hop nor any other new musical genre had emerged
to capture the public imagination the way disco had
in the 1970’s. CDs altered this situation: They were
marketed as being so superior to records in audio
quality that they made audiophiles dream of the po-
tential impeccability of digital audio recordings, and
of purchasing such recordings to replace their im-
perfect analog vinyl records.
Slow Initial Adoption Following as they did the
failure of other similarly heralded formats to catch
on with the public, CDs were initially greeted with
skepticism. They could, after all, be played only on
then-expensive CD players, and consumers who had
previously invested in the audio-visual equipment
necessary to play quadraphonic vinyl records, eight-
track cassettes, or laserdisc films were understand-
ably hesitant to take another financial plunge into a
pool that might soon dry up.
Compounding their caution were the initially
limited number of titles available in the CD format
and the even more limited number of fully digital re-
cordings. The industry invented a code, placed on
each CD’s jewel case, to indicate whether the record-
ing was completely digital (DDD), digitally remas-
tered from an analog original (ADD), or simply a
digitized version of an analog recording (AAD). Mu-
sic afficionados were well aware that an AAD record-
ing on a CD would be of no higher quality than a vi-
nyl recording and might well be worse.
Classical music was the genre whose enthusiasts
provided the initial impetus behind the push for CD
technology. One legend even ascribes the CD’s origi-
nal seventy-four-minute length to Sony vice-president
Norio Ohga’s desire for the format to accommo-
date Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. This was in
part because the ideal live classical experience is
wholly acoustic, whereas most rock performances
are expected to be amplified and otherwise filtered
through electronic systems. Thus, fidelity in tone is
of more concern to the average classical fan than to
the average rock fan. As a result, the number of clas-
sical titles outnumbered the titles available in rock
or other popular styles, and classical labels commis-
sioned new, fully digital recordings of the most fa-
mous works.
Controversy over Quality In the absence of first-
hand consumer experience with CDs, rumors began
to circulate that exaggerated the format’s virtues.
Chief among these virtues was the compact disc’s
alleged imperviousness to physical damage. Con-
sumers were erroneously assured that no amount of
surface scratching would impair playback and that a
compact disc would play perfectly even if smeared
with peanut butter.
Rather than counter such assertions, advocates of
vinyl argued that the best analog recording and play-
back equipment yielded fuller, “warmer” sound than
digital recording was capable of achieving. (Because
digital recording translates sound into a binary lan-
guage rather than simply capturing it, all such re-
cordings necessarily filter or modify some aspect or
portion of the original sound, whereas analog re-
cording is capable in principle of capturing a com-
plete, unaltered sound.) Vinyl’s advocates asserted
that the putative superiority of that medium made
such flaws as surface noise and occasional skipping
worth enduring.
Eventually, however, neither the susceptibility of
compact discs to scratching nor the potential audio
superiority of vinyl mattered. The equipment neces-
sary even to approach the level of sound fidelity vi-236 Compact discs (CDs) The Eighties in America
During the 1980’s, compact discs became the primary means of
distributing recorded music.(PhotoDisc)