a different tune

Last week saw the 25th anniversary the compact disc. The first commercially released CD was made by Philips on August 17, 1982.

That disc was “The Visitors”, the eighth and final studio album of Swedish pop group ABBA. Probably the best known of the included tracks are “One Of Us”, and (appropriately) “When All Is Said And Done”, which was the lead single. Later ABBA recorded a number of singles which were included in a reissue of the album in 2001. These included the epic “The Day Before You Came”, complete with a day of triviality and a majestic classical synth-orchestral chorus.

While 1982 saw the first commercially released disc, CDs had been under development for several years. Philips started researching digital audio laser discs in 1977. Then in 1979 Philips and Sony joined forces, each contributing innovations that became part of the “Red Book” compact disc standard. The manufacturing process was based on the LaserDisc (remember those big guys?) which Philips developed in 1969, and publically demonstrated in 1972.

Now a confession: I bought my first CD player in 2002, which I guess means I missed about 20 years of CD opportunity. I still have stacks of cassettes from those “lost years”, but have never really been a big music collector. I’ve bought a dozen or so tracks from iTunes, but must admit that I was not impressed with the quality of the sound. To my ear AAC at 128Kbps sounds noticably distorted, particularly at the top end of the spectrum (eg. sibilant lyrics, and percussive sounds like cymbals). Perhaps when someone comes up with a DRM-free MP3s at a reasonable bit-rate I’ll give it another go, but for the moment its back to the good old CD.