The single CD amongst all that analog media seems so much like an anachronism that I had to look it up. The CD standard was published in 1980 and it was commercially available in the US in 1983 but it took until 1992 for CD sales to surpass cassette tape sales.
The Walkman and other tape players were so much superior to CD players for portability and convenience. Batteries lasted a lot longer for portable tape players than for CD players. Tapes could be remixed easily so you could bring a specific playlist (or 2 or 3) with you. Tapes were much more resilient than CDs. The superior audio quality of CDs didn’t matter as much when you were using 1980’s era headphones. Or, even if you were using a boombox, the spinning of a disc was still susceptible to bumps or movement causing skips, and the higher speed motor and more complex audio processing drained batteries much faster. And back then, rechargeable batteries weren’t really a thing, so people were just burning through regular single use alkaline batteries.
It wasn’t until the 90’s that decent skip protection, a few generations of miniaturization and improved battery life, and improved headphones made portable CDs competitive with portable tapes.
At the same time, cars started to get CD players, but a typical person doesn’t buy a new car every year, so it took a few years for the overall number of cars to start having a decent number of CD players.
The single CD amongst all that analog media seems so much like an anachronism that I had to look it up. The CD standard was published in 1980 and it was commercially available in the US in 1983 but it took until 1992 for CD sales to surpass cassette tape sales.
Why can’t this he from 1983 then? Hell, even 1992 isn’t crazy.
The Walkman and other tape players were so much superior to CD players for portability and convenience. Batteries lasted a lot longer for portable tape players than for CD players. Tapes could be remixed easily so you could bring a specific playlist (or 2 or 3) with you. Tapes were much more resilient than CDs. The superior audio quality of CDs didn’t matter as much when you were using 1980’s era headphones. Or, even if you were using a boombox, the spinning of a disc was still susceptible to bumps or movement causing skips, and the higher speed motor and more complex audio processing drained batteries much faster. And back then, rechargeable batteries weren’t really a thing, so people were just burning through regular single use alkaline batteries.
It wasn’t until the 90’s that decent skip protection, a few generations of miniaturization and improved battery life, and improved headphones made portable CDs competitive with portable tapes.
At the same time, cars started to get CD players, but a typical person doesn’t buy a new car every year, so it took a few years for the overall number of cars to start having a decent number of CD players.
Same thing with blurays and UHD now, DVDs still ahead