What was the first CD you bought?

First Player:Technics SLPX-7 - a portable model with an attached battery case which weighed half a kilo! Not very portable at all (but all so cool!)

First disc: David Sylvian - Gone to Earth

regards,

Giles

Inxs X I think. I still have it and funnily enough I've been listening to it tonight, ripped via NDS.

Kevin-W posted:

I didn't get a CD player until 1991 - a Nakamichi CD 4:

Kevin,

You started on a very high note.

My first cd player which I got for nothing. My first cd was John Mellencamp Lonesome Jubilee.

It was a Dylan album.  I honestly don't remember which one.  And it came in the popular "long box".  I guess the box was supposed to make the purchase feel more substantial.

The trouble I found with CD when it first came out was it didn't really sound very good, although it could certainly be impressive with its lack of surface noise and wider dynamic range, In the early years there was a strong tendency to harshness - of course that may only have been in comparison to familiar vinyl. I wanted to like it, but it just wasn't worth the investment. Gradually, players started to improve, though how much of that was me learning to like the sound I can't say, but one thing was a deal breaker for me when I tried for real -  the bass was missing. Having decent full range speakers and liking to hear the bass when it is in the music I noticed when it was curtailed. That eventually changed by about 1989 , when I heard and bought the Cambridge CD2, and so started my CD collection. But unlike my first LP and first single as a teenager 20 years earlier (Shades of Deep Purple and Beatles' Get Back respectively), I am struggling to remember my first CDs - I bought about a dozen at once. Several at least were classical, and one I'm pretty certain was the 1979 Telarc recording of Tchaikovsky's 1812.

matt podniesinski posted:

It was a Dylan album.  I honestly don't remember which one.  And it came in the popular "long box".  I guess the box was supposed to make the purchase feel more substantial.

The long box came about as a result of lobbying from powerful US retailers, who didn't want to change shop furniture - two rows of long boxes fitted quite nicely in an LP rack. Here in the UK we had no retailers of comparable power so we just went for jewel boxes.

This is the reason why DVDs came out in DVD cases as opposed to CD ones - lobbying by powerful retailers who didn't want to get rid of their old VHS racks.

Before I had this I had a boys cassette radio player. So this was my first real CD player which I bought when I was 24

....and it served me very well for over 20 years, with a 2 services .....

ewemon posted:

My first cd was John Mellencamp Lonesome Jubilee.

Exquisite taste ewe. My first purchase was three CDs at once (as I recall);

 John Mellencamp Lonesome Jubilee

Beatles Rubber Soul

Beatles Revolver

Kevin-W posted:

The long box came about as a result of lobbying from powerful US retailers, who didn't want to change shop furniture - two rows of long boxes fitted quite nicely in an LP rack. Here in the UK we had no retailers of comparable power so we just went for jewel boxes.

I always presumed the long boxes simply enabled the smaller CDs to fit in existing LP bins. As I recall, most US shops did the long box format - maybe those not convinced the CD would have staying power. Others at the time converted a portion of their racks to hold the bare jewel cases - maybe those who foresaw a future in CDs - these were initially the minority.

My first CD was Electric Warrior by T.Rex

It was at least two years before I bought a CD player - a Meridian 205.

My first CD player

My first CD was Roxy Music / Bryan Ferry - Street Life - 20 Greatest Hits

Both bought in 1986 or thereabouts .. I think the CD from Tower Tecords and the CDP from Richer Sounds in London.

Eloise posted:

My first CD player was part of a late 1980s Pye Midi system (but I'm sure that's forgivable? Please?)

Awesome. All the major formats of the day, an equalizer, and I bet it rocked a teenager's naïve ears. Plug in a single power cord and you're set.

The practical part is you could record your CDs to cassette. Everyone was doing it then to feed the cassette players in their cars. CD was the ultimate format yet with no means to play in cars initially. Then the early car CDPs would suffer jumps and drop outs every time you hit a hard bump, often scratching the CDs.

1986- First ever CD was "Brothers in arms" by Dire Straights

To listen to it I bought a Yamaha CD2 and some cheap sennheiser headphones and was in digital heaven. If you'll pardon the expression!

My first CD player was the original Sony Discman, bought in 1985 with the proceeds of my summer job. I can’t recall the very first CD I bought, but among the first batch were World Machine by Level 42, a compilation of piano music by Satie, Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, and a pair of Mozart string quartets.

In 1985 Compact Disc was the hot new thing and, having a collection of about six records, I thought I was being clever by getting in on the ground floor – why buy any more records when they’re going to be obsolete in a few years? At that time I had no exposure to high quality audio, and completely accepted the predominant “perfect sound forever” expert opinion. I was aware of a small number of dissenters, but I assumed these were fringe-type Luddites.

After about two years I had maybe a dozen CDs and was noticing a pattern. Every piece of music that I anticipated buying always left me underwhelmed after I acquired it – “hmm, I thought I would enjoy that more.” I was also aware that most manufacturers were talking about better machines, improvements in the technology, and so on. That made me uneasy, given that the audio quality was supposed to be near-perfect.

To put my mind at rest, I went to that big CD shop on Charing Cross Road and listened to the best player they had, a 2- or 3-box Sony player costing a cool £2,000. It was certainly better than my Discman, but it didn’t fundamentally improve on the sound – it still had that digital signature. A few months later I visited The Cornflake Shop on Tottenham Court Road and listened to a relatively basic system consisting of a Roksan Xerxes, integrated amp, and standmount speakers. While it had some obvious flaws, the music making was in a different league to any of the CD players I had heard to date.

That was it for me. The following spring, when I had the money together, I visited the Sound Organisation in Southwark and finally embarked on the analogue-only journey I’m still on. I have over 3,000 records and maybe 30 CDs, something I never would have foreseen all those years ago. I’m hopeful that digital will mature to the point where I can store a near-limitless collection either in the cloud or on a small device, but it’s taking its time getting there, and I’m not in any rush. And given the music industry’s lack of commitment to audio quality, I see no likelihood that I’ll ever abandon the black discs entirely.

Colm

This is my first and only CD player bought in 1991.

I also had a small CD collection before I had a player. My first CD was Beck and Sanborn.  

I only ever had two CD players. The meridian (as pictured above I think) and then a CDX2.

But then again I have only ever had three turntables in forty years.

My first CD was "Brother in Arms" by Dire Straits, which I think was one of the first (if not the first) CD to be commercially released in the UK, followed shortly, I think, by Donald Fagan's "Nightfly". There wasn't much to choose from when I bought my first CD player, and some of the first CDs I heard sounded pretty horrible. These two sounded pretty good, though. 

My first CD player was a pretty decent one - the Denon DCD 1500. I got this when I bought my first house around 1984 and decided not to reclaim my old system (Transcriptors Hydraulic Reference turntable, Cambridge P50/11 and Celestion Ditton 66 speakers) that I had left with my parents for 4 or 5 years while I worked away from home.

I had been without a real hi-fi system for those 4 or 5 years, and so I was very much looking forward to buying on. Unfortunately, I just couldn't have lived with any of the cheaper ones I auditioned, and so spent much more than I had meant to on the DCD 1500, but it was superb. I recall it was around £450 - a lot of money in those days. I have had 3 or 4 CD players since then, but this is the only one that I still have (although it hasn't really been used for twenty years or so. Actually, It still sounds not bad at all. Nowhere near as good as my Klimax DS/1 or Chord Hugo, but still pretty inoffensive, and even pretty decent when used in my smaller elderly bedroom system.

Billy Joel's '52nd Street' was the first  CD album in October 1982.    Dire Straits' 'Brothers in Arms'  was the first CD single released in 1985.  

My first CD was bought with my first "hifi" setup. I was 16 years old and it happened back in 1990. The setup was this...

And my first CD... "Heroes del Silencio"s album "Senderos de traición"... It keep turning and turning during weeks. Each time I listen to it I see myself plugging all the cables!!

...Javi

Mike-B posted:

Billy Joel's '52nd Street' was the first  CD album in October 1982.    Dire Straits' 'Brothers in Arms'  was the first CD single released in 1985.  

Are you sure Mike?

I have read this on many Internet posts as well, but my memory (which may well be playing tricks) leads me to believe that CDs weren't released in the UK until some time later.

"Brothers in Arms", I believe was the first 'DDD' CD to be released in the UK, and I would be extremely surprised if Billy Joel's CD was released in the UK a full 2 to 3 years earlier. 

Bananahead posted:

I only ever had two CD players. The meridian (as pictured above I think) and then a CDX2.

But then again I have only ever had three turntables in forty years.

I also only ever had 2CD players, each lasting about 10 years before mistracking problems heralded their demise. (Shearne Phase 6 after the Cambridge CD2 already mentioned). However I only had 2 turntables in 40 years, one lasting 38, admittedly with a change of arm and some upgrading in between). As I'm already on my second streaming player in just over 3 years, so the track record suggests that's it!

Hmack posted:

 Are you sure Mike? 

I was not talking UK specific -  according to most www data - & copy/paste from 'The Register' 1 Oct 2012   "............. The first commercially release disc and player - respectively, Billy Joel's 52nd Street and Sony's CDP-101 - were introduced in Japan on 1 October 1982  .................  CD production commenced in Europe that same month, on the 17th (1982) with Abba's 'The Visitors' the first ever disc to roll out of Philips' Hannover pressing plant ........... "

My comment:    Dire Straits' released Brothers in Arms in 1985 & was the first DDD CD album & (I believe) the CD single release was the worlds first single.

First CD I bought was

On my way back from purchasing an Arcam Alpha CD player.

Still got the CD but the player was replaced by a Linn Karik and now my wonderful CDX2

I'd just bought a Phillips CD104 from dixons in 1985 then popped next door to WH Smith and paid an eyewatering at the time £11.99 for this.