Phasing out of Compact Disc

Political economy - a calculated decision to shut LP production down? Where did it come from? I don't think the casette was such a big factor here in Europe. Could it be, mainly, that the world went slightly mad, buying into the hype of the CD and the digital medium?
I mean, I did so myself. I was a great enthusiast of the "PC revolution" in the 80s, and became a programmer at my spare time. I thought, a bit is a bit. I had recorded analog, on a Revox A77, for twenty years - but I now thought, digital is the way to do it, and bought DAT recorders. Digital means perfect! I was under the spell.
Happily I also invested in a better analog system - and discovered my errors.

O_holter, yeah, I suppose it's possible I could be nuts on all that, but I just haven't come across anything that I could say that fits the facts any better for me, so far anyway. But, that sort of thing is fairly typical of big money. (Rush fans remember that song??)

I do remember my first CD player: a 2nd-generation Pioneer 6-disc changer in '83. All the magazine articles I'd been reading had been shouting: "Do CD's sound better than vinyl, or worse?" and never really seemed to pick a side. Excited and eager to unwrap and take my first listen, it took all of about 5 seconds to realize in my mind that it was all apparently a pretty sad joke, Lol. And I recall my vinyl rig at the time (also a Pioneer), with cartridge, weighed in at about $250. But, somehow I decided to be a trooper and carry on...maybe someday they would improve things with it. Very recently I believe I've now persisted in getting CD to sound as good as, or even better in most ways, to vinyl (not without a Ton of electronic noise reduction, though)...but, that has only taken me, what?...about 30 years?...Lol!

Thanks Ivan - political economy and music is interesting. Nuts? No not at all. And - I respect differerent ways to get good sound. The CD was not all bad. It was bad only from a certain cut point and upwards in the existing audio systems / consumer market / class- and status-divided society. If you were below that cut point, the CD did sound 'objectively' good. For example, if you had a $250 analog rig - or even a 1250 rig. What happened was, this cut point gradually went up, and for those below, the CD really was a good thing. First, in the 1990s, analog specialists (like Lyra) learned how to go beyond the digital sound. Next, in the 2000s, how to make this better sound for less money. Thats why the vinyl market has a rebirth. If you factor in Michael Fremer, this causal model should be just about 99 percent right!! :-) Enjoy your music!

By the time CDs came out, I already had a sizeable record collection. I was the first on the block to buy a CD player. It was one of those Phillips top loaders. I quickly learned that Sony's claim of "Perfect sound forever" was a joke. As more people jumped on the CD bandwagon, some of my friends and I started cleaning up at garage sales buying up as many good LPs that we could get our hands on. I bought out entire collections for ten-cents each to fifty cents each. And I'm talking about really good mint classical, jazz and classic rock. I'll never forget the one guy (a Brit) saying, as I was walking out of his house with 300 classical albums, all import pressings that I just paid him a dollar apiece for: "I don't know why you would want records anymore when we have these great sounding CD players." I told him I was too poor to be able to afford a CD player. *lol* I was thinking ... "thanks for the EMI's, the imported RCA's and the Telefunkens. All found a good home.