When CDs first came onto the market in 1982 .......


Everyone was "blown away" with the perceived clarity of sound.

I might be wrong (hence this post) but my recollection was the major difference between a CD and it's vinyl analog was merely volume. 

CDs were mastered with an audio stream turned up to 1.2v (?) whereas all analog recordings (vinyl, tape etc.) had been mastered using an analog audio stream of 0.8v

Is this on the money or am I mistaken ... ??

ozymandias_

My first player was a Sony CDP 101.   It sounded like crap compared to today's players.    I remember for about 4 months I could barely find any titles I liked.   

That player was $1000 in late 1982/1983......  I think I paid $600 as an open box unit at Manufacturer 's Marketplace in W Roxbury MA.    That was a great place that had some pretty good brands that were overstocked / c,osed out.   It was like a dream being in that place as a 15 year old kid.   I purchased quite a few things there with my paper route money

On some of those first CD’s the (cheap) record companies just pressed the vinyl master onto the cd. Those did not sound good. 

It’s seems a bit later than 82 but yeah it was awesome. But everything was when you are young. I was an early adopter I think. I remember it being some sort of int unit by Mitsubishi. Me and the gang blown away. To be able to go direct to any track we wanted was the greatest invention since the microwave.

I forget what it was called with cassettes but on better decks you could do extreme fast forward and listen for a break in the sound and stop and you should be at the next track. It took a good finger to get it right. And if you wanted three songs forward trying to listen for three breaks (silence) while fast forwarding. Ugh

CD changed everything for ease of use. Don’t think I was even worried about sound quality. It was too cool to care.

Ah the 80s. What a blast.

Some early CD just sounded horrible. I still loved them because I didn‘t listen to the sound much. As much as some remasters are bad in their own respect, in some cases they were just neccessary. I‘m glad I didn‘t have to fully go through the early stages of the medium and only joined in the early 90s.

One example:

I heard the first CD player on the market for the USA in '82. This was the Hitachi vertical-loader. Retail price $1K. Not many CDs available then. I was not tempted to sell my TT! I didn't buy my first CD until the Fall of '91. I bought my first player the following Summer in '92 - a cheap Technics. Sounded OK! Not tempted to sell my TTs. I was busy buying brand-new LPs at bargain prices as music retailers were dumping them to add space for more CDs. The reason I held off buying CD players was because I didn't think the first few generations sounded good. By the 90's they were at least listenable!