD in 1985.

 

[Happosai]

I never liked CDs. They seemed like cheap plastic replacements for records. My first memory of a CD is my mom buying the Hootie and the Blowfish record and is having to return it because the disc was defective.

The industry got too greedy and raised the cost of music, despite CDs costing far less to produce than vinyl.

When they introduced CDrs the floodgates were open for mass piracy. People had been gouged for decades so you bet we saw nothing wrong with it. The industry did this to themselves with the format switch: while it is practically near impossible to copy a vinyl you can easily copy a CD.

Around 2000 I had several booklets of 300 discs or whatever stolen from my car, my entire collection, including rare Japanese imports, irreplaceable recordings made by friends, etc. That was kind of the last straw for me with CDs.

Meanwhile I’ve been buying used vinyl all my life and still even after 20 years I can find a listenable copy of something I really want for $5 or less. And vinyl lasts for decades. Quite the smart investment.

I guess it depends with me. I kept CDs of band I was mildly interested with inside a compartment of my car. The deluxe edition sets, collectors sets, soundtracks, etc; those never leave the house and have always been played on my best CD players. I remember CD trying to replace record (or vinyl as people started calling it moreso again in the 2000's). There was a time when they were less. Now, record (vinyl) is super expensive again. New releases of full albums run from $35-$45 and new CDs run for about $12-$16. Records are now being treated like collectibles and that's why I stopped buying them in the late 2000's. There was a retro trend going on about 10-years ago and people were buying back their records and cassettes (also buying back anything from their childhood just to call it nostalgic). That trend is what I believe caused record prices to inflate above that of CDs.

Why is the price of vinyl albums at a record high?

Music on vinyl has been coming back for years, and production is ramping up at a Burlington plant. So why are the prices getting so crazy?

www.thestar.com

My Dad and I are huge Neil Young fans and we used to buy bootleg cassettes of unreleased material, live shows, acetates, etc. The first form of bootlegs was coming in the form of vinyl. So, although CD-R's did allow for piracy; records were no exception to this either.

Counterfeit Records and Pirate Pressings

 

[Old Retro]

I love me some CDs! I have boxes and boxes of them. I still buy them when I can't find the digital version online. I installed a big ass Sony CD changer in my car in the mid 90s, archaic by today's standards. Being a nerd pack rat, I still have a few of these long cardboard CD packages lying around...

I never want to go all digital if I can help it. I have a few hundred vinyl albums that I'll bust out and listen to every once in a while.

 

[Happosai]

I love me some CDs! I have boxes and boxes of them. I still buy them when I can't find the digital version online. I installed a big ass Sony CD changer in my car in the mid 90s, archaic by today's standards. Being a nerd pack rat, I still have a few of these long cardboard CD packages lying around...

I never want to go all digital if I can help it. I have a few hundred vinyl albums that I'll bust out and listen to every once in a while.

I have quite a few of those, too. I have about 300 albums, singles, and EPs that I keep in a storage cabinet. These are the owns I listen to the most and put them out to grab quickly if I'm going somewhere.

 

[YCoCg]

It set the audio standards that we've pretty muck kept since then! 44.1Khz/16bit is the defacto norm base for music streaming/MP3s/FLACs, etc, the only time an increase in quality came close was when we shifted to 48Khz/16-24bit for DVDs and that's been in continuous use for movies and broadcasting ever since as their base.

 

[The Scrivener]

Cool. Coincidentally I just go an email by Google to say Google Play Music is now cancelled. Forever. I think all purchases, and I may have one or two, are going to YouFuckingTube, or downloadable.

I still got 200 CDs in the garage.

Good CD collection.

A nice bit of Eric Johnson I see there man.

 

[The Scrivener]

I think the last audio CD I bought might be St. Anger. I don’t miss them.

I assume you mean CDs? St. Anger's a beast.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

I grew up with vinyl. Probably didn’t see a CD until the early 90s.

They’re practical, but still have many issues. Laser skipping, fingerprint magnet (I love how the video posted in OP says you can touch the CD‘s surface all you want and it’s fine - no, no it isn’t, you liar), easily scratched, small art, stupidly fragile cases, and disc rot. And another thing about cases, CDs came in so many different case types, it was maddening. Those soft cardboard single cases especially, those were shit. And the plastic ring that holds the CD in place would break so easily.

I’m not saying any of the other physical formats is superior, just that CD isn’t perfect. Sound-wise it allows for much more flexibility than vinyl, even if this led to the loudness wars and a long series of abysmal “remasters”.

 

[McHuj]

Wow.

I didn’t know it was so old. I didn’t get my first cd until 1993.

Skull crushers compilation

Various - Skullcrushers

View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 1993 CD release of "Skullcrushers" on Discogs.

www.discogs.com

 

[Happosai]

Cool. Coincidentally I just go an email by Google to say Google Play Music is now cancelled. Forever. I think all purchases, and I may have one or two, are going to YouFuckingTube, or downloadable.

I still got 200 CDs in the garage.



A nice bit of Eric Johnson I see there man.

Take those CDs out of the garage and convert them, mate. Always fun to look through and see what you have. I'm a huge E.J. fan. He's got a new album out but it released during the start of the pandemic, so it's mostly digital.

 

[Happosai]

I grew up with vinyl. Probably didn’t see a CD until the early 90s.

They’re practical, but still have many issues. Laser skipping, fingerprint magnet (I love how the video posted in OP says you can touch the CD‘s surface all you want and it’s fine - no, no it isn’t, you liar), easily scratched, small art, stupidly fragile cases, and disc rot. And another thing about cases, CDs came in so many different case types, it was maddening. Those soft cardboard single cases especially, those were shit. And the plastic ring that holds the CD in place would break so easily.

I’m not saying any of the other physical formats is superior, just that CD isn’t perfect. Sound-wise it allows for much more flexibility than vinyl, even if this led to the loudness wars and a long series of abysmal “remasters”.

They're far from perfect. That's why it's not the only audio format I go to. Jewel cases were a mistake and the mini-vinyl paper cases scratch the discs up. Records did get moody and warp over time. Cassettes deteriorated even faster. But discs have that issue with cosmetic damage attraction. Scratching the protective layer, no issue. Scratching the data layer, dead disc.

 

[p_xavier]

Cool. Coincidentally I just go an email by Google to say Google Play Music is now cancelled. Forever. I think all purchases, and I may have one or two, are going to YouFuckingTube, or downloadable.

I still got 200 CDs in the garage.



A nice bit of Eric Johnson I see there man.

I bought Apple gear again when I was forced to move my music. YT Music banned me from YT entirely because I had suggestive covers in my music collection. Took 4 days to resolve. Fuck that horrible service and fuck Google. I was more than happy with Google Play Music.

 

[Rentahamster]

Based Sony blessed us with its technomancy.

 

[Thaedolus]

I assume you mean CDs? St. Anger's a beast.

I was talking CDs. Though they served their purpose at the time and I constantly had my headphones in with my discman on road trips and shit growing up.

St. Anger is bottom tier Metallica but even that’s still alright. If you can find a version online where they replace the trash can drums Lars was playing it‘s way more listenable

 

[iconmaster]

Still a technology of beauty.

 

[T8SC]

I still buy CD's and have a Marantz CD player as part of my home theatre setup. Fuck digital.

 

[YCoCg]

Fuck digital.

...huh

 

[Birdo]

I remember my folks going to Dixons and buying a gigantic JVC Hi-Fi.

Not my photo, but this was the same model (dr-e53l):

The remote made the volume knob turn. It blew my young mind.

 

[Happosai]

I remember my folks going to Dixons and buying a gigantic JVC Hi-Fi.

Not my photo, but this was the same model (dr-e53l):

The remote made the volume knob turn. It blew my young mind.

My first real stereo system was one of the all-in-one types. Except, mine was Magnavox. It was a nice system and never really broke. I replaced it for a more compact Sony then a Philips three piece system. I have another behemoth Sony system here in Mexico and a lesser extent Panasonic. They stopped adding the phono attachment in the late-90's and replaced them with 5 + disc carousels.

 

[iconmaster]

Music generated by FRICKIN' LASERS

 

[The Scrivener]

St. Anger is bottom tier Metallica but even that’s still alright.

Yeah... I know... No need to rub it in...

 

[eot]

The amount of feedback control that goes into keeping the seeker head over the track is pretty impressive. Even on a regular ass old CD, the lateral tolerance is a few tens of nanometers before the information can no longer be read. A 4x drive spins at about 1000 RPM when the seeker is at the outer edges of the disk, and the track width is a micron and a half. That means the seeker is moving across approximately half a meter of CD track in a second. Imagine that the track is a meter wide instead of a micrometer, and that you're a car driving on that road. That would be the equivalent of going 170,000 km/h trying to stay on the 1 m road. Now, this road is not a straight one, it's turning like crazy (because the CD isn't perfectly centered, and you get other vibrations that couple etc.)

Of course it's easier to move a small seeker head than a car, but it's still an impressive application of control theory.

 

[Happosai]

The amount of feedback control that goes into keeping the seeker head over the track is pretty impressive. Even on a regular ass old CD, the lateral tolerance is a few tens of nanometers before the information can no longer be read. A 4x drive spins at about 1000 RPM when the seeker is at the outer edges of the disk, and the track width is a micron and a half. That means the seeker is moving across approximately half a meter of CD track in a second. Imagine that the track is a meter wide instead of a micrometer, and that you're a car driving on that road. That would be the equivalent of going 170,000 km/h trying to stay on the 1 m road. Now, this road is not a straight one, it's turning like crazy (because the CD isn't perfectly centered, and you get other vibrations that couple etc.)

Of course it's easier to move a small seeker head than a car, but it's still an impressive application of control theory.

That kind of tech is part of why I see CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, and other disc-ROMs still in production today. It's not a dead format and still has room for expansion.

 

[triplestation]

that was some good times

when i was like 13 i found some good ass porn by accident on a cd one time

 

[davepoobond]

My uncle took a cassette tape and slid it into his pocket as he told me, "you can't do this with a CD".

Would have told him “get bigger pockets you hipster”

 

[Grinchy]

My first CD was Aerosmith Big Ones.

Whether I liked it or not, it was going to get 10s of hours of play because I didn't get another CD for a while lol

 

[Deleted member 740922]

Did you prefer music on CD? If yes, do you still buy physical music like CDs today?

Yes and Yes. I always hated surface noise from records. I hate the way it's just hand waved away as some magical "warmth". I don't want the sound of a crackling fire playing along with the music. Plus the sibilance at the end of each side of an LP record is another deal breaker (again, there'll be an excuse for this - "your equipment is at fault", bad pressing, etc.)

And I bought Paul McCartney's double CD remaster of Flaming Pie for my collection just this week. I've been buying CDs since 1988 and never once had this so called "disc rot" that gets mentioned occasionally online.

I have zero interest in streaming music.

Last question. Will you stick with discs this next generation for games (PC or console), or will you go all digital and download?

Discs of course. Cold, dead hands etc.

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

Remember when home taping killed music?

 

[sinnergy]

A couple of years ago I gave my whole CD collection away and never looked back , streaming4life.

I was found of my Philips 900 series as 14 year old, and my Sanyo as a kid.

 

[nkarafo]

Never had a CD player. Not even a CD based console (got the N64 back in the day). I went straight from cassette tapes to MP3 players and DVD devices. Though, my first (for a brief time) MP3 player was CD based, i still never got a redbook audio CD for it. Just a couple of CDs filled with 128kb MP3s.

 

[TGO]

Any good album I buy on CD, usually from Amazon and get the free MP3 download with it.
Unless you are using a lossless format the difference in quality through a real sound system is staggering.

 

[SirTerry-T]

Still buy albums on them when I can, if nothing else, it's worth it just to support the dying art of The Album Cover.

 

[JordanN]

that was some good times

when i was like 13 i found some good ass porn by accident on a cd one time

Did you know if you took certain games on the PS1/Dreamcast and put them in your PC at the time, you could access bonus files?

For example, there where was an EA game that had the first South Park episode on it? In other cases, they came with wallpapers.

 

[raduque]

If you like deep dives into old audio video technology, y'all should look up Techmoan on YouTube. He does excellent videos on cds, cassettes, video cd, laser disc, jukebox systems, ancient video calling systems, all kinds of stuff.

 

[Happosai]

Yes and Yes. I always hated surface noise from records. I hate the way it's just hand waved away as some magical "warmth". I don't want the sound of a crackling fire playing along with the music. Plus the sibilance at the end of each side of an LP record is another deal breaker (again, there'll be an excuse for this - "your equipment is at fault", bad pressing, etc.)

And I bought Paul McCartney's double CD remaster of Flaming Pie for my collection just this week. I've been buying CDs since 1988 and never once had this so called "disc rot" that gets mentioned occasionally online.

I have zero interest in streaming music.



Discs of course. Cold, dead hands etc.

Great to hear. The crackle on records was fine if you're listening to something pre-60's on a 33RPM. 45 LPs it gets in the way. Likewise, I've never seen or had disc rot. I tried streaming and I got tired of having to borrow peoples compressed music online. Same with physical games.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

First CD player I had was I think in 1991. It looked something like this.

I think the first CD I bought was New Order.

 

[Happosai]

Any good album I buy on CD, usually from Amazon and get the free MP3 download with it.
Unless you are using a lossless format the difference in quality through a real sound system is staggering.

The compression on even the best MP3's gives them a sound only slightly above a stereo cassette. Play a CD through a good system (Boss headphones or a good stereo system), then do the same with an MP3, then a cassette. I too bought and made many MP3s in the 2000's and I didn't go back to CD for nostalgia. However, with digital...I do use WAV or FLAC. FLAC is the top. Right side is WAV pulled from a CD -- left is the compression of any given MP3.