[Chung]

Randy Yates wrote:
"c. leeds" writes:

Chung wrote:

Yes, digital audio did not take over immediately. One reason is that the
cost of the CD player was very high in the first year, or maybe two
years. Back then you had to really care about sound to invest in a CD
player and the CD's.
You must be joking, right?

I agree with him, and I am not joking. I made the decision to invest
in the then-expensive CD player and CD replacements precisely because
I cared about the sound.

And I think he has a valid point: the "early adopters" have to see
something signficantly better in a technology in order to shell out
the extra cash to get in on the ground floor.

At the time I was an electrical engineer developing part of a $40M
satellite tracking system for one of those government agencies you
don't talk about in the clear, the point being I was seeped in
technology (and still am) and knew my way around the digital world.

I worked at HP during the early 1980's. The lab engineers I worked with
were unanimously impressed with the sound quality of CD's. In fact,
everyone in our lab who had any interest in sound had switched over to
CD very early, so I guess engineers tend to be early adopters when they
are convinced of the technical superiority of the new technologies. The
couple of engineers who were also expert audio designers I knew at the
time (who would become famous later in high-end audio) were already
exclusively using digital technology (PCM to beta) to record live concerts.