Happy 25th Birthday, Compact Disc

CDlogoI’m getting ready to move from Minneapolis to Boston and, upon cleaning out my house, found a treasure trove of old CDs that I’d shoved under the stairs along with my 3DO and Sega Saturn systems that some idiot spilled beer all over. I grabbed Metallica’s self-titled black album (which, coincidentally was the first CD I ever bought) and threw it in the last remaining CD player I have in the house and remembered why people loved CDs so much when they first came out.

After listening to compressed MP3s for so long now, my ears had forgotten all about how good music can really sound. And while I’m not sure I’m willing to start walking around with a Discman any time soon, you can bet I’m going to start looking for higher bitrate MP3s. You can ask any hardcore music fanatic where to get the best sounding music and most of them will tell you that vinyl’s where it’s at but the compact disc made great sounding music more accessible by providing the ability to easily skip around from track to track and shrunk the whole thing down to a manageable size.

Do you remember your first CD burner? I plunked down $400 for a 4x HP drive and ruined the first three discs I tried to burn because I ever-so-slightly bumped my P166 Sony Vaio (with MMX extensions) as it was writing to the CD. Good times.

Anyway, happy birthday CD. Sorry we haven’t hung out in a while.

Compact disc hits 25th birthday [BBC News]