What Was The First Music CD You Acquired?

[the_poochies]

I was 16 years old and I saved my money earned lifeguarding during the summer of 1986 to buy a small Technics CD SL-PJ11 model at Crazy Eddie ("his prices are INsaaaaane!) for $250.

I bought three CDs at Crazy Eddie that day: Pink Floyd's The Wall, Big Country's The Crossing and The Cars' self-titled debut. I still own those three CDs.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

deckeda wrote:
The poster child for shitty sound on a CD was always The Police's Synchronicity, a weaksauce, virtual screechfest compared to the LP.

The music labels, Sony's "Perfect Sound Forever" ad campaign and audio magazines who should have known better all lied to us with nonstop hype, instead of revealing how good LPs could sound with a little effort. But each had agendas to sell instead.

Thankfully, CDs and players have become much better over the years.

This had much to do with the fact that the first wave of CDs released were created using masters originally intended for release on vinyl. Mastering for vinyl requires equalization very different from that required for CD releases; this difference was the primary cause of the brittle-sounding nature of early CDs.

[mikebw]

Bush - Sixteen Stone, it went along with my AIWA shelf-unit CD/tape receiver combo.

[deckeda]

N-OS X-tasy! wrote:
[quote=deckeda]
The poster child for shitty sound on a CD was always The Police's Synchronicity, a weaksauce, virtual screechfest compared to the LP.

The music labels, Sony's "Perfect Sound Forever" ad campaign and audio magazines who should have known better all lied to us with nonstop hype, instead of revealing how good LPs could sound with a little effort. But each had agendas to sell instead.

Thankfully, CDs and players have become much better over the years.

This had much to do with the fact that the first wave of CDs released were created using masters originally intended for release on vinyl. Mastering for vinyl requires equalization very different from that required for CD releases; this difference was the primary cause of the brittle-sounding nature of early CDs.
Maybe. Or it could be that they were using very early and 16-bit/44kHz ADCs because that's all that were available.

But there's "mastering," and there's master tapes. The latter, as far as I'm aware, are suitable for mastering releases in whatever format. Master tapes utilize an EQ suitable for whatever Ampex/Scotch etc. tape and recorder was used, which doesn't have anything to do with with EQ done later for mastering for a particular format.

In other words LPs and CDs can be mastered (EQed, mixed and to some extent sequenced etc.) either "on the fly" or from another analog or digital copy made with those changes at leisure from the masters.

In other words the EQ for mastering comes aft of the master tapes, which simply represent the raw original recordings, pre EQ, pre mixdown.

I have several early CDs that were culled from the original master tapes and still sound yucky. Cheap Trick's Live at Budokan for example. It's even a "different mix" more pure from the LP because the LP has some of the performance corrected for a flub or two left in the CD. They certainly didn't use the LP's mixdown or EQ there.

[Will Collier]

Lew Zealand wrote:
Boston - Don't Look Back
Pink Floyd - The Final Cut

Both were on sale and I didn't get the player (a Sony) for another week. Nov. 1985 IIRC.

That Boston disc is something of a collectors item. It was one of the first CDs to be pressed, but then got pulled after a short run due to the multiple lawsuits between Tom Scholz and Columbia. Didn't reappear until after Third Stage came out in the fall of '86.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

deckeda wrote:
But there's "mastering," and there's master tapes. The latter, as far as I'm aware, are suitable for mastering releases in whatever format. Master tapes utilize an EQ suitable for whatever Ampex/Scotch etc. tape and recorder was used, which doesn't have anything to do with with EQ done later for mastering for a particular format.

In other words LPs and CDs can be mastered (EQed, mixed and to some extent sequenced etc.) either "on the fly" or from another analog or digital copy made with those changes at leisure from the masters.

In other words the EQ for mastering comes aft of the master tapes, which simply represent the raw original recordings, pre EQ, pre mixdown.

I was referring to masters, not master tapes.

A special EQ curve is applied to a vinyl master to circumvent certain limitations associated with physically dragging a needle through a groove to reproduce sound. This is why a phono pre-amp is required for turntables; its purpose is to "undo" the vinyl master's EQ curve to provide the correct sound upon playback. Because CD players do not provide the pre-amp function, early CDs made from masters intended for the production of vinyl records sound wrong because they do not correct for the vinyl EQ curve.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

The first CD I ever *saw* was Michael Jackson's Thriller. This was in 1983 at the record store where I worked after graduating from high school. We had a single copy, which we kept on a shelf behind the counter. None of us had ever seen or heard of CDs before - we had no idea what the freaking thing was.

[bwicklander]

Prince's Batman soundtrack in 1989

[Black]

N-OS X-tasy! wrote:
The first CD I ever *saw* was Michael Jackson's Thriller. This was in 1983 at the record store where I worked after graduating from high school. We had a single copy, which we kept on a shelf behind the counter. None of us had ever seen or heard of CDs before - we had no idea what the freaking thing was.

We both worked in record stores in 1983 . . .?
I do remember Thriller being one of the early ones.

[sunfalcon]

Bryan Adams in 1987 when I graduated from high school. Purchased my first "real" stereo and a CD player with my graduation money. That cd player finally just died in my 8 yr old son's room last year! Still using the speakers and receiver though!