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How it began: my 99-year old grandpa.
Why doing oral history makes me glad.
News/blog archive highlights: Interviewing, Audio equipment, Oral History Projects.
Current Article
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
On digital formats: the audio CD player graveyard
Over the weekend, my first audio CD player (born 1985) went to the recyclers/electronic waste disposal people. I used it from 1985 to about 1999, and attempted to give it a second life at the family cabin. The persistent failure of the mechanism that opens and closes the disk tray killed it (despite one successful repair attempt). So it went bye-bye.
Why is this event worthy of note here on this site? My audio CDs are good only if there’s a device that will play them. The end-of-life of an early CD Audio player stands as a signpost: It’s a marker of the time that’s transpired since the format was invented, the popularity of that format, and a warning of the risks we take when we store our stuff on Audio CD disk media. More
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