Retro Buyer's Guide: Portable CD Players!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 เม.ย. 2022
- There are signs that the humble, 40-year-old compact disc may be poised for a comeback. Interested in getting involved with the format yourself? A retro portable CD player is the easiest (and cheapest) way to do so -- let's check out a variety of models so you can know what to look for!
Sources:
2021 CD sales article: www.theverge.com/2022/3/14/22...
2021 CD sales article: www.stereogum.com/2172153/cd-...
Sony D-2 photo: www.flickr.com/photos/jaytils...
Technics SL-XP7 photo: imgur.com/gallery/wy220
Sony D-250 photo: www.flickr.com/photos/2147650...
Sony D-150 photo: www.flickr.com/photos/3401903...
Sony basic inline remote photos: yahoo.aleado.com/lot?auctionI...
Sony D-EJ775 remote control photo: www.grelly.uk/itm/sony-walkma...
RCA CD player photo: www.ebay.com/itm/184522529804
Audiovox CD player photo: www.ebay.com/itm/324720932639
Craig CD player photo: www.ebay.com/itm/323378457393
Store housewares photo: trillingtruevaluehardware.com...
Flea market CD photo: pixy.org/src2/647/6470717.jpg
Used CD store photo: www.flickr.com/photos/sea-tur...
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CD's are back because people have started to realize that owning your own music and being able to play it whenever you like, without the need for constant internet access, is actually worth something.
exactly. spotify had removed an album of one of my favorite artists and there is another album that was not on spotify at all but youtube has it officially. however there is an album of another artist that is on spotify and not officially on youtube. quite a mess. I just bought the cd that they removed from spotify and just found out it was also enhanced! there’s only one video from that cd on youtube but I do not know if it is the only video on there.
I download everything! Music, TV, movies, comics... All free, all digital, all mine.
@@5Ci0N The FBI has entered the chat.
Got it taped
Yeah if you live in rural africa
The problem with streaming is: You never really own the music. They own it, and they can take it off from streaming anytime. With CD, tape, vinyl, and other kind of physical media. You own the music. It's yours, as long as you have the player.
Hence why you stream from yourself. Rip to a local server and stream off that. Jellyfin and Plex serve that job quite well (personally prefer the former)
You can also turn them into mp3 or flac or whatever floats your boat.
I like cassettes because they are cheap and more importantly, is a cassette player fits in my pocket and I can operate it through my pants riding a bike.
Pay this in mind that Vinyl's gets damaged when handled incorrectly or set to the wrong turntable speed which leads to the Record getting scratched. Cassette Tapes can easily be destroyed with a misaligned tape deck and the ferric tape getting mangled as a result and as for CD,CD's can easily get scratched and become unreadable by the player and on top of that you get yourself a CD collection now and over the course of the years they will suffer the test of time since Disc Rot will deteriorate the CD's and there is a way to save your collection but you must rip all of your CD's on a PC and today's PC's no longer have a CD/DVD Drive so people will have to pay for a external USB DVD Drive in order to ge the job done. You could then use a CD Ripping/Burning software to make copies of your CD's and archive your library. To finish off I value preservation more than having Amazon Music or Spotify delisting content due to them losing their streaming rights. Streaming is not the future and these dated formats are only going to get stronger as time progresses.
As you said, you need a player. Not only a recording, but hardware to enjoy some music. It's a dealbreaker (obviously) for most people. You don't own "licence" itself, but it's click away to have a digital copy on storage media you choose. The only gimmick in favor of older music/media is it's analog form and not stream of digital bits, which CD Player is anyway.
Honestly there so much media and music out there that I just don't care if things get delisted. I'd rather have the space back that my collection of DVDs and cds took up than worry about owning the media.i can 100 percent see getting old media players for aesthetic reasons but when I think about not being able to change artists with the press of a button I shudder. I grew up in the 90s with both cassette players and cd players and I don't miss either of them.
I had a CD player with 45sec anti-skip which i didnt know was a thing.
One day at the bus stop my player fell out my pocket, hit a tree root, and the entire top lid popped off and the cd went rolling away.
I had enough time to re assemble the top part and pop the cd back in before the music stopped playing. I was absolutely stunned!! What a cool device
Proof?
I remember fooling the lid open switch on my sony when I first got an anti skip CD player and stopping the CD to see how long the music would play.
@@volvo09I did that just a few days ago! I was pretty impressed.
@@5Ci0Nmate back in the early 2000’s thing were made a lot better than today. What he said is just the way it was. Fact. Born 1990 pal. 👍🏻
@@5Ci0Na wicked and perverse generation needs to proof for everything.
A young airport TSA agent was very confused by my Sony portable CD player with remote and CD wallet. An older agent came over and said "you've never seen one of these before?" - "Its a portable CD player! You can listen to music!!". The young agent was clearly embarrassed by this razzing because for a moment there he was very suspicious. This was last week. CD's are AWESOME and I especially love the players that show the disc spinning.
Kids these day's?
What does 'razzing' mean?
@@darkestnite822 the older agent bent him over and inserted is fist into his anus and used him like a puppet for the rest of his shift
This may sound dumb, but do you know if the probable CD players allowed to be used in flight?
exactly I own many CD disc in my collection.
I have a basic theory about why CDs are apparently becoming popular again:
So the start of the vinyl resurgence came around the end of the '00s. It's arguably still going, but has probably reached something close to a critical mass by now, since high quality turntables are very easy to come by and you can walk into just about any major retail store and find at least some vinyl. Then towards the end of the '10s we started seeing a minor resurgence in compact cassettes too, though people quickly discovered that it's much harder to find a reliable and high-quality compact cassette player. Now only a few years later it does seem like people are flocking back to CD as the physical medium of choice.
To me, it seems like everyone who got really into vinyl (myself included) has taken the long way around to rediscovering why CDs took over the market to begin with: reproducibility, portability, and longevity. A CD is gonna play exactly the same way on every CD player, it's tiny and lightweight, and a CD I've played a thousand times sounds just like it did when I first bought it. Not to mention, you can make a perfect backup of the whole disc pretty easily with a computer and some free secure ripping software.
Then, of course, everyone else who just kinda passively transitioned to using streaming services over the '10s is learning about the ills of recording and publishing contract disputes, and it's still relatively easy to find your favorite music on CD if it vanishes from the legal internet routes.
You are kind of right, but another factor is that since the wide resurgence of vinyl was driven by the so called "hipsters", and similar minded people, it might be different with CDs . Vinyl was a nice and cool lifestyle accesorie that fit their retro ethos.
But its been a long time since the early 00s, and entire generations have grown up without any connection to physical media, and it has become a quite common myth among younger people that Vinyl is objectively technically superior in sound reproduction accuracy compared to all other formats. These misinformed youngsters presumably make up a share of the vinyl buyers these days, though how big that share is, I couldnt say. Its a quite fascinating example of how information can get lost, distorted and rediscovered in society in a not too long time.
TLDR: We shall se if the impressionable youths find CDs "Cool enough" to shift the market to the same degree as they did with vinyl. In the short term, I think its doubtful.
Relative cost is a major factor. Vinyl isn't worth the pain
Vinyl was the best sounding thing. But most people I know including myself meanwhile are too old and lazy to get up every 2o minutes switching sides. As my old CD of AC/DC Highway to hell gave way, I bought a new version. It was of most awful sounding. What had happen? The Atlantic CD version basically was just the soind of the vinyl pressed on CD. The then to come Sony version was a remix. So I had to get rid of that and find myself an old version.
@@jcmanganold cd’s can be revived with resurfacing. Some game stores do it, you can ask them. Be mindful however that it should really be used as a last resort as it makes the cd’s more prone to scratching
I started buying CDs in the last quarter of 2021 because I wanted to own my music, I use a USB CD player and rip them and use my phone to listen but when I'm at home I use the actual discs
I buy CDs when I cannot find them on a streaming service. I like some obscure artists and run my own Plex Server to fill in the gaps left by Apple Music.
I started buying CDs back in 2019. I have a collection of over 300 discs now. I stream from my own Plex server and have them all uploaded to TH-cam Music, so I can stream my library there as well.
I keep my CDs safe, I back up my library to Google drive for extra backup. All kept for personal use.
Not sure why people think you can't actually own music without buying physical media. All major services offer DRM-free music file downloads. If anything, physical media is just wasteful.
@@graealex well originally I planned to buy MP3s but i Don't use apple services Amazon's music service is cluncky and Google killed play music aka the best music player
@@gkid64 Still, music can easily be owned as files, without physical media.
I'd understand the argument if we were talking about movies, where there is currently no (legal) way to download DRM-free files. And obviously "buying" a movie on a streaming portal doesn't grant actual ownership.
Was in to cd's i the 90s and never got out... At the moment there's a treasure trove of used cd's to be found in thriftstores at a cost of basically nothing. A great way to find your old favourites again and even to discover new music. It's an adventure... and if you're lucky you can even snag some real collectable gems! I certainly did! 🙂
even back in the day I used to buy used CDs. You could find a lot of CDs for less than $5. I still have about 400 CDs in my collection and most of them were bought for cheap.
Yep. Used CDs are def the way to go. Been able to get many of my favourite albums for less than $5 each! It's fun to collect all the older (pre-loudness war) pressings too! :)
How many racks of CD's u need, stuck in a museum, lol!
Keep it if you think it's still good enough?
I'm going to my local record store tomorrow to see if they have any cheap CDs lying around.
@@thecookiemaker We have that many too still and enjoy listening to them. Many songs are still not on all streaming services and every country due to copyright’s etc.
I've never lost faith in the CD format, it just works so well. I've just stuck them in my computer and ripped them to FLAC in EAC, and they sound AMAZING. Been doing that for about 4 years now, and I still haven't looked back
enhance the codecs, you color your B/W movies too, better?
amazing?
@@lucasrem cds are lossless lol
@@bingle2484 not if you want to brag about your 20k vinyl setup 💀💀💀
Yep. I still can play them in one of my cars. Great for road trips.
This is a great follow-up on Techmoan's "R.I.P. Personal CD..." video.
I remember my dad buying me my first CD player! He took me to Wal-Mart and let me choose which color I wanted. It was mostly silver, and the little part where the digital numbers popped up was surrounded by this really pretty grey-blue color! I LOVED it so much! It took two AA batteries and had the repeat one and repeat all feature. It had an ac adapter option as well I believe and...I remember getting frustrated when I would walk and the song would skip if I stepped too hard but I loved the freedom the cd player gave me at a time of my life where I really had no freedom.
I mean, being able to listen to a song by myself was wild!
Nice story!
The ones that had anti skip was amazing. But sadly then mp3 Ayers like the ipod were just around the corner.
I wish you'd made this video a couple months ago. I started rebuying my cd collection and wanted a good quality simple CD player and was a bit overwhelmed by the options. everything you said in this video was true and lined up with the homework I was doing myself. At first I wanted a super cool retro 80s looking one like the D-5 or something, but then I discovered they're too expensive and finicky to get into, despite how awesome they look. I ended up going with a Sony D-EJ017CK which was simple, affordable, looked sleek and sounded great. Ive been enjoying listening to all my albums with a set of MDR-7506s ever since.
If you like the best Discman, just get Panasonic SL-SX500.
Adam Wilson
You sold your CD's and now you buy them back
Mad people here!
@@lucasrem sick burn bro
Collecting anything today is work but back in the early 2K you could have bought these CD players for $1-$5 as the thrift stores were just giving these away and had a lot of bins for them! And CD's were 50 cents to $1.
"Maybe you're young enough to have never experienced that format in its heyday" are words I wasn't prepared for about CDs. I feel very old now!
When I was very young (2 years old), I remember my parents listening to their Hi-Fi CD player (Sony model). As a 2 year old, my eyes just lit up seeing it!
I grew up right at the beginning of the mp3 era. We had a home cdplayer at home but my parents never really let me use it nor did i like their music. Suddenly I'm getting really into cds of my favorite albums and now I'm addicted
I still love CD’s! They’re my favorite format. They’re nostalgic for me, as we used to have a ton! I now have a collection of just over 100, and the absence of hum/buzz you get from them during quiet moments in songs is just wonderful. I will admit, cassettes and vinyl records can get damn close, but digital silence is just unmatched.
I grew up right as CDs were fading out so I never really got into it, but my first 'Music Player' was a Sony Walkman so I have real nostalgia for cassettes.
But that’s all it is, yes? Nostalgia. I don’t see any advantage to the cassette format. I grew up with it, but with the best will in the world, it was a comprised format.
@@FatNorthernBigot I mean yeah but cassettes are fun and so is vinyl.
@@ramen6236 I grew up with the fiddly, hard-to-read (especially at my age) inlays and vaguely compromised SQ of tape. It was fun, but teenage me wouldda dropped all of that in a heartbeat for what we have now.
For certain things, cassette beats CD. For example, I like listening to music while biking. A cd player will not fit in my pocket and MP3 players are not easy to control riding a bicycle. I can operate my cassette walkman with my hands through my pants pocket and lower or raise the volume blind because it's just a wheel at the top of the unit. Cassette is just the best solution to my problem.
Also, cassettes sound good enough. The alleged poor quality of cassettes is MASSIVELY overstated. Prerecorded tapes are recorded at a very high speed and have no wow and flutter in the recording. If you have a decent player, the wow and flutter inherent in the format is so low that most people cannot pick it up even during a piano solo.
@@ramen6236 I think the format you listen to music on is your own choice. All formats have there own little quirks. Just pick the one that gives you the what experience. #vinylgang
I had a portable Panasonic CD player I bought in 1999. It actually had a 60 second buffer in it and it was very hard to make it skip as a result. The unit did have the switch to turn off the buffer if you wanted to. I did use the cassette adapter to play CD's in my car at the time. It was a nice little CD player that worked very well. I also burned a lot of CD's from MP3's at the time and it was nice to be able to play those in the car. I cannot see CD's dying completely. The sound quality of CD's was already good enough that they will still be useful for a long time.
If its sound quality that matters, CDs arent just "good enough", they are literally "perfect", as in transparent to the human ear from what was recorded.
I loved my Panasonic CD players. Had a ~'93 with 3 second skip protection and a ~'96 with 30 seconds of protection, which I used until I got an iPod mini in '05. When I got the '96, I gave my '93 to a friend. Last I checked, both players are still running strong.
Both models had a little Easter egg... when the skip buffer ran out, the display would flash "Ooops!". LOL!
If you don't need it to be portable, in my experience by far the cheapest & most reliable method option is to get a used dvd player(even nice brands are likely to be dirt cheap, or even free) - ideally with play control buttons on the front so you don't have to always use the remote.
You better hurry and buy these "cheap" DVD players before the thrift stores jack up the prices!
I remember growing up and having this specific CD player from Philips and this just reminded me of how much that thing meant to me :)
I had some Philips one too. It had a transparent blue cover with the buttons near the center of the cover. 40 seconds of ESP3. It was always fun because you could slightly open up the cover while listening, put your finger on the CD to stop it from spinning, and still listen to the music. As a young teen, I thought that was so cool.
Dont forget nearly every car has a cd player in and can get very good quality systems with cd stackers. Alpine is magic for this. I remember when Dire Straits released Brothers In Arms. Albums like this were monumental in the increased popularity of cds and fully showing off the hi fidelity and suburb quantity benefits of digital music.
Also please answer this.....often told if you back up or make a master disk of important documents , family photos etc to a cd and put in safe in case fire burns physical copies , they recommend that you duplicate to A NEW CD EVERY 10 YEARS ?? As they DETERIORATING OVER TIME ?? . @thisdoesnotcomp IS THIS TRUE FOR DIGITAL MUSIC CDs ALSO.??
@@dfsilversurfer cds and dvds do suffer disc rot. maybe 10 years is a bit much but maybe more like 15-20. iirc there was some reason it doesnt happen as much to music CDs as they do to burned ones (i think its because music CDs are stamped?)
Now today new car don't have cd player it's a shame to be forced to use a usb stick , SHAME........
2006 kid here who’s getting into CD collecting, started buying CDs with pocket and birthday money around the end of 2022, I like the designs of CD jewel cases, the booklets and the disc designs, there’s something about CDs that’s just cooler to me than LPs, plus they’re dirt cheap. I don’t actually have a dedicated player, I just play CDs on my PS3 (I also import them to the HDD for use during games) and am considering getting an external CD/DVD adapter for my MacBook Air
2007 kid & i agree, its very fun. i bought amerie & TLC CDs off amazon and i own a discman d-e251
I was born in 07 and started buying CDs when I was around 12 since they were $1 at goodwill vs a $10 monthly Spotify subscription. Ive a CD alarm clock for a long time but I usually just ripped the CDs and put them on my iPod nano. I've got about 60 on my CD rack and that's after getting rid of like 20 I wasn't listening to in order to make room for the new ones I've been buying. (just ordered 8 today and am waiting for them to arrive). I guess there's just something I like about actually being able to see the albums I own in a physical form. Plus there's neat extras sometimes like a hidden booklet in the case of my Kid A CD.
2006 kid too!!! I remember my dad teaching me how to burn CDs and DVDs as a kid, but being bummed out that the way he showed me was less and less accessible for me. Plus, with streaming getting on everyone's last nerves as well as my general yearning for physical media, I'm starting to collect and hopefully learn how to keep all my favorite things backed up through TH-cam tutorials.
I think it's great that older formats are making a small comeback. Cassettes and CDs are my favorite.
I've noticed lately that the prices for cassettes are going up.
Comeback? CDs never died 😂
I bought a couple of Philips “jogproof” CD players from the early 2000s at the thrift store recently, and they really sound lovely for how much they cost.
I like to put 3 or 4 of my cds in my backpack every day and listen in the coffee shop while I study. I swear the sound quality beats anything from Spotify (especially when the cd is mixed properly), and I love owning my favorite music.
Sure! Spotify premium is still only mp3 320kbit/s, so a lossy compression.
Jog proof! Whoa throwback
If I could afford them or find decent second hand fully functional ones I would have a few of the Panasonic shock wave cd and mp3 cd player models as they are really decent players and still better than most of the newer ones sold in stores
There's something truly bizarre about CDs making a "resurgence" because, aside from them still being pretty relevant a decade ago, literally nothing replaced them. Only Bandcamp and maybe some obscure online retailers sell uncompressed music (and usually no artwork or extras, just the music), streaming is a trial period where you own nothing, and while I also enjoy them, cassettes and vinyl are both analog formats that compromise on sound quality (you simply can't argue it, it's objective).
I never stopped buying CDs because nothing replaced their exact use case to me. Nothing else was worth the tradeoffs. I'd have to transfer an analog format to use it on my computer, and when they're usually made from the CD master anyway as 90% of modern vinyl is, I'd rather just buy the CD and cut out the middleman. Obviously, I love CDs, so if more people wanna get into them, that's great. Just seems like peak faux-nostalgia to me.
Absolutely. Exactly why I also never stopped buying CDs. CDs still the only mainstream physical format, pity SACD never really caught on. Many people forget how good quality audio CDs are, especially when compared to low bit rate digital formats.
@@ps2channel25 A lot of people forget that MP3 was never meant to sound amazing, it was meant to stream well over low-bandwidth connections. It's still good enough for most people, but I don't like to malign it for not being FLAC when it was never meant to be FLAC. Really, it's a brilliant format because it does what it was meant to do so well.
Mostly, I like having lossless/uncompressed around because I can transcode it to lossy formats as needed or do any other type of editing work with it, or I can hand it off to Demucs and get the best possible AI stems. Some of it's totally peace of mind, but that's still my preference.
SACD was never worth all that much, to be honest. Outside a studio context with a lot of bouncing going on, you'd never need 24-bit, and 48KHz is overkill unless you're trying to preserve, say, a studio master tape or something. If something had a better master on SACD (like Oasis' "What's the Story"), then it's worth it, but CD has the hardware and software support, and that's the appeal for that. I think I'd rather see more multitracks and isolated instrument stems floating around than just higher quality stereo or even surround.
HDTracks is not exactly obscure, though...
@@psionski HDTracks is a grift. It's not really HD audio, it's nearly always the same smashed master as CD and streaming, just with a lower noise floor and a higher frequency cutoff (like either of them matter), and of course, bigger file sizes. Even if I were to buy through them and just knock it down to CD quality myself, I'm still not getting a physical product nor am I getting album art or any special goodies like I would with a CD. It's effectively buying rips of DVD-Audio discs. I'll pass.
@@mariteaux the point is, it’s not obscure, lots of people use it, and you get DRM-free FLAC files. Whether it’s HD or not, it’s not like anybody could tell the difference anyway...
I used to have this RCA cd player with the 45 second anti skip, the best part was that it buffered the audio up to 45 seconds, so even if I opened the lid by accident, the music kept playing. haaaa man i miss those days.
As a DJ, I experienced the turn of 2000 opposite to how you described: I was buying more new vinyl than ever before and listening to mixes on cassette all the time.
D-151 was my first CD player as well. High quality sound, certainly.
You get high quality sound out of just about any CD player unless the amp is really bad. This is not true of cassette decks and phonographs and so people just expect cheap CD players to sound as bad as cheap cassette players and phonographs. There is no equivalent to a crystal cartridge or low end head or permanent magnet erase head in the CD world.
@@tarstarkusz free ukraina
@@ps5hasnogames55 What in god's good name are you talking about?
I got into cds as a kid my dad had tons of cds he let me listen to them growing up. For my birthday he got me my first cd player it's a portable sony one I still have it it works perfectly and started collecting cds when I was 16 and still am to this day and will always be finding more to listen to and enjoy for years to come
CD sales increased in the US again in 2023. As someone with an album no longer on streaming, I'm thrilled to see people wanting to own the music they love again.
I like CDs because they're a perfect copy of the music, you can just rip them and have a cheap MP3 copy especially if you buy used thrift store CDs
I still have my Panasonic SL-CT800 from when I was starting high school (2004), including its original box, documentation, remote, and headphones. I took really good care of it so it's still scratch free after 18 years. I did have to buy a new battery for it, but thanks to eBay, it's not hard to obtain one. My first Portable CD player was a Sanyo model which had POOR battery life. I mostly had to use it with the AC Adapter. I don't miss that one.
I also have a Panasonic SL-CT800, I haven't used it in a number of years but I'm pretty sure that it and its batteries still work. I loved that player when I first got it, the batteries last forever and ever, especially if you use a combination of AA batteries and the rechargeable batteries. I think the thing I like the least about that player is it doesn't have a pause button on the remote and no resume playback either, that is, when you turn it off then back on, it doesn't resume playback from the exact position you stopped listening. The LEDs on the front of the unit are cool, I always liked them. I should get mine out and test it and see if it's still going.
Maybe they got better as time passed or up the range, but my SL-CT700 died after like a year or less of use. It was so cool looking and had so much character. Definitely my favorite portable CD player I ever had.
@@Lachlant1984Yes, I do remember the AA battery adapter. I still have mine. However, I never actually used it. The gum stick batteries last a long time, and the magnetic charger was a super cool feature. I do remember the resume feature working on my unit, I could be listening to a specific MP3 file off a CD and it would resume where I left off. The LED's are extremely handy as they show the charge indication.
@@tall_dude1233 I never used the magnetic charging attachment, I'd always plug the AC adaptor straight into the unit, I think the manual said something about the magnetic charger allowing for smoother charging, whatever that means. I would often use regular AA batteries in my unit and take the rechargeable batteries completely out believe it or not.
@@champa224 I've never heard of the SL-CT700, possibly and earlier/cheaper model.
Love your videos. You never disappoint. Thank you for all the time you invest into creating these videos for us.
CDs are without a doubt my favourite format for distributing music, I've been buying CDs since I was a teenager in the late 90s and although I generally use streaming music these days, I still like to buy the occasional CD, or ask my family and friends to buy me CDs for my birthday etc, I have a number of personal CD players, my favourite being a Panasonic SL-CT800 that my mother bought me for Christmas in 2004, I think it's still working although I haven't used it in a number of years. Panasonic and Sony stopped making personal CD players like these ones quite a long time ago, I wonder if they'll return to making them again, I think they both still make Hi Fi stereo systems with CD players in them.
I think the biggest modern perk of finding a portable CD player that can still play mp3 cds is if you’re big into audiobooks. I’ve noticed that a lot of newer audiobooks that still get a physical release are being sold as mp3 cds, probably to cut costs
Something else to keep in mind is that if you’re only looking to listen at home another option that someone may have at home already is a DVD/Blue-Ray player. If not they can be found fairly cheaply at a thrift store.
Absolutely, for a while i had been using an old DVD player as my CD machine until i figured out it couldn't play my burned CD-Rs :/ But if you don't care about that, it's still a really reliable option. The great thing about CDs is that they're going to generally sound the same no matter what device you use, even if it's an old beat up DVD player
yeah, i have like 7 old DVD players i dont use anymore and they all play CDs. so do my home consoles that have disc drives (except for nintendo for some reason)
@@tinkercrab11 the oldest DVD players dont support DVD-Rs and CD-Rs i think which sucks. i have one from like 1999 or 2000 and i thought it was broken because it wouldn't play a burned DVD i made or a burned CD but then i put in a copy of 8 mile & it played fine
I still have my Sony D-EJ100 CD player. I felt it was pretty advanced for it's time with the anti skip, super long playback life on a set of AA's, it was pretty slim, and had the inline remote. And the bass boost button was sick with the included headphones.
I love CDs! I've probably got well over 300 collected over the years. The best part is some of those CDs aren't on streaming platforms which is nice because it feels special being able to listen to them. Physical media will never die!
When I was in elementary school around 1997, there's nothing on this earth I wanted more than portable CD player. I ended up receiving that exact RCA model you pictured as a gift. I was very careful with it but the very poorly-designed door hinge mechanism would break if you breathed on it incorrectly, and the door would fly off of the player. I remember my dad diligently submitting warranty claims for that same issue maybe three times, and the multi-week wait for the player to go back and forth in the mail each time. RCA kept sending refurbished units back. After the third occurrence, they sent a brand new unit back with a statement that they would stop honoring warranty claims for that issue. It broke within a month of receiving it. I got a Philips Magnavox after that, which I still have and still works perfectly to this day.
Great video!
I have bad memories of that D-E305 player though. Between my brother and I, we went through about 5 players before FINALLY convincing the Sony rep that they were absolutely horrible when it came to skip protection; something we both absolutely needed as we walked everywhere.
Eventually a new manager was hired and they upgraded us with two units with ESP2 which should have been recommended from the get-go and they were much, MUCH better.
Nice! This not only about experiencing the format and owning media, but also about a significantly better quality of sound. I decided to buy higher end stackable audio components of the early 90s. The only thing that’s usually broken is the tray belt. No biggie to replace
I just love CD and they are most most preferred format to listen to music. This format never died for me, and I am happy to see it is seeing a resurgence. I just love the ability to have best of both worlds, in regards to ripping CDs to FLAC or just playing them direct on a dedicated player in my home entertainment center for a chill listening experience. Fantastic video, been a fan for years.
Hey Colin, just wanted to say that even though this isn’t your most popular video, I found it very useful and it got me into collecting CDs, with some great information. Thanks!
FANTASTIC show! This is right in our wheelhouse! Something else for folks to consider as well is that players made prior to the early 90’s will have older 16 bit DACS which can sound (very slightly) worse. You will notice all of his 90’s and newer players have 1bit DACS which is the gold standard and uses noise shaping and dithering techniques. The D-131 was my first CD player and it was a HUGE deal to have digital sound and to be able to skip - and no rewind! I personally like some of the new players, brands such as HOTT and Monodeal make great players with awesome features such as Bluetooth out (for cars, and BT headphones) as well as rechargeable batteries and SD card integration. I think we are seeing a renaissance of CD player design. And amen to the quality being so very close from one model to the next - it’s really hard to go wrong!
The fact CD players aren't everywhere is making me feel old. I have a cassette, record and cd player, a whole hifi. I always have. I make sure all my CD players have MP3. Its essential some people have disc catalogs from that time and not to mention even today you can burn your entire library to a disc or two and then update it every few years along with swapping out and playing your CD's. If you are to buy one, Id really say to buy a MP3 one, you may lose a hard drive, but losing a physical CD in a booklet is a whole lot harder.
Great video, really takes me back to my own first Discman, but also gives a nice overview of the evolution of the device. Wonderful to watch!
I never stopped buying CDs. I started buying vinyl around 10 years ago, but CDs have always been my favorite format.
The other thing to add about why they offered car kits for many of these is at the time (late 80s into the early 90s), the car specific CD players were VERY expensive. Sony themselves didn't offer a model under $400 until almost the mid 90's. And as you mentioned, many people were still attached to cassettes so they didn't want to dump their tape deck to go exclusively CD's. CD's themselves were also very expensive at around $15-18 for new releases. That's like $33-40 today. My first car CD player was a Sony CDX-7520 in 1990 and it cost $400 and this was literally the least expensive Sony car CD player you could buy at the time.
the car cd stereos ruined the music industry with the introduction of the Loud Wars; nowadays the only reason I can think of for buying a cd is to get a good deal on some japanese SACD version of pre-90s artists (jazz, soul, funk, blues mostly); rip that off and play it back on my HiFi berry dac + Volumio coupled to my Sennheiser headphones ; that way I'm not pirating and own my music
I still have my Sony Discman D-303. All metal case. Released in 1991. There was an optional "car kit" - a gooseneck (bendable) shaft, a nice metal clip-in table at top with some springy shock absorbing. This was to be securely bolted to the car floor somehow. The player was very skippy when jolted.
I honestly cannot understand why he recommends portable players. They are the worst of all worlds if you ask me. They make the most compromise in audio quality while offering really nothing in the way of portability because CDs were never portable in the first place. CDs are too big to fit in your pocket. Component/rack CD players are every bit as cheap to buy used today, they sound better and are easier to work on if they don't work.
These units were never designed to be serviced. It is a nightmare working on stuff this small if you don't regularly do it. If a cap has gone bad, you're going to have to desolder a very small SMD cap. This is not easy and cannot reasonably be done with a regular old corded soldering iron. You will need a soldering station with hot air to do it easily, plus another 10 dollar roll of Kapton tape. If you don't already have this stuff, it all adds up.
I also failed to mention my Sony CDX-7520 car CD player skipped like a school girl playing hopscotch. I moved to an Alpine 7903 and used that unit in 3 different cars over 10 years. No more skipping, a volume knob and superb SQ. Alpine was the gold standard in car audio CD players throughout the 90’s IMO
@@tarstarkusz he recommends portable sony vs deck sized ones for a sub $100 entry level barrier into the vintage format; he also thinks sonys have better audio dacs and headphone amp than the rest of the brands; but if you ask me, you are better off with a cd-rom drive + your own sound card/amplifier because contrary to audio tapes in which the head quality makes a difference in the sound, cd lens are pretty much the same in every unit, thus you can find any cheap cd-rom reader/burner from any old pc and use it a your audio cd player
Great video. Very informative and interesting to see the past of a format that people have written off over the last decade and a half. I also recently started getting into CD players as a way of supporting more indie artists that do not have MD or Cassette options for physical releases
Great choice with that Semisonic CD! I always loved the pattern on that disc.
This was a very nice wrap up of the portable CD player history! There were topics mentioned that I had totally forgotten. One more thing: before the electronic shock protection (or rather at the beginning, when it was a feature of high end players), there was mechanical shock protection. My first portable CD player was one from Philips (a car set). The CD player assembly was mounted with dampers in the housing. It was rather bulky and the shock protection was bad. I later switched to the Panasonic which you showed (but with the basic remote) which works very well. And when I see that the value of it nowadays is only 5$, makes me keeping it. Thanks for the Video!
It would be interesting to have the same kind of video but with retro ('90 - '00) mini stereo systems with cd readers.
Excelente vídeo, lindos aparatos. Hace poco conseguí uno casi nuevo Philips para carro con todos sus accesorios y con un sonido genial. Ojalá los grandes fabricantes los volvieran a producir. Un saludo desde Bogotá Colombia!
Red Book, still the gold standard for digital audio...
After several Sony discmans I went and stayed with superior iRiver SlimX mid and top models (titanium shell, dig. optical out, under 1 cm thick, full backlit remote, fm tuner, esp, mp3 playback, eq + presets and some more).
I was in high school when the mp3s started to take off and although I did have a portable CD player they were mostly burnt discs because I couldn't afford any originals. I just recently started getting into collecting CDs and so far it's been great.
I still own a SONY D-33 Discman, and it works like a charm. It can even read CD-Rs, if they are finalized. UPDATE, November 30th, finally my beloved D-33 kicked the bucket, and I'm looking for a good replacement. I only see a SOUNDMASTER and a TECHNISAT discman, and I'm uncertain, which one to pick up. However, TECHNISAT is a german satellite equipment brand, Soundmaster is rather unknown. Thank heavens, my 2009 RAV4, D4D, has the 6disc in-dash changer, so I rip my precious discs into mp3, and insert them in my car. Can you recommend a discman for me? Thank you and season's greetings.
My Sony portable CD player had a base unit which cushioned bumps while driving. Cool, but bulky. Neat to see these.
I have one from 2003 it is a sony cd walkman d-ej368ck. I purchased it at a thrift store for 3$. Works great and been using it quite reguarly.
With the advent of music streaming, I can't wait to have a guide for digital audio players in the next few years.
As people from my generation (late millennial/early gen Z) get older, it's actually not too surprising that there's been an uptick in CD purchases. Most of us are in our mid-20's and still used CD'S in the early 2000's, even during the advent of the iPod.
I had the Sony D EJ615 with remote back in 99 - 2000. It was my first cd walkman i ever bought. I used it every day when i went to high school and the G-protection worked really well. Never had any problem with skipping songs. Now when i saw your video i will buy another one again just for the nostalgia.
They started to go downhill in Europe in the early 2000's when they started implementing volume limiting. Many just wouldn’t go loud enough, especially when using different earphones or bigger headphones. They failed to understand that some cd's are quieter than others and you just couldn’t get enough volume, even at sensible levels.
I had 3 of the ones you showed. The D-36 was my first one. I loved it amd I still have my first CDs I bought back in 1991. I love your videos BTW.
I have a Sony D-5 player that I bought in 1985. It still looks and plays like new.
I got a Sony Discman D-E555 from 1999 and I love it. Line out and optical out , the works. portable CD players near 2K were just amazing.
This video got me all nostalgic and I got out the D-CJ01 for some rainy day listening. (Bought new in 2002 and still an amazing player)
Just recently i have started buying super audio compact discs.paired to a good set off speakers the sound is phenomenal.
Great video. Completely forgot I owned a D-131 until I saw you feature it and was awash in amazing memories of that unit.
Not sure if you’re fielding video ideas, but the miniaturization of portable cassette players in the mid-90’s always fascinated me. Panasonic, especially, was making really thin, high-quality “walkmen”, sometimes with an external AA battery mount to compliment the thin rechargeable batteries that came standard.
I owned two of those models you showed! One of the basic silver and grey ones with mega bass, and then the one with shock protection and Groove. The latter was a replacement for the former which was stolen when my house was broken into.
As for MP3-CD, I took full advantage of that when it became available affordably (I think I had a Panasonic player). I could carry 10 MP3-CDs with me to university, a 1 hour trip each way, and essentially have my whole music collection with me.
I’ve never collected CDs and picked up a Discman just recently. Found some CDs of my favourite bands too. This is exciting, experience like never before lol.
My biggest tip if you're new to CD collecting is to visit thrift stores and Discogs! Sooo many CDs you can get for so cheap. Of course they won't be in perfect condition but as long as they're not too scratched up they'll play perfectly well.
Make sure to check out thrift shops! It’s still common and easy to find portables in thrift stores, usually for $5-$10 each.
8:22 - My first CD player… I love that you have it.
After 5 years of hiatus, I started to collect CDs again from my favorite bands. I recently bought a used Panasonic SL-SX400 Portable CD Player (I believe this was a Japan-only model) and it runs very fine and it has an 10 seconds anti-shock feature but still sounds fine.
D-151 was my first CD player, very nostalgic.
just bought a discman de456ck and was worried i picked a bad model. this video is an amazing resource on getting started!
Very informative video. I ended up buying a very good condition used Philips AX2330 for £15, fed up with TH-cam adverts whilst streaming music so going back to the old ways!
Bought a D-CJ01 used on eBay as I wanted to get into CDs and I really liked the look of it after seeing it in your repair video. It works great with Panasonic eneloop batteries which I can recharge with the AC adapter from the player.
Rechargeable batteries should work in everything you own which takes those size batteries. Because even though they have a nominal lower voltage, their voltage is well within the range of a disposable alkaline battery.
Alkaline batteries are 1.5V NEW and about 0.9V on their last leg. 99% of electronics which use alkaline batteries will function perfectly normally at 1.2V per cell and this is especially true of things like tape and CD walkman. The motor speed of a walkman or CD player is extremely important and are designed to work across a wide voltage level, especially if they are multi-cell batteries. Like if it takes 6 batteries, it needs to work between 9V new and 5.4V on their last legs without slowing down.
Rechargeable cells work at their nominal voltage across the charge cycle. IOW, they are 1.2V hot off the charger and 1.2V just before they die.
I built a working Panasonic SLS model out of several busted ones I got at a thrift store back in 98. Loved that thing.
By the time I got a cd player in the 90s I found out about mini disc. I still had a cd player at home, but I moved onto mini disc and loved it. My mini disc player had an inline remote, was pretty cool.
Sony was just a small portion of this market. I fondly remember the Panasonic Shockwave series of CD players that came in blue or yellow, or the later ones that were clad in aluminum and came with cool accessories like a hand strap.
You out together an excellent instructional video that all seems quite accurate - thanks and have subscribed.
Great cd player primer! And I'm very jealous of that Tatsu vinyl.
What a wild video. I have had, and still have, almost every Discman on that table. Brings back a lot of memories.
Great video! I just spent the last couple of months gathering up hundreds of used CD jewel cases with light scratches and a few boxes of new CD-r 100 pack discs. I am planning to release my mixtape on Cassette and CD and have been making post's on my facebook page showing all the stuff you have to buy just to put out a project on hardcopy. Now we just need Sony to come back with some new CD/Cassette boombox models that also have Bluetooth capabilities so people can connect their phones to it. Would probably make some good sales!!
The player at 29:47 brings back memories, it was the first CD/MP3 player that I purchased and I still miss it*. It was the first CD/MP3 player that Sony released it was just about perfect. Small for a player designed to play regular CDs (it was only slightly larger around that the CD itself), excellent control layout, and the largest display I have ever seen on a portable CD player (the display was about 4 inches by 3/4 of an inch). excellent sound, and a long battery life with two AA batteries. The only negative was that this player couldn't fast forward/rewind MP3 tracks and for me that was a minor issue. When it comes to portable CD players, this is the one that I compare all others too.
Concerning the niche that the player occupied, it was great to be able to put between 6 and 10 hours of music on one CD, and I had a CD carrying case that was about the same size as this player and allowed me to carry 20 CDs with me. Plus, it was much less expensive then the digital audio player (IIRC I paid about $100 US for mine).
*I didn't know it at the time, but I now suspect that either a capacitor went bad or a belt slipped off within the player.
Great video! Would be cool to see a similar video for portable cassette players.
Man I had that d242ck, I haven’t see one in years. That brings back a lot of memories.
Thanks for the great video on the Sony Discman history. I was checking the Japanese action prices and they are same as the US eBay listings. Your video has made an impact.
I still have my D-141 and it still works after all these years. I abused the crap out of that thing as well. The battery life with rechargeables was amazing for the time.
I use eneloops in mine
Fun video! I haven't used music CDs much in years but still have a big CD collection stashed away .
Think my first Discman as a kid was either the D-131 or D-141 featured in the video.
Recently dug out my old D-EJ615 (looks identical to D-EJ616 you have in the video), and working on it while I'm watching this. Still works great on AC power but has battery compartment corrosion that needs to be cleaned up. Looks a bit cosmetically beat up but everything works and it's complete in box with remote and all the documentation and everything.
Great video! Very informative! I still have my Sony D-EJ611 CD Walkman player from about mid-2000. It's a little scuffed up on the top cover and the battery door is held shut with tape, but it works perfectly. I used it extensively in college because my car didn't have a CD player built in. I don't use it much anymore, but I still enjoy it once in a while. My wife and I are both into collecting the physical formats (vinyl and CD) because 1) they sound great and 2) we own the music. With streaming, the sound quality may be a bit subpar, especially if you're not paying for the premium offering. With streaming, you are also at the mercy of the studios and distributors when it comes to availability of the music. When we buy CDs or vinyl, we can listen to them any time we want. Our kids are also accustomed to (and enjoy) hearing that quality of music. I'm kind of staying away from cassettes because of how expensive they are and not trusting that my old tape decks won't suddenly decide to eat one of those very expensive tapes. :) I have a bunch of tapes from when I was a kid, but I haven't bought any new tapes since probably Y2K or so.
It's honestly really interesting to think about how relevant this video is. A used portable CD player is really the best way to be listening to CDs if you don't mind using an audio jack instead of a Bluetooth connection. This is mainly due to a lot of modern laptops, desktops, and even shells for custom desktops not having any form of disk drive, anymore. Like I get it, you can get things like games or drivers for a printer via download online, now. Same time, I want to be able to watch the physical movie disks I have without needing to turn on my PS4 or what have you. This is especially frustrating in how modern home consoles don't play CDs anymore.
You can cast a Discman to Bluetooth if you use a Nintendo Switch bluetooth adapter, I do that in the car :-D
I was in high school in the early 2000's so the ESP Max CD Walkman has a bit of nostalgia for me. Everyone had one. I had a RioVolt SP250 which was packed with features like CD-Text and mp3 playback and I still used the Sony Walkman because of the long battery life and how slim it was.
Great video. My 15yo daughter was using my old Technics SL-XP700, circa 1990, until recently. The audio jack failed, the case developed a crack near the hinge, the usual wear and tear for a 30 year old + machine. This was one of the earliest ‘slim’ players, using gum stick cells + external AA battery case and took a fair chunk out of my first wages lol. I cherished that player for a long time before moving to minidisc then iPod. Now browsing eBay looking for a nice replacement!
I had the top-of-the-line Sony D-E705 Discman and I used it primarily to send music to my MZ-R70 Minidisc recorder.
I could hear the compression of the ESP² however it passed the audio straight through the optical-out and would only send compressed audio to the headphones.
I've still got my Minidisc stuff but the main flaw of the Sony D-E705 was it's flimsy lid.
This is a fantastic walk down memory lane for 90s music listening, at least until 98/98 when I got a CD-RW drive and could rip CDs to flac and make my own mix CDs and then in 99 or so when I got my flac/mp3 portable CD player that held a hundred or so songs with id3 navigation. And then eventually I got a second generation ipod 10gb and then eventually a 30gb video when that died. Video podcasts were amazing.
i mean, it's just nice to have physical copies of your favourite albums and CDs are the most convenient of the big three formats right now. I mostly use em to rip and put on my phone and ipod.
I've still got my Sony MZ-R900S player my brother gave me and still load it up with tunes. I love the LCD remote stick looks so cool even now...
The older compact Cd players with manufacturing dates of 2002 and earlier are not made with engineered destruction, so they last longer. K-pop music companies release their artist’s albums in a hard cover picture book with a Cd album.
21:13
This is the same connector for the PSP (PlayStation Portable) Remote. It's interesting to see that they just carried this design over when creating the PSP which released in 2005. I got the PSP for Christmas that year and it came with the remote.
Now I am going to try to use my PSP remote on my Walkman. Surely it will work?
Edit:
The PSP remote connector Jason less pin, as well as being thicker. This is still impressive considering I am trying this with a D828K from June 1993.
I still have the Sony CDwalkman. It was bulletproof. I then got into MiniDisc which I still have a fondness for.
I’m still blown away by your talking hand.