1983 review of Sony's first-ever CD player unearthed: hindsight's a beautiful thing
By Ross Miller 
posted January 15th 2010 1:42AM
posted January 15th 2010 1:42AM
Here's a little bit of color for you. The gang at Retro Thing have brought our attention to a republished 1983 Stereophile review of the Sony CDP-101, the first-ever CD player. The results were that the audio quality was promising but not stellar, and the $1,000 (!) cost of entry for the device made it even less alluring. Knowing how history unfolded, we can't help but chuckle a bit at the worry that CDs would in the near-term become obsolete by another physical disc medium, but hey, we can't blame them for not being psychic. Just think, one day our own reviews will be discovered for the future to laugh about -- paying over $500 for a device that doesn't do multitouch on its native apps? What's up with that? Find yourself 15 to 30 minutes of quiet time and hit up the source link for a blast from the past.
I don't care about multitouch!!!!! Why does everyone care about multitouch?
The last line of the Cd review...
"Nirvana may not be here but its closer."
And sure enough, we got Nirvana in 1987.
A while back I seriously considered snapping up one of these on eBay just to own a little piece of history... but I never use the CD players I already own.
That's a neat article. Magazines should publish more of their really old content online.
Anybody want my CDP-101? Almost like new and in box, even though 26 years old. Give me the original $1000 and it's yours.
This is why you don't buy magazines like Stereophile, they are advertising driven conventional wisdom machines.