I was a young adult in the 90s. Had hundreds of CDs (original copies and mp3 mixes). Not a single one survived the decade + of partying. Scattered everywhere, all of them either got scratched or skipped for no clear reason. It's funny thinking of all those racks of CDs I had when I have zero now. My LPs from that time are still in my collection, sure some of them have a good covering of beer and weed residue but they still work and are still with me.

I have over 4000 C d's and still accumulating them along with about 5CD players. Is still my preferred way to listen to music.

Loved vinyl (and still do), but CDs really changed everyone's expectations of how good (and quiet) a well recorded album could sound. I bought my first CD before buying a player. I remember holding that thing and just admiring the engineering behind it. Only thing that bummed me out was the loss of real estate for the album covers which had grown with vinyl into being an art form.

The Sony Discman was my introduction to the CD world. CDs are still the lifeblood of the independent bands, sold from the stage and autographed on demand.

CD is back !!! that is fine. For classical music lovers, CD is an immense source of great recordings. Hopefully Japan and Germany resisted to the MP3 apocalypse. They keep the love for CD releases and high-end CD players. I am convinced that people will rediscover how good this format is since with have state of the art DAC everywhere. The most complicated thing in the furture will be to find good and affordable CD transports.

I've enjoyed recorded and live music all of my life. When I was 12 years old I heard stereophonic sound for the first time and loved it. That's when I became an audiophile. I stopped counting at around 3000 vinyls. As an engineer I was an analog man in what would become a digital world. On off , 1, 0 blah, that's it. But in time I had to adapt my thinking. So far since that time only two technological developments impressed me, the switch from tubes to transistors and the Redbook CD. The first CD players were very expensive and string instruments sounded like they were made out of steel, what audiophiles call harsh and glaring. That was solved by oversampling which pushed the brick wall anti-aliasing filter far beyond the audible range where at 20 hz it causes phase and frequency response problems in the top audible octave. Since 1989 when I bought my first CD player I've acquired over 3000 CDs. Can I enjoy both? Yes. Which is the superior technology for its purpose; the storage and retrieval of electrical signals that are supposed to be analogs of musical sounds (they aren't) in another form with the least distortion and noise in the audible passband. Regardless of which you like better, the simple fact is RBCD wins by a country mile. I'm not familiar with how most other digital streaming systems work (I looked at MQA and IMO it can't work as claimed because it violates Shannon Nyquist by 400%) but I read the Red Book standards and as an engineer I am awed by how well this method was thought out and developed. It has so many belt and suspender error detection and correction systems built into it the mind boggles. So enjoy either or both but know that vinyl is a late 19th century idea perfected as best it can while RBCD is a late 20th century idea that I simply cannot find fault with. The technology leaves vinyl far behind in the dust. Because of the many differences in the way the two technologies are used you might find vinyl recordings more pleasing and that's okay.

The intro to CDs in my life was what made me love records. I was a bassoonist and accustomed to hearing real music in real places. The records played on the crappy system I grew up with sounded awful so I had no interest in having a stereo system. When "Perfect Sound Forever" appeared, I swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. I bought the Magnavox player shown but not identified in the video and a Four Seasons disc by Telarc because all the audio press said it was great and I was very familiar with the piece. Then I took that disc and began hitting all the audio stores in town to find an amp and speakers. That was a less-than-fruitful undertaking. The sound was always lousy because the set-ups in those stores were always lousy. I went to the Pacific Stereo and the manager did a demo for me. I commented on the ugly, flabby bass and he started turning all the other speakers in the room around, pushing them into the carpeted walls. With each removal of another passive radiator in the room, the sound got cleaner and cleaner. Little changes, I now knew, meant a lot. Finally, I wound up at Audio Prophiles in Houston. This was a semi-snooty high end store where the owner parked his Ferrari out front as a sort of warning to folks like me to stay out of the store unless you had money. I parked around the corner on a Tuesday morning when they had no customers, went in, and a very nice woman offered to help me. I described my journey thus far and she looked at me sorta funny. Clearly, she was thinking and scheming, in the nicest of ways, mind you, about how to educate me. She said "Come with me" and we went into a demo room. There she took my disc and put in in the Phase Linear CD player. The electronics were all Krell and they were connected to the speakers by some sort of cable that looked like a garden hose. The speakers were the original Apogees. She hit play. Six notes in, I clamped my hands over my ears and screamed at her to turn it off! I couldn't believe the torture! The sound was harsh as I could imagine. It was like my ears were being stabbed with broken glass rods. It was nails on a chalkboard raised to the 100th power. It was literally painful to hear. She turned off the CD and put a copy of Dire Straits Brothers in Arms on the Goldmund Reference turntable. As I listened to "Money for Nothing", I relaxed. This was so much more natural. The irony that the electric guitars on that record seemed more natural than the violins of my disc was completely lost on me at the time. It wasn't lost on her. She took me to the front counter, sold me a copy of The Absolute Sound, and bid me have a good day. She had just created an audiophile. Now I have ~25,000 records in my listening room, a peculiar affinity for stuff recorded by Everest, and a lifetime spent listening to good music. Thank you, CDs, for teaching me that analog rules. And yes, digital has gotten much better. It's become listenable and more. If I were starting over, I'd be all in for digital formats. But that's not my story. My records and reel to reel tapes will always own my heart.

I still own the majority of my CDs from the 80s, 90s, and 2000s and I continue to listen to them to this day! 🎧😊 💿 🎶

Tower Records really shaped the way I thought about music. It allowed me to explore music both visually, by perusing the isles/genres, and audibly, by checking titles out on those listening stations. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

It's interesting that you brought up CDs. Some months ago I was browsing on eBay. I came across a Parasound Halo CD1 CD player. I'd wanted one of these for years but couldn't afford it. This one was in excellent condition and selling for far, far less than the original price. I bid on it and won. The sound was so good that I actually found myself doing that reviewer cliche about "relistening to my entire collection". This was one of the best audio purchases I've ever made.

For classical music, there is no substitute in terms of price. Plus, great audio engineers like Andreas K. Meyer, have been remastering classical recordings from the 60s (like Bernstein's Mahler cycle) to improve sound. I can purchase the entire musical catalog of any conductor/soloist/orchestra for $2-4 per new CD. Additionally, although used LPs are an option, many of these classic recordings from 50s-60s that had been out of print are now available. Partially because the classical music industry flooded the market with CDs in the 90s, their catalogs are comprehensive. Now is the golden age of the classical CD box set and everything Bernstein, Abbado, Solti, Markevitch, Masur, Previn, Wand, Reiner, Munch, Muti, and many others are now available at $2 per disc.

Hi all.....I STILL have my first CD player. It was one of only two models that Radio Shack sold, NEITHER had remote control! (CD-2000). Date of manufacture on placard rear panel? August 1985. The day I bought that player, I took home a Realistic orchestral music sampler CD, THEN I went over to our local Lechmere store and picked a Telarc sampler, #3 I believe. My Telarc library alone is up around 150 recordings from their roster! Even though I have Qobuz and Spotify premium, I still pick up a CD/SACD and new vinyl now and then.

Bought my first cd player in 1984, the Philips cd 104. My first cd was Roxy Music's Avalon. All this at the ripe ol age of 20! I remember being so excited about this new format and 'graduating' from a dual turntable.

In my opinion compact disc was and still is the greatest media I have never gone back to vinyl thanks for a fabulous review!

I remember the local radio station ( for rock) made the announcement that “ this Friday we are changing over to CD “. It was an event:) We sat around marveling at what we “thought” was perfect sound. My roommate had just got a Thorens record player and it was moth balled. Now I have the Thorens:)

You asked for my comment, here it is: When the CD came out, it was a seminal moment in my life. There was truly a God. I couldn't get one fast enough and never looked back - no more, snap, crackles, and pops; no flipping the record over; easy to get to a particular segment of the music, and no fuss no muss, no cleaning, etc., etc.. Then came SACD/DSD and heaven opened-up it's gates again. Today, I have mostly McIntosh equipment and still love the CD. I search high and low for SACD/DSDs. SACD/DSD is the absolute best we have, if recorded in SACD/DSD. It is true analogue. Thank god for Paul McGowen and Octave Records. If the world should come around to true analogue, as it is deceptively does now for vinyl, heaven will open it's pearly gates for a 3rd time and I will die in heavenly peace.

Great video, Steve. I was 21 when CDs came out.........Tower Records were cool record stores in NYC, but the Mother of all record stores for me was J&R Music World downtown on Park Row. I was a happy owner of the Sony CDP-101 CD player, which was built like a tank, lasting about 12 years from 1983. I welcomed CDs with open arms back then, even was a charter subscriber to Digital Audio Magazine until it went out of business. Still loved vinyl as well, with my trusty Dual 622 (w/Ortofon cart) turntable from 1981(replaced an old BSR w/Pickering cart). That Dual is still with me today, although I have sold off my vinyl collection, with the Dual soon to follow suit. I have over 2000 CDs, and continue to purchase more when I can. CDs just hold up better than vinyl for me. I remember when there were articles about CDs deteriorating after a number of years due to oxidation.............I've had them since 1983, and not one has done that. Been replacing some of my vinyl albums with CD copies lately, and I'm amazed at how good some of the recent remastering of Cream, Doors, Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, etc..have turned out.

Just very happy analog and vinyl made a comeback. I sold my vintage turntable and albums that had been in storage to some youngsters for a very nice sum. :) Clearly the mastering on some records is better than some digital versions, but when well done there's no comparison to how good digital can be. And accessing a track on demand on my network server from my large ripped collection, or from one of the streaming services, is a dream compared to finding and queueing up a track on an album. Don't begrudge anyone their antiques hobby, but this music lover couldn't be happier with the newer tech.

A friend of mine pulled into my (dad's) driveway in '85. A big year for us, high school graduation was the "thing" in '85. He was blasting Dire Straits' -Money For Nothing- and his '65 El Camino with the ubiquitous Pioneer Super Tuner in-dash CD player never sounded so good! We were a lower middle class bordering on poverty level area in the suburbs of St Louis. But we loved our music. I immediately recognised something new about his system. I knew it like the back of my hand, we drove to high school 15 miles with 10 stoplights together for the last three years. We both knew each other's car and home and boom box situation. Turns out the only upgrade was that he purchased a CD. I was intrigued to say the least. Soon after I was on the lookout for the Columbia House "20 CDs for a Dime" deal. And the rest is history.

In Norway in 1986 I got my first Technics CD-Player. I think I was the first in high school that got one. I started to sell parts of my Vinyl collection to friends at school. I remember people said "Vinyl will never go away in our life time" I joked about that in the 90s but sure, vinyl survived everything. 6-7 years ago I bought back a record player. REGA Planar 3 and I have upgraded with different Riia and Pickups. I do not use it that much but it is nice to have for what remains of my old vinyl collection and I sometimes buy vinyl. I still think I was right to replace most of my Vinyl with CDs. I also think that CD is perfect sound forever if done right. Some recordings I have on vinyl sound better than on CD but mostly it is the other way around. Cool to have both formats.

Thank-you Steve. A fun watch and nostalgic trip down memory lane.

I love CDs. I still collect. Just this week I bought 16 at $1 each from a local op shop (thrift store) in Wollongong, Australia. They were mostly Blue Note and a few ECM and in perfect condition. And I rip them into FLAC files for portability. I am not a format snob and I have reasonable equipment but digital is clean and easy. I also stream but just love my CDs of which I have thousands. I am the music lover not the audiophile. Love the reviews Steve.

Part of the reason Tower went out of business, besides the ubiquity of downloading, was that the owner refused to lower the prices of CDs in order to compete with other stores. Many CDs at Tower were priced at $17.99 or $18.99, when you could get the same disc at other record stores for around $13.99. I remember the owner stating in an interview that people are willing to pay more for the disc for "the Tower experience." That didn't work out so well for him.

Gen-Xer here. I grew up with vinyl on the old console systems. My sister got a boom box with a cassette player for Christmas and that changed everything. I eventually got a cheap single CD player when I could afford one, 1987-88. Then graduated to a Pioneer 6 disc changer with the cartridge magazine. Still rock a Yamaha 5 disc DVD, SACD deck and listen to vinyl today.

Still have my vinyl and cds, and have no intention of getting rid of either. I still prefer vinyl for many reasons even beyond the sound, but I love both mediums. Thanks for another good one, Steve!

I remember the "CD longbox" packaging controversy. Also the scramble to get recordings fully digital, "DDD".

I lived out in the country the prices were completely different. In 1989 CDs $29.99, Vinyl $19.99, Tapes $9.99 CD prices did not start to go down until 1992. I am 49 as teenagers we only had part time jobs at $3.15 a hour so we did not have a lot of money but we wanted to listen to music in the house and the car so we bought tapes. Only the rich kids has CDs because a car CD player was $1000.00

I first experienced CD sound at the Consumer Electronics Show in Washington, D.C. in February 1983. The first track I heard was the theme from Chariots of Fire. I bought that demo mix CD when I bought my first player later that year. It was a Hitachi demonstrator, and I was happy to pay the $699 plus tax. In 1985 I purchased a Sony CDP-302 which seemed so much more refined than the Hitachi. I wholly embraced the CD format. Today I still have all of the CDs I purchased over the decades, but I ripped them all and now I listen to them in other ways. I grew up with vinyl and never abandoned that format. I have always been enamored of those pieces of machinery that extract sound from record grooves. Today I have two high-quality turntables and a slowly growing collection of vinyl, mostly jazz recordings.

I was a part of that "welcome" transition to CD's. Living in Ottawa ON in those years, the cost of my first CD (Tango In The Night - Fleetwood Mac), was $30, compared to $7.99 for the vinyl version. It sounded stellar on my new Philips CD player. Unfortunately, that player model had a short life as it was prone to skipping. The dealer replaced it once and then could not get any more. Every subsequent CD player was not the same. I could not listen to more than 1 CD at a time from then on. I felt irritated and looking for something else to do. I could not nail it down, but that effect did not happen with vinyl. A player has a LOT to do with the sound! Today's Marantz CD-6006 has heightened my enjoyment of CD's. Even more enjoyable is my Marantz SA-KI Ruby SACD Player in my Music Room. In summary, the CD experience, save for the "clean" sound, were never the same good experience that vinyl was...holding the 12" gatefold artwork while playing the record...the whole ritual before lowering the tonearm...

Thanks for this wonderful remembrance of this format "upheaval". I can remember thinking that I wasn't going to buy into CDs until the entire Beatles and XTC catalogs were available. The very first CDs I bought on the way home from buying my first CD player (Sony) were used copies of U2 War and Led Zeppelin III. CDs were sooo damned expensive then. Now, LPs are sooo damned expensive. I still have my Sgt. Pepper long box.

HAPPY 40th ANNIVERSARY COMPACT DISC!!!🎆🎆🎆🎇🎇🎇🎇🎇🎇🎇🎇

I also was an audio salesman during the same period. As a listener of CD’s I thought that they had many advantages but the high end cut off really affected the sound stage. About the time this problem got better the dreaded MP3 format came along and most people just accepted that crappy sound was OK. WE did not. I think that split caused many Audiophiles to gravitate back to vinyl. Lossless files have really given us a nice convenience of both. Still romantic about playing a record. Don’t even mind some pops and clicks. I think most listeners now have realized how bad music sounds on MP3😂😂Love the channel. From one old HiFi salesman to another, keep up the good work.

I worked for a Sony production vendor back in ‘80 ‘81 and after, and it was very interesting what the facilities and technicians went through to produce new CD’s…for example: doing the silk screening on the discs! And overcoming skepticism within the industry, wether the format would even fly or not! Among “audiophiles” vinyl never really died, but it did slow down. As you well know, some CDs sounded great, and got better, and some, even today sound crappy. The players improved as well. I myself, understanding very well how great vinyl can sound, still dumped all 3000 of my records and switched to digital. And never went back. CDs WILL make a comeback.

In the mid 1980’s as CD’s were emerging as THE next big thing in Audio since the transistor, I was on the music faculty of a small University Music Department and CD’s allowed our Department Music Library to greatly increase our holdings because CDs took up far less physical space allowing for an increase in physical holdings. I taught a Jazz History Course and getting the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz on CD made it so easy (and lighter) for me to bring recordings to class. It was a big step in music education. I did miss the albums with the important detailed liner notes and larger artwork (Miles’ “Bitches Brew” always elicited interesting responses from the class). The convenience of the CD Format was important in music education for its many benefits and as the first of the digital formats it also revolutionized the music Radio Stations as well. Yes it may have been one of the biggest things in music audio since the transistor. Back to the present time, I must say that I still absolutely love vinyl. While not the “perfect” medium it has many important characteristics that I, along with with a great many others, still find very attractive. Brings me back to my college days in the 1970s reminiscing of Record Club of America. 😉😂

I remember my dad bringing home a marantz CD player in the early 80s. It had been giving to him by Sting of all people. My dad had been the head of A&M records in Ireland. Along with the player be brought home a Jeffery Osborn CD. After telling my and my 3 brothers they were “indestructible”, we proceeded to fling this piece of the future it around the living room. It skipped from the get go, as the neighbours filed in for a listen of the future. Those were the days.

I remember myself back in 90s where i was a tape collector of rock and metal music, i had to fast forward in order to find my favorite song.. and all by the sudden i could play track 5 in a cd without turning side, without waiting to run forward the tape.. that was a great upgrade The lack of noise of the motor, and chewing gave me enough memories, sweet ones Pure RAW clean sound from the same speakers same amp, and i could listen forever without any physical damage to the source.. ahhh I also remember collecting these to mp3s and creating a huge sound library. Nowadays streaming music is my paradise.

My father's cousin, David Wedgbury worked for Decca records in the early '60s as house photographer when such artists as The Who and The Moody Blues were recording. Prior to CDs coming out I was at his home and he showed me an early Philips CD player working. By that time he was a cover designer for Decca classical records which had become a Philips subsidiary. I assume that the machine he had was supplied to him by Philips as he was by that time working on CD insert design. Some of David's photos of Decca artists can be seen in a book entitled "As Years Go By". ps I was wowed by the technology even though I worked in a fairly high-tech environment at the time.

I own a good CD transport (Audiolab) that feeds the DAC of my NuPrime IDA 16 amp. I also have a tweaked Rega P3 turntable. Many years ago, when I had one of the first Yamaha CD players and a Thorens TD 166 MK II turntable, I found that records could sound better than my CD's, but not always. As CD's improved (and I went from Canton, to Heybrook and Road from Sound By Singer) I used my turntable less and less. In 2020 I find that CDs and digital files will best vinyl 75% of the time. Technology has caught up and surpassed vinyl, but it doesn't mean I don't enjoy still spinning records!

I was living in the Bronx when Tower blew out their lps in a huge sale. I bought as many as I could carry on the subway from 4th and Broadway to Pelham Parkway. The jazz section of that store was the best I've experienced. Great times.

I had a nice vinyl collection then switched to cds around 1987. For a long time that’s all I bought. Then I got into downloading and streaming. Now I’m back to vinyl and am happy to be listening to records again. Still do CDs and streaming as well but my favorite is still vinyl.

The superiority of CDs remains. The only difference now is that vinyl is twice (or more) the price of CDs.

I don't remember the year, but Stereophile reviewed an inexpensive Phillips/Magnavox CD Player and made it a recommended component. I went out and bought one. At the time LPs were mostly $3.99 in the Baltimore/Washington area so I was buying 5-10 a week. While CDs were more expensive I don't recall them costing what you were paying. I was worried that vinyl was ending, and I had hundreds of LPs, so I decided to buy my "forever turntable" while they were still selling them. I still love that B&O TX2, though I've since bought a couple of other turntables just for fun. My biggest complaint is that most of the new LPs I've bought are filthy and difficult to make listenable, right out of the wrapper. I'm now in a mostly CD/SACD stage.

My switchover to CD was pretty much made for me in 1985. I'd been buying vinyl since I was in my mid-teens in the late 60s. But in 1985 my company transferred me from the U.S. to the Middle East and it was suggested that my electronics go into storage. So in went my music system and my 350-400 albums. When I arrived in Dubai and seeing that CDs were growing in popularity (and available), it seemed like the right time to make the switch, so I bought a nice Kenwood component system with Bose 601 speakers and started collecting CDs. I haven't bought vinyl since and I'm still happy with CDs (I've got over 6,300 of them).

I was living in New York City in the early 1980s (1969-1983). I bought an Oracle Delphi turntable shortly after it came out at Sound by Singer (were you there then?). Andy Singer told me that he thought it was the first Oracle sold in NYC (1981?). Then I moved back to California in 1983 and at Berkeley Classical Tower (yes, Berkeley had 2 Towers, Classical and Rock-Pop-Jazz-whatever) saw the CD section very small, slowly eating up the Lp section, eventually owning about 95% of the store. I started buying and listening to CDs in 1997. I forget what my first CD player was, but I eventually went to an Oppo Bluray player, which sounded better. I got a PS Audio Perfect Stream DAC when it first came out, got into computer audio (for the first year, PS Audio did not play gapless! I was livid). Now I still have the DAC, use Roon, and have not listened to CDs since Roon came out. About half my downloaded collection is high definition. But the 16/44 downloads still sound much better than using the Oppo as a transport only.

This all is super interesting! Keep it coming! And greetings from Finland 🇫🇮

My first CD player was a Realistic CD-1200 that I bought from the local Radio Shack it was a great reliable player the first 2 CDs I purchased were the Doors first album and SADE Diamond life. I still have those first cds and the player was still working when it went into basement storage years ago. Thanks for the great video and bringing back some fun memories.

I still have the very first CD I owned, Steve Winwood, higher love. It was 1986. And, I still have several Chesky CDs I bought at a HiFi show in LA in the early 90's.

I was born in 1964. When CD arrived I was as excited as anyone by the new format, but I only bought my first player in 1991. It was a Pioneer LD player. Always kept my vinyl records and B&O 1602 TT, though. But I was never absolutely convinced by the CD. Going through harder times, I sold my collectin two times during the nineties. My vinyl records remained. As my system evolved, so did the CD players and TTs, going from a Sony entry level CD player, to a Marantz, to a Naim CDX. My TTs were Rega PLanar 3, Well Tempered Classic, then a DIY Phono 4 project by André Thériault. I don't really stream except YT and Bandcamp now. Still buy a lot of vinyl records and use the downloads when available or buy downloads as well, to which I listen through a DCS Delius DAC. But I listen mostly to vinyl, it's just more involving. The system is: Nagra PL-P preamp, Luxman MQ88cu amp, Dunlavy SC5 speakers. Thanks!

I was a young man in the 80's and my first system was a modest Hitachi receiver, cassette tape deck, Technics turntable and ATL Award speakers. Cost about $600 all in. My biggest investment was vinyl records and blank cassette tapes. I recorded albums onto tape to play in my car. Never really got into CDs because that meant buying a player and ... CDs. Plus, you couldn't record onto CDs then, so I largely ignored until it became nearly impossible to find vinyl in my small-ish town. Now, I have doubled down on analog with a good table and have about 300 vinyl albums now. I still call them "albums"and had to explain the term to my kids. I have compared albums played on my old Sony 5 disk DVD changer to the vinyl version and streaming through Tidal and a Cambridge Audio DAC. Still prefer vinyl. It is just more alive to me, even with it's imperfections. Maybe it's just what I grew up with, but I tried to be as objective as possible. Thank God for vinyl!!

I remember the first CD player I oweed was Pioneer PD-M710 Changer! I still have it even though it doesn't work. And I spent sooo much of my life in Tower Records in NYC. I preferred the location right across from Lincoln Center on Broadway. I had a " record budget " of $100 a month so I always set money aside each check so I could go Record shopping. THEN.. the CD 💿 came into our lives and I was immediately hooked!! I bumped up my budget to $150 prer month and I was off to the races! My FIRST CD was by a group called "Spyro Gyra". I had their record already and wanted to see if I could tell the difference between formats. WOW!! Was I blown away!! To me the difference was monumental! I lived in Tower Records right up till the year it closed! Great memories of that and other stores in NYC. J&R Music world, Sam Goody, Virgin Records just to name a few. I still love and buy both LP's and CD's! Thanks for the walk through memory lane. Happy listening my brother from another mother!

I just got out of storage some old Technics and Yamaha CD players and ordered a handful of CDs for the first time in years. I can definitely see myself getting back into collecting.

Great vid Steve! While in grad school (early 80s) at Indiana State University (Terre Haute, Indiana) I worked at the campus jazz station station as a DJ and we had a CD player along with our turntables. This was my first experience with CD technology. If my memory is correct, Sony built their first CD production plant in the U.S. in Terre Haute, IN.

When CDs were dominant, I remember reading a novel about a time-traveling audiophile type guy who went back to the 1960s and met a bunch of rock stars. In the story, he described the CD to a 1960s Brian Wilson as "depressing" because people were listening to digitized music on computers and he felt it was a less "real" experience or something... But the truth is CDs are great! Incredibly clear sound, DRM free, they last forever if you take care of them, and no one on the Internet is tracking your song-by-song listening habits!

I grow up seen commercials of the new records saying now on CD, LP and Cassette. When I graduate from Elementary after the ceremony my mom gives me a gift box with a Sony Discman and the Michael Jackson Dangerous CD. My first CD ever and I still have it and work.

My CDs is what I listen the most. And I'm still buying them, new and used!

I hear you loud and clear Steve… I remember it just as well.. I remember walking into tower records (Lincoln Center) in around late 1984,.. and over in the backleft of the store, you had this little island of rectangular cardboard boxes-filled with miniature laser disks-boasting; “compact discs”… I picked one up rather peculiarly,.. and the salesman said yes, these are going to take over vinyl records and cassettes… (could that have been you? LOL) I sneered. Lol And then a few months later I was listening to rockline on WNEW when deep purple was the studio guests.. and they announced that they were going to play a song off of the “”new compact disc””… that was around the time all radio stations were quickly making the transition from vinyl to CDs… & by 1986, all of the main radio stations we’re doing the CD format… Life goes by fast doesn’t it..lol

I remember sampling CD playback in a pair of headphones 1982 in Philips' flying-saucer-shaped science museum, known as the Evoluon. This laser-based disc technology seemed fully at home in that temple of high-tech wonders at the time.

i still remember two events that "forced" me into the CD world. moving into a new home back in 1988 or so i heard what i thought was a live band coming from next door. being an avid music fan and a musician i was not upset as much as curious about the music. a couple of days later i met the neighbor and asked him about the band playing the other day. in told me in was a CD player. then sometime soon after i walked into a record store , and it had changed over to all CD's. i realized it was time to get on the CD train!. gladly i didn't ditch my lp's , although i didn't buy or listen to one for many years. i think i still have the first three cd's i ever bought. 1. a two CD collection of robert johnson songs. i figured might as well buy some old music on a new format! and 2. a roky erickson tribute CD. the third one escapes my mind as i type this. i feel like steve does about analog vs digital. i still like listening to my lp's and have a decent "budget audiophile" set up. i also listen to CD"s and stream. i don't think one format sounds "better" one might sound warmer and one might sound cleaner , but they all serve their purpose in my listening to music.

I’m going on 34 and just really stepping into quality audio gear. Within 18 months I went from a DENON early 90’s CD player and amp with a AT-lp60 turntable to a modded REGA p3 and a couple pair of $400 plus speakers, dac, power conditioner, etc… Vinyl sounds great on most all older recordings but newer music is still hit and miss for me but cd’s…..good quality, cheap and all the music in my lifetime is still pretty easy to access on cd. Plus the library is a great source still regarding cds. I’ve decided to focus on CD as my main format. Cd transport and DAC will be my next purchases. It’s just harder and cost more to accumulate the music I want on vinyl

I bught my first CD player in 1986 at the Army PX. The Beatles Revolver was my first CD.

I heard my first CD in late 1983. As I recall, it was on a DUAL branded CD player. The players and format weren’t as good as they are now. But, I was hooked anyways. And (fast forward to today) … about people getting rid of unwanted CDs? Nowadays, I get used CDs dirt cheap. For me, playing CDs is far easier and more reliable than streaming.

I was born in 81 and my sister 76. We grew up on cassettes and LPs and slowly got into CDs by 89 or 90. Her especially and id borrow steal) CDs from her after I got a Sony Discman.

I'm 40, grew up with CDs, and got into vinyl cause it was cheaper than CDs in the early 00s. Of course now it's flipped. I invested in a Rega Apollo (real smooth) and a Schiit Gumby Multibit DAC and now happily scoop up CDs all the time. They sound freakin phenomenal. I've only been into high end audio for maybe 5 or 10 years now but I bet digital playback has come a long way. I don't stream music but I do play downloads from Bandcamp via the DAC. Downloads, vinyl, CDs - they all have their charms and their time.

I grew up having a few records then had cassette tapes and then cds and back to vinyl. In the 90's all my friends had cds but friends who where djs still had 12" singles.

I changed from vinyl in 1991 and never looked back. The first was a Phillips the in 95 i got a top of the line Sony 5 disk changer. I also transported all my vinyl to cassettes and sold some and gave away all my vinyl records.

Wow, you took me back Steve. When I lived in the East Village in the 90s, it was bleeker bobs and Tower was the mainstay mega shop stop for spending a portion of my Thursday paycheck. Still occasionally listen to underground or out of print discs that aren’t streaming though these days it’s almost entirely vinyl and streaming for me. Give me some Rock ‘n’ roll vinyl & some good bourbon on a Friday night….all is well and a counter to the crazy world outside.

CDs were fantastic for me. It caused many to dump their vinyl collections, which enabled me to get many used LPs for cheap. I look back fondly on those days, now long gone.

I still have a couple thousand CD's, about 1000 LP's, 200 mini discs, 100 DAT's and 65 cassettes and the hardware to run them all. Still enjoy them all including my streaming and computer based music. I enjoy the music, no matter where it comes from...

My parents bought a costly Bang & Olufsen hifi in 1986 which included our first CD player. To this day, it is the only CD player I've ever seen that required you to load the disc label-side down. It also started skipping uncontrollably within a few years and never stopped.

The Cd is dead! Long Live the Cd!!

I own 500+ CD's and still listen every day! Love the trip down memory lane!

Ah, but do you remember the first cd you ever bought and how exciting that was? I believe my first two cd buys may have been Gram Parsons Grevious Angel/GP and Ry Cooder, Chicken Skin Music, which I still have in my collection today, and sound as fresh as ever, no pops, clicks, or scratches, carefully maintained, now almost 40 years old.

Awesome Video. I am an early Gen-X so early years... had records... then CDs... and now have seen Records make a comeback... sort of. I love CDs... own over 2500... and counting. First Records ... I was a BMG record member, at the time an affordable way to buy music. By the time I was 18... had some 50. Then CDs showed up... I saved up and bought my first Technics cd player in 1988. Then... I took my records to the USED MUSIC exchange 1991... and the guy refused to by ANY OF THEM... not even give me trade in credit towards CDs... WTF ! I used the covers as art in my room, moved from apartment to apartment then to house. Finnaly... in 2012 Wife forced me to get rid of a bunch of stuff. Garage sale, 2 record players, 400 disc cd changer, tube amp (15 yr old starting to fail), 3 VCRs, 2 tape decks..... and 40 records. Records sold for 25 cents...at end of the day. I then had 10 left... but NO record player to hear them with... LOL. They included Led Zep 1,2, 3, 4, U2 Joshua Tree, Def Leppard Hysteria, Journey Greatest hits, The Cult Love, Top gun soundtrack and Soundtrack The Wraith.

When CDs came my fist note was, they don't wear out! I could just listen to the tracks I wanted easily. This was great. I was tired of my tapes wearing out, getting eaten etc. Fast forward to about 4 years ago when I broke down and bought a CD transport and just realized what I have been missing. I had been playing CDs on DVD players and my PS3 for years. I woke up jumped back into 2 channel with both feet and even got back into records, vinyl or wax for you hipsters, with a dedicated 2 channel system. All I can say is my old CDs sound really good despite what some of the commenters are saying. It has to do with how good the recording was to begin with as always I am sure.

Born in the 60s, a reel-to-reel, vinyl, cassette user and abuser through the 70s and 80s, but as soon as I could afford a CD player, that's where I went full force. While I never sold off my vinyl collection, for better of for worse, I did sell off my turntables. It wasn't until just a few years ago that I started dabbling in vinyl again, and quickly remembered why I abandoned it so easily and never looked back. And now, while I buy new CDs and SACDs at every opportunity, I always rip them and stream them via Roon, and my CD player sits and gathers dust...

Tower Records All Things Must Pass is an excellent movie! A wild ride for sure! Currently on Amazon Prime or Netflix, one.

I remember the Tower Records in my area,So California , had a parafanilia section in the back corner of the store too!!! And like Steve said, rowes of vinyl records.. Miss them ;([....

A friend of mine had the very first Sony Cd player, $1,200.00, back then, top loading, and one thing I remember was how easy it would skip with minimal motion around it. He had the Bose 901's but I never really liked that sound. I was late to switch to CD's, can't remember my first player, but I made a lot of tapes using an Aiwa , M-100?, cassette deck and TDK SA 60 or 90 tapes on the first listening of any new album, then use the cassettes for casual listening or in the car. I still have some of those tapes and even after 40 years don't sound too bad in my old cars. And Tower Records! Heaven on hearth for music lovers, they had everything that had been recorded in any format including international music, they will always be missed! Nice video, Mr. Steve!

Still my favorite format by far. Just makes too much sense in every way!

When I lived in LA in the 80s I was a big fan of Tower Records and their biggest store in LA was on sunset blvd. I bought a lot of LPs back than from Tower Records. Later in the 90s I continued visiting Tower Records in Marina Del Rey store since I used to live in that area. Around that time I was buying CDs and listening mostly from CDs

My Oracle turntable is from 1980 and works well. Tower Records in Hollywood was a great store. They later had one in Northridge.

Still very happy with the silver discs. Have a nice collection and play them every day.

I grew up on vinyl from the 60's and 70's listening at home, switched to cassette tapes around '85 because there were tape decks in every car, switched to CD in the late 80's because I was running out of bookshelf/ cabinet space for my record collection and now it was CD decks in every car, switched to MP3 in the 2000's because it was so easy, and in 2020 began scooping up every great CD I could get my hands on because you can get an entire artists music catalog for a few dollars and the sonic quality is amazing. Ultimately, my favorite visceral experience is still gently dropping the needle down onto a record. But sonically I'm just as happy with CDs. Steve, why is it that to my ears the worst sound quality at home and in the car and at work is listening to a digital download?

Here in the UK in 1985 my first cd player was a Yamaha but changed the same year to the Meridian Pro mcd player early Dec which used the Philips cd player, love the video's.

Steve, gret video and I liked your presentation. I am absolutely a Vinyl lover, I remember very well the changeover from Vinyl to CD. In my area, we had no Tower Records but we had Strawberries Records and Tapes wich I absolutely loved going in there. Usually twice a week I went there and it was so exciting to go there even if I did not buy anything, just to look around was exciting. I remember with great fondness buying a new album and then looking around the store for a high quality blank cassette tape so that I could record the album right away so I could play it in the car. Those days were so much fun. And I feel like the days of the mix tape are sadly for the most part gone, but I do make one every now and then and I am sure there are others that do. I am not saying I don't love CD's, as they are great. But, I have noticed that I played a DDD CD a few weeks ago and I sat there and said to myself, "THere must be something wrong with my speakers" as the sound was rather flat and just kind of dull but then I plated a CD that was ADD and the sound was so much better. I have also found over the years as I am sure many other people have that the Vinyl Record of a record is very much superior to the sound of a CD. One example would be John Denver's Greatest HIts. Vol. 1 and 2. THe Vinyl version of this recording sounds better then the CD by a long shot. So, it is my guess that when it was transferred to CD not a lot of care was used in the mastering, or there was some other reason that I am unaware of. Stay well and take care.

Enlightened Audio Designs (EAD) from Fairfield Ia, home of Maharishi University, where they actually levitated the parts from the parts bin right into the chassis. Loved my CD1000. I sent it back to them so they could install one of the first HDCD chips from Pacific Microsonics.

in the beginning i remember that most CD's titles where either produced in Japan or West Germany since america was not able to produce them in the beginning. and they did sound better vs. the same title that eventually was state side. for instance Dark Side of The Moon, Black Triangle/Toshiba Japan is still considered the best CD version of this classic.

Steve, in the image of a younger you at Sound by Singer there are cabinets/shelving in the background. I thought of would never see those again. I have that very cabinetry in my home. I had them custom made back in "85. I wanted them on the main floor of our current home, the wife did not. We came to a compromise, they are in the basement. They still house several turntables, CD players, & a host of amps & old receivers. Thank you for sharing, really appreciate your channel. Take care, Joe

Started buying records in 1984. It was LP's then. Shifted to CD in 1990, shifted back to LP in 1996.

My first CD player was a realistic CD 1000 and my first CD I bought was the Cars Heartbeat City I had a B&O turntable and a Pioneer receiver and Advent speakers when I heard my first CD I was hooked but I still love the sound of LP'S better now.

I bought my first amplifier and turntable october 1986 and in december I bought a pair of speakers, the Pioneer Prologue 8. In the summer 1986, June, I bought my first CD-player, a Yamaha CDX700

Been buying CDs since the 90s, and haven't stopped yet. I will play the CDs directly, but I also rip them and put them on an SD card so I can listen to them on my phone on headphones, or via Bluetooth in the car. I have dabbled with Vinyl, which is fun from a collecting standpoint and is nice as a change, but ultimately I find CDs don't suffer from the variability in sound and difficulty in setting up properly that vinyl has, plus they don't have the same flexibility of ripping for portable use. Because of this I've recently found myself picking up CD copies of some of my favourite LPs. Happy to know that no argument with a musician and a label and a streaming service will prevent me listening to music I've already bought.

A special episode! Muy bien!

First heard the Philips CD player you mention at an audio store in Denver, 1983. Like everyone else in the store at the time, I was blown away by the clarity and absence of hiss, clicks and pops. However, as a starving student, I stuck with analog. I'd buy and LP and record it to a high quality cassette and listen to the cassette. (which was still less than the price of a CD at the time). Interesting you bring up the fact that turntable sales actually increased after the introduction of the CD. My audiophile uncle plunked a big chunk of change on a high-quality turntable and kept his old one as a backup fearing they'd eventually go the way of the eight-track. Your experience seems to verify others were doing the same. It's all streaming for me these days; my high-frequency hearing has diminished to the point that anything above 320kbps MP3 is meaningless to my ears.

And so started the loudness wars! :-)

How things have changed, now CD sales are down, and vinyl is up. Most people now don’t care about quality, just convenience. So we now consume music streamed to a device in a compressed format, and listened with tiny wireless headphones

My first CD player was a Pioneer. Forgot the model. It had a cartridge that held 6 CD's It was great.

I have read through most of the comments here. The Telarc recording of the 1812 Overture (original release 1979) was brought up. First off, there is NO recording I know of that has the impact of dynamic range of that performance/session. More importantly, the development of the CD actually SAVED Telarc as a record company (true story!) because that recording on vinyl was VERY difficult for most cartridges/tone arms to track! If you look at the LP, the cannon blasts are the widest spaced grooves you will probably ever see on vinyl! I bought the CD early on and found out just how 'taxing' it is on our audio gear. Not all that long ago, there was a RE-release (2015) of the recording on VINYL , all sanctioned by the Telarc crew including Robert Woods and Jack Renner. It was a limited edition release on 200 gram. and I paid around $60. My copy is one of 1000 pressed by Quality Record Pressings . I was always curious (for YEARS!) to learn more about the cannon sessions which took place on some school grounds. Happily, my questions were answered with the new vinyl production. The beautiful packaging looking like a box set included a FULL SIZED booklet that shows many photos of the cannon layout and recording session and a wonderfully written intro by (the late) Michael Bishop himself! Just to let you know, my old Dual 506 table could not get through ANY of the cannon volleys!, and my Rega RP-6 can't stay in the groove on the loudest last blast! I was just reading that Telarc took this recording to a CES in 1979, and as it was told for the demos, a penny was used to keep the cartridge from bouncing out of the groove! To conclude, I LOVE the warning on this record, which is similar to the one you can find on the CD. It concludes with this: "First Impression Music is not liable for damage, exchange, or refund if your system is unable to play this LP." I think that says it all (O:

I bought into the cd hype in the mide-80s and began selling my lps. That didn't last long, fortunately, when I realized that cds sounded weak. I quickly realized that it was time to buy records. Now cds are cheap I'm buying cds. My cd playback is as good as my analog now. All is well in the music world!

Man, the future ain't what it used to be.