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First ever CD

Darkagesound

Darkagesound

pfm Member
I was listening to Trevor Pinnock/The English Concert: Pachelbel's Canon & Gigue last evening and realised that this was the very first CD I bought in 1989 to play on my newly acquired Yamaha CDX5. It sounded good then and it sounds even better today played through my Rega Saturn, Elicit and Kudos X2 system. I think the next purchase was Bruce Springsteen's Tunnel of Love. Anyone else recall their first CD purchase?
 
London Calling - obviously ;) It was the 90s before I venture into CD, my ritual with any change to the system was to christen it with LC, not as a sonic test per se, but to see if it was enjoyable.
 
My mate gave me a copy of Tunnel of Love ( can’t remember why he had 2), but I can’t remember the first one I bought.
 
I didn't have a first as such because I was so impressed with the CD format that I bought a whole lot of CD's at once all being CD equivalent of LP's that I had.
(first LP was Abbey Road)
 
The Orb Journey Beyond The Ultraworld and REM Automatic For The People. My purchasing a CD player, a Rotel 965BX, was actually driven by not being able to find a quiet copy of that Orb album! I bought all three on the same day.

As a result I bought all of that period of ambient house/IDM stuff on CD, which in hindsight is highly annoying as the vinyl pressings are all now worth a bloody fortune, and I really was in the right place/right time buying it all when it came out so walked passed all the limited vinyl issues. To add insult to injury a few of the early Warp PDO CD pressings have suffered bronzing/disc rot!

I’m now quite a collector of early CDs so have many discs far older than either of the above, but that is where I started.
 
In 1986, Japanese made DSOTM, R S - Between The Buttons and, possibly, Joan Armatring - Show Some Emotion. Pity the Sony D50 I had sounded absolutely crap as the CD's, far preceeding 'Loudness War', sounds stunningly good!
 
Dire Straits - Love Over Gold....no hisses,clicks or pops in Private Investigations... sadly it sounded dreadful in all other respects.... until I got a Naim CD2 many years later.
 
I can’t remember but it was in the late 90s.

I remember my dad got a B&O CDX in about 1988 (which I still have at home) and we played Graceland and Brothers in Arms and thought that the CD slaughtered the vinyl.
 
Bowie Station to Station and Led Zeppelin lV. Was underwhelmed by the thin bass light sound but welcomed the absence of vinyl noise.
I had a Ferguson CD player rented from a TV rental place and a Sony budget turntable.
Still got the Bowie CD.
 
10,000 Maniacs - In My Tribe. Bought from HMV in 1987.

Played it recently and it's very quiet compared to a lot of later CDs, had to crank the volume up a fair bit.
 
1983 first generation player, rather expensive but I believed the perfect sound hype. Shostakovich 8th Symphony on Decca. It was totally unacceptable - bright, cloudy with decay of notes in a series of steps. It was obviously a sound not meant to be heard with Quad ESL57s.

1994 I heard a Naim CD3, that was excellent, I was converted and disposed of my LP12 many years ago. First CD was Monk, Thelonious Monk. It still sounds fine.
 
Lowlife - New Order 1985
There was a few of us sharing a flat in the mid 80’s, one of the lads bought a Phillips CD player when they first came out (I seem to remember him paying a fortune for it) I bought Lowlife just to see what it would sound like, I think I was impressed,so much so I didn’t buy another CD until six years later when I bought Trompe Le Monde by The Pixies, I’d just bought a secondhand Sony DiscMan off a work mate and hooked it up to my stereo, to be fair it sounded rather good, here I am now 35 years after that first purchase 700 Cds later trying to sell the lot!!
 
I honestly can’t remember, it would probably have been some back catalogue release from Fopp for a fiver.

I don’t think I really fully embraced CD until about 2005, I have very little vinyl after this date.
 
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