Opus-the-Penguin t1_j20ptwj wrote
Reply to comment by PossibilitySuperb465 in Wiil CD's make a comeback like Vinyl? by trukises
No. Almost nobody had a car CD player. Too expensive. If we wanted to listen to a CD in the car, we usually recorded it onto a cassette. There was also this thing that plugged into the cassette deck and to your portable CD player's headphone jack. Those worked but they were a little bit fussy and your CD player had to be portable. Not at all convenient. Convenience was 100% NOT the reason we switched. We switched because CDs sounded better. Ask anyone who remembers the transition.
PossibilitySuperb465 t1_j20r6v1 wrote
I... am... someone who remembers. And CDs in cars were rad.
Opus-the-Penguin t1_j20uirg wrote
When was this? I didn't get a CD player in the car until the 2000s. In 1987 almost no one had one. This was NOT what drove the switch. If you remember the transition during the 80s, you remember that.
PossibilitySuperb465 t1_j20v44s wrote
I mean the late 80s I guess is what I'm talking about. *Shrug*
Let's be reasonable though--CD players were always small (compact disk) and portability was very much the point as much as anything. They really were alternatives to tapes more in my mind I think in that regard. There were also those weird tapes with aux cables.
Opus-the-Penguin t1_j20wa9o wrote
Portables were fine as competition to the Walkman, but they weren't more convenient on that front. You couldn't go jogging with them. Even your car hitting a bump in the road could derail your listening experience in a situation where the cassette would just keep chugging along. Nevertheless, the sound was so much better that many people made the switch.
However, I don't think it was portables that drove the sales. Maybe I'm wrong, but my impression is that most people were buying full sized players for their home audio systems. Home audio was a much bigger deal back then and everybody wanted a good stereo system.
PossibilitySuperb465 t1_j20wvr1 wrote
>You couldn't go jogging with them
Loolllll man, takes me back. They were really fine in cars though in the 80s (unless you hit a bumpy patch, it would for sure skip lol). Honestly and truly, the few people who I knew back then who were obsessed with audio were still clutching vinyls and eyeing CDs with suspicion. I honestly do remember there being multiple camps on this topic back then though, so the discrepancy in our recollection is frankly unsurprising.
Opus-the-Penguin t1_j20y8x8 wrote
Yeah, I remember the holdouts who claimed that vinyl sounded "warmer". I also remember the articles in magazines like Stereo Review where the audio engineers were proving objectively that the CD was delivering more and more accurate sound information to your earballs. They said the "warmth" you were hearing in the LP was an artifact of deficiencies in the recording and playback process and meant that you were hearing sound that was somewhat different from the sounds that had been recorded.
Meanwhile, the so-called "golden ears" of the industry were confirming subjectively that what they were hearing from the CD was closer to hearing a live performance than anything they'd heard out of an LP.
So I figured, yeah, go with the experts and go with what my ears were telling me.
Fluffy_Little_Fox t1_j229wzn wrote
Warmth really just means "Extra Midrange Presence" and "Less Sharp Treble."
Very easy to simulate "Warmth" and even "Extra Stereo Separation" by using the RC20 VST.
That thing has MANY options.
Wow, Flutter, Wobble, Crackle, Distortion.
If you wanna make a digital recording ripped from a CD sound like it was recorded from a Vinyl, you totally can.
Fluffy_Little_Fox t1_j229arb wrote
Home Stereos. Even the goofy Wal-Mart systems with the big gaudy speakers that looked like something out of a sci-fi fever dream -- were a BIG business market back in the late 90s and early 2000s.
The ones with the 6 tray Automatic CD Changers. And later they compacted that into a Cartridge form.
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