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Comment by yvrev | Hacker News Reader

I'm going out on a limb here but wouldn't CD's be both cheaper and simpler to manufacture too?

Not in 1982. CD players were very expensive to manufacture and buy and making discs was harder too. Over time it got cheaper because a potato could do the decoding and the lasers got cheap and economies of scale allowed it. But at first it was very expensive, discs cost like twice as much as vinyl albums.

A record player is mechanically and electrically much simpler. And vinyl disks are just pressed vinyl. You can buy a toy kit to build a record player, a CD player is just too complicated.

> You can buy a toy kit to build a record player, a CD player is just too complicated.

you don't need a toy kit, to get sound of a vinyl. but yes it's basically impossible to build a laser and tech to read cd-da and than get audio from it...

well there is https://www.theaudioeagle.com/columns/column07.html but you need a dac and a cdm device, vinyl only needs paper and pencil (fun fact a guy from r&d of dts showed that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaqmdcaF87w)

You're probably correct. That means the audio CD offered cheaper manufacture and superior sound. (Vinyl lovers will dispute the superior sound claims.)

Call CD sound "more accurate". Vinyl lovers historically loved vinyl precisely because they love the particular inaccuracy it imparts. CDs are more accurate. Brutally so at times, even. Especially when they're being really, really accurate at conveying clipping brought on by the loudness wars.

(Now I suspect vinyl's main purpose in life is as a marker of being a discriminating consumer who doesn't want to be a victim of the loudness war, since you can't overdrive a vinyl record in the same way for physical reasons. It is unfortunate that one must go to such measures to opt out of "music that sounds like crap because you ruined it, you stupid music companies".)

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