# When did the average person first hear about CDs? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 16, 2017, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285 "2017-03-16T03:24:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Miss\_Mapp](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miss_mapp/32/369_2.png) [@Miss\_Mapp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Mapp)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/21 "2017-03-16T11:02:06Z")
I don’t remember the exact date, but it must have been the early '80s. A radio station I was listening to talked about CDs and played “The Sound of Silence” on CD to see how it sounded. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/22 "2017-03-16T11:03:13Z")
I had been reading about the development of CDs since the very early 80s, then finally bought a Technics CD player for my 40th birthday in 1985. At the time, CDs were rather boutique items, relegated to a small corner of record stores, starting with the classical section. It wasn’t long before they really took off, as more varied content became available. The first CD I bought was by the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus. ---
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/23 "2017-03-16T11:13:39Z")
Probably around 1987-88. ---
**Author:** ![Crotalus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crotalus/32/41_2.png) [@Crotalus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crotalus)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/24 "2017-03-16T11:18:20Z")
I worked with a guy in 1983 - 1984 who was an audiophile. During that time, he was eager to replace his vinyl records with CDs because of their amazing sound qualities. At that time, I believe the price of CDs was several times the LP or cassette price, but he was buying them anyway. The big obstacle for him was that very few of the rock albums he wanted to replace were available on CD yet. I bought my first CD in 1987: Document by R.E.M. I lived with my brother at the time. He had just bought a CD player. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/25 "2017-03-16T11:29:21Z")
I watched something on TV around 1982, where a couple has a fight, because one of them spent some windfall money on a CD player. Before then, I’d heard the term, but wasn’t clear it was a new format for music production. I didn’t personally get one until you couldn’t buy vinyl anymore. Then when writable players for computers came out, I bought one for my computer, and a player for my car. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/26 "2017-03-16T11:37:45Z")
The first store selling CDs that I saw opened in Salt Lake City in 1983 or 1984. They had a monopoly in the city on them – the record stores weren’t fast to jump on the bandwagon. I recall that one of the clerks wore a broken CD on a chain around her neck. It was pretty clearly intended as a status symbol (_The broken CD is glittery and multicolored , like diamonds. But it also means I’ve had these long enough to break one._) At the same time, I attended a lecture at the University by someone in the industry who complained that he’d been trying to get CDs into the marketplace for _years_, and that he still didn’t understand why they weren’t already putting out movies on such digital discs. But that, too, was years in the future. ---
**Author:** ![Cardigan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardigan/32/187_2.png) [@Cardigan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardigan)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/27 "2017-03-16T11:44:25Z")
First learned of their existence while in Japan in 1985. Bought my first CD sometime around 1988. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/28 "2017-03-16T11:50:40Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > Then when writable players for computers came out, I bought one for my computer, and a player for my car. Just curious, at what price point did you buy your first CD burner? I got mine for $499, plus another $199 for a good SCSI II card. It was 2x, but that was plenty fast considering that buffer underun technology hadn’t been invented yet. (Blanks were $12 each.) ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/29 "2017-03-16T12:11:40Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > The first store selling CDs that I saw opened in Salt Lake City in 1983 or 1984. > > … > > At the same time, I attended a lecture at the University by someone in the industry who complained that he’d been trying to get CDs into the marketplace for _years_, and that he still didn’t understand why they weren’t already putting out movies on such digital discs. The guy was an idiot. LaserDisc came out in 1978 (and [SelectaVision](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc) in 1981.) So there were already _two_ disc-based movie media available at the time. If his hang-up was that they were analog, not digital, then he had not a clue about the realities of digital media. At the roughly NTSC resolution of 320x240, 24 bits per pixel, 30fps, uncompressed digital video is around 23 GB an hour, not counting audio. At the roughly DVD resolution of 640x480, that goes up to 92 GB per hour. No 5-inch disc at the time could hold that much data, and I’m not sure if a 12-inch one could. As for decoding compressed video, that takes a _lot_ of computer power (relative to the time.) When I bought my first DVD-ROM in 1998, my CPU could run rings around the best supercomputer of 1984, but it _still_ wasn’t fast enough to decode DVDs in realtime and required a separate hardware decoder card with a cludgy loop-back cable connecting to the video card. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/30 "2017-03-16T14:13:29Z")
I _heard_ about them sometime in the mid-1980s, but more in the context of something cool in development in the back of “Popular Science” or 'Discover". I remember video laserdiscs (the ones that were record-sized) even earlier, but only in the context of the highest-end electronics available at the home electronics store. I got my first stereo with a CD player around 1989-ish IIRC. Before my senior year of high school anyway (1990-1991), and got a handful of CDs, because they were pretty expensive- like $20, in 1989 dollars (something like $35 in today’s money). It took until probably 1995 or so before CDs had nearly entirely supplanted cassette tapes- I remember buying a tape as late as 1994, because I wanted to listen in my truck, which only had a tape deck. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/31 "2017-03-16T14:34:15Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > However, at that point, IIRC, CD players in boomboxes and car stereos were still kind of uncommon, and “Walkman” portable cassette players were still very common. When I bought a new car in 1991, the stereo had a cassette deck, but no CD player (which was, I think, a higher-end option). I don’t think that I owned a portable CD player (either a boombox or a Walkman-style player) until the mid '90s. > [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > By the time I moved to Australia at the turn of the century, it was CD music all the way, although most cars still only seemed to have cassette players in them In those early days, cassettes were a lot more practical for portable and car stereos, because CD players had a tendency to skip when they were bumped or in motion (before [electronic skip protection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_skip_protection) became commonly available). Plus CDs were touted for their superior sound quality, but that superiorness couldn’t be appreciated over the road noise in a moving car. And if you still had an extensive collection of cassettes, you couldn’t listen to them on a CD player, but CDs could be easily copied onto cassette to make your music portable. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/32 "2017-03-16T14:39:34Z")
1983 or 1984. Went to a high end stereo store and the salesman tried to sell me one. The only music he had was jazz and Rod Stewart. I said I’d pass. It was probably close to or over $1000 unadjusted dollars for the player. Got my first player in late 1985, and my first disc was A-ha. That disc still plays fine, no degradation at all. Remember when they sold discs in those yuuge boxes because they were afraid of theft? And I bought my most recent disc this weekend. You streamers and your hoity-toity attitude. Steaming doesn’t sound as warm and have as much presence as a CD! ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/33 "2017-03-16T15:27:17Z")
The first CD I ever bought was a Thelonious Monk album. I remember unwrapping it in the parking lot, and not being able to figure out how to open the case. ---
**Author:** ![eunoia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eunoia/32/97_2.png) [@eunoia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eunoia)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/34 "2017-03-16T15:45:51Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > You streamers and your hoity-toity attitude. Steaming doesn’t sound as warm and have as much presence as a CD! I see what you did there. 😃 (If anything, Dopers seem to have been aware of CD’s a few years earlier than average, I’d say average was closer to 1987 in North America, maybe slightly earlier in Europe.) ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/35 "2017-03-16T16:01:18Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Just curious, at what price point did you buy your first CD burner? I got mine for $499, plus another $199 for a good SCSI II card. It was 2x, but that was plenty fast considering that buffer underun technology hadn’t been invented yet. (Blanks were $12 each.) I don’t remember at all. I do remember that I had to put more RAM in my computer to be able to use it, so I spent like $40 on RAM, and I downloaded my first music program, because whatever the default Windows program was, was uploading CDs like molasses in January. Also, when I burned a music CD, it took time. You hit burn, then went and took a shower, or made a sandwich, or something. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/36 "2017-03-16T16:08:12Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > My sophomore-year college roommate ('86-87) had a CD player, at a time when that was relatively unusual but not unheard-of. (Whoops—just remembered this was junior year, so '87-88. There was someone living on my floor the previous year who had a CD player, though.) ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/37 "2017-03-16T16:15:14Z")
My friends started getting CDs in the late 80s. I joined Columbia House (remember that?) to get my own in 1989. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/38 "2017-03-16T16:18:04Z")
By the time I got to college, fall of 1993, CDs were ubiquitous, as far as I remember it. I do remember CD burners being uncommon until the late 90s. I played in a band in college in '97 and '98, and I remember we still had to go to a media lab at my university to burn a CD, since nobody we knew had CD burners at the time. Portable mass storage at that time was of the Zip disk variety (god, I hated those things–I’ve lost so much data to disk failures) and Jaz disks. I can’t for the life of remember when a CD player first showed up in our house. I know I got a Sony Discman for Christmas of 1992, so they must have been pretty affordable by that time. So my guess would have been around 1990-1991. ETA: Oh, sorry, that’s an answer to the average person having a CD player. Hearing of them? I would guess 1985/1986 or so, but I was only 11 at the time. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/39 "2017-03-16T16:19:58Z")
The first time I \*remember \*hearing about CDs was at Middlebury in the summer of '89, but I’m sure I already knew they’d been around for some time. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285/40 "2017-03-16T16:24:26Z")
I got the Beach Boys’ album _Still Cruisin’_ in 1989 when it came out. I had recently turned seven years old. It was the first CD I had known, and my parents had to buy me a little CD-playing boom box to play it on. Up until then I had only known records and tapes. But I’m sure people who were adults in the 80s were aware of CDs long before I was. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-average-person-first-hear-about-cds/782285.md?page=3)