Anybody here lived through the Discman era?

[Dr. DTVT]

Yup...I remember those days.  I had a discman from the ages of 15 til my first year of grad school when I got my first iPod.  I used my discman namely for my paper route in HS, and walking to campus my senior year of college.  I don't remember it skipping too much, so the biggest drawback for me was portability, you could take one, maybe two CDs in a Discman case, but with my 160 GB iPod classic, I have my entire music library (800+ CDs), 9 movies, and still have 60 GB of space left.

[Zook]

Hasn't everyone on the forum lived through the Discman era?

[Progmetty]

I used to have a portable CD player and jeez were those things awkward to carry around.

I used to have the Discman in the front pocket of my jeans so I suffered from the awkwardness the most, the headphone would go under the shirt I'm wearing to my head. This is the same thing I do with my iPod now except it fits easy in the back pocket.

Hasn't everyone on the forum lived through the Discman era?

Well I'd say that era was -at least for me- from 1997 to sometime in 2003. So most teenagers here wouldn't have really experienced it. Plus from the replies it seems like a lot of people dealt with the Discman that plays mp3 discs more than the original one which only played music CDs and is the one that I had to live with for most of my Discman period.

[orcus116]

I had a Discman for years from when I was a kid up until mid 2005, when I got an mp3 player. Best decision as Discmen wede outdated by that time.

[Pols Voice]

Yeah, I liked my discman. I still have a functioning one, actually.

As an aside, I don't have an ipod or any other mp3 player. I have about a dozen reasons why I don't like them, but I won't bore you with that in this thread.

[Jamesman42]

Yeah, I liked my discman. I still have a functioning one, actually.

As an aside, I don't have an ipod or any other mp3 player. I have about a dozen reasons why I don't like them, but I won't bore you with that in this thread.

Pretty interested in a list of reasons why, at least

[Fluffy Lothario]

I had several Discmans (Discmen?) while I was at high school. More early 2000s than late 90s.

In my last few years at high school, I did Painting one year, Photography and Design the next, and Painting and Design the one after that. We were free to listen to music as we worked. Not only that, but my parents were farmers while I was at school, which meant a daily bus ride of an hour to and from school. So my Discman and CD wallet were with me almost every day.

[hefdaddy42]

I had a 8-track mono speaker portable player before the cassette player then the CD Walkman.  Yeah, It was "DYNOMITE!!"

Old Farts will get that joke.

I don't get the opportunity to say this often, but fuck man, you're old.

Fucking fell out of my chair on that one.

Never had a portable 8-track, but definitely remember the Sony Walkman.  That was the shit.

[Gadough]

I actually used a portable CD player up until 2 years ago....took me a long time to warm up to my iPod, but now I don't know why it took me so long to switch over.

[King Postwhore]

I had a 8-track mono speaker portable player before the cassette player then the CD Walkman.  Yeah, It was "DYNOMITE!!"

Old Farts will get that joke.

I don't get the opportunity to say this often, but fuck man, you're old.

Fucking fell out of my chair on that one.

Never had a portable 8-track, but definitely remember the Sony Walkman.  That was the shit.

Hef, I had the JJ Walker endorsed 8-Track player.  No Joke.

[kirksnosehair]

I never had a portable one, but my first music player was an 8track.  The first portable device I had was a cassette player.  I resisted CDs when they first hit, then whe I finally caved in and started buying them, I resisted the Walkman portable disc players because I was so used to just making copies of my cassettes to carry with me, that I kept that going by making cassette copies of my CDs.


It wasn't until I got married that I started sometimes using a portable cd player, and by then MP3 players were hitting the scene.


I resisted those for a while too.  But these days I have an iPod and I'm not sure how I lived without it.

[AcidLameLTE]

I didn't even know they released a portable CD player that could play MP3 CDs.

[glaurung]

I didn't really start listening to music until iPods were out so I didn't have to deal with CD players very often.

[ytserush]

Walkman yes....Discman no.


CDs were too valuble for me to be carrying around when I could just record them and not worry about them getting lost or stolen.

[bosk1]

I definitely thought it was the best thing at the time cause it made rewinding and forwarding less of the task it was with the Walkman.

Yeah, but the problem was, the slightest movement or vibration would often make them skip.  So in the car, they were okay but not great.  And forget about trying to use them in the gym.  At least with a walkman, you could run with it or wear it while lifting or whatever.

[aparadoxindeed]

Yeah, I liked my discman. I still have a functioning one, actually.

As an aside, I don't have an ipod or any other mp3 player. I have about a dozen reasons why I don't like them, but I won't bore you with that in this thread.

I don't have an iPod either man!  And I still use my discman everyday!   

When it breaks though... eBay here I come.

[TAC]

I definitely thought it was the best thing at the time cause it made rewinding and forwarding less of the task it was with the Walkman.

Yeah, but the problem was, the slightest movement or vibration would often make them skip.  So in the car, they were okay but not great.  And forget about trying to use them in the gym.  At least with a walkman, you could run with it or wear it while lifting or whatever.

I remember I had the cassette adapter for my car and I would velcro my discman to the dashboard!

[Cyclopssss]

Lived throug? I'm still in it! 

I'm serious. I listen to cd's everyday on my way to work.... 

[King Postwhore]

I definitely thought it was the best thing at the time cause it made rewinding and forwarding less of the task it was with the Walkman.

Yeah, but the problem was, the slightest movement or vibration would often make them skip.  So in the car, they were okay but not great.  And forget about trying to use them in the gym.  At least with a walkman, you could run with it or wear it while lifting or whatever.

I remember I had the cassette adapter for my car and I would velcro my discman to the dashboard!

Hot damn I did the same thing!

[Nekov]

I remember those good ol' days. I used a walkman until I borrowed a discman from a friend which was cool because it could read any kind of CD and I wasn't very keen on having original CDs bouncing in my back pack while I went to school or the university so I just made copies. I still have that discman though it doesn't work anymore.

[Moonchild]

I had a Discman but I preferred using the walkman mostly because at the time only cds that I'd borrow from friends could be easily ripped to cassettes to make my mixes.
Anyway I spent a several amount of time of my life making those fucking mixes and then came first the cdr and then mp3s, goddamn life savers.

[Orbert]

Never had an actual Sony Discman, just as I never had an Sony Walkman, but I did go through a couple of cheap portable cassette players and later a couple of portable CD players, the last of which could read CD-Rs full of mp3s.

Skipping was never really an issue with the CD players, because by time they came around, I'd been driving for a while.  The CD-R player sat at my desk at work, hooked up to some PC speakers.  Nothing beats having tunes at work.

[yorost]

My first car lacked a CD player, but it had a cassette deck so I bought one of those super-cool discmans with the tape converter that let you play CD's through the car's speakers.

I still do that.  I even just bought a new Sony portable cd player earlier this year.

[AcidLameLTE]

Visiting my parents and I found this in my old room:



That full shock detection didn't protect it from me accidentally dropping it on to a pavement D:

[glaurung]

Is that from the 70's? It has a prog button!

[AcidLameLTE]

I DON'T GET IT

[glaurung]

THAT'S FUNNY

[Orbert]

It was an option on some CD players for a while.  You press the PROG button and it makes whatever you're listening to sound like Prog.  It used a very sophisticated algorithm that, sadly, did not prove cost-effective, and you don't see it very much anymore.

[The King in Crimson]

It just added keyboard solo's and lyrics about hobbits to everything.

[Orbert]

Well, it was the 70's.  What would you expect?

[Cable]

I had at least 5 portable CD players over the years. My dad did buy the original disc man model or whatever, and my first official I bought was a Sony discman with skip protection, after I broke the discman without skip protection.

The ways to carry varied. At first, I had about a 20 CD case that would store the entire case. Then a 24 CD wallet, I did the car visors mostly, and at some point I tried briefly a 200 CD case.

Interesting to see the responses of those who swore of MP3 players for years. Seems like most who eventually try them swear by them after awhile.

I wouldn't have it any other way now. 320 kbps is enough for me.

[Orbert]

I held off getting an iPod for several years.  At first, it was because they were expensive and the early models didn't hold enough.  After a while, it was more of a rebellion against the trend.  They were so ubitquitous, they actually started including iPod interface in car stereos and boom boxes.  And the prices never came down.  And they still weren't big enough.

When they finally came out with the 160GB model, this was the first model that even had a chance of holding my entire collection.  I didn't want to figure out which albums or artists to put on and which not to, so it had to be big enough to hold everything.  Also, I bought it with bonus money from work, so I wasn't really spending my own cash.  I thought of it as the company buying me an iPod.  But I've had it for years now (since whenever the original 160's came out) and man, I love it.  It was free, and it's big enough, so what the hell.

[TAC]

I have the 160 G iPod. Last week, two nights before we left for Disney, I accidentally erased the whole fucking thing!

I still have a full 30G model so I was OK for the trip.

[Orbert]

How did you accidentally the whole thing?

[TAC]

How did you accidentally the whole thing?

Well, I was adding 4 albums onto it when I got an error message. Then I clicked on the Restore button which it recommended. Then I got a warning message that if I continued I would lose all data, so I clicked Cancel, figuring I was stopping it. I unplugged it, and all was gone!

What sucks is that apparently, I cannot transfer from one iPod to the other without buying a program, which I'm not going to do.