Do You Remember Your First CD Player?

Dopogue: Right you are! I didn't even remember that my first player was branded Magnavox, not Philips. And I had just read Nrchy's post! Guess I had some issues (at the time, and apparently still) thinking that my bitchin' mid-fi system had something in it made (only not really) by an old-line manufacturer of TV's... :-)

I had the same Philips CBD-650 as Nrchy (circa '86 maybe?). Couldn't tell you much about how it sounded, as I wasn't an audiophile back then and didn't have a particularly revealing system. I do remember my brother getting an inexpensive Panasonic a few years later with the "MASH" circuit (described as '18-bit' I believe) and auditioning them both through my father's system and coming to the conclusion it sounded better than my player. I gave mine away to a friend years ago, and I don't know if he still uses it or not.

Speaking of my father, at the time he was still using his original player, the first Mission, that I believe was one of the earliest models available (bought in '83?), which for some reason I recall as having been specified as a '14-bit' machine. It had a very attractively designed, smallish but unusually solid chassis, with (I think) some heat sink fins on the rear (!), but was also trounced by my bother's Panasonic. My father couldn't hear any difference.

After the Philips I got an Adcom changer, and then my current (well, not a term that really fits them anymore) Theta separates. For some reason, I can also remember the first CD I ever got: Thomas Dolby's "The Golden Age of Wireless", which sounded so bad I think I listened to it maybe twice before getting rid of it.