AAD, DDD - Digital snobbery in the 1980s

The Compact Disc appeared in 1982, and at a time when anything “digital” was the future, was marketed as the ultimate in sound quality. So, to help sell “pure digital” CDs, the Society of Professional Audio Recording Services, or SPARS for short, came up with a lettering system to show how “analogue” or “digital” were a CD’s contents.

Link to my other channel - Big Car:

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[LittleCar]

Erratum: Some streaming services have greater than CD quality, such as Tidal or Apple Music.

[cjmq]

Actually, for me the AAD label meant a precious CD I must buy. I noticed in during the first decade of this century that those CDs were sold or traded in sites like ebay to a much higher price, especially the likes of The Beatles catalog from 1987.

[_B.M_]

I was one of those geeky teens who looked for DDD on CDs. Good times.

[McMillanScottish]

“Music was an event, rather than that something you put on while you’re doing something else.” I couldn’t agree more. Good music isn’t the paper on a room’s walls - it is the room itself.

[thanosb.]

Not owning CDs anymore? I never understood why people could get rid of media that contained music!!!! Started my cassette collection in '89, my vinyl one in '90 and my CD collection in '93. Still own every single one of them, some 35 years later!!! Yes, AAD CDs do sound better than DDD ones because they also do not suffer from the loudness levels that later CDs did. And yes, everyone now knows that even cassettes can sound a hell of a lot awesome when recorded on proper equipment and being well cared of. Long Live Analogue!!!

[alliejr]

As I recall, our first CD was "The Nightfly" by Donald Fagan precisely because it was "DDD" and also because it was one of only a handful of CD releases. I say "we" because my (weathy) college roommate had the actual CD player with matching expensive stereo kit. I supplied the physical media music.

[HelloKittyFanMan.]

That's nuts. Why would I get rid of my CDs just because they're not the latest and greatest technology now?

[maxdamiann]

The vast majority of my CDs are in AAD format. I go out of my way to find them. I'm thoroughly convinced they sound better...

[vwestlife]

Part of the reason why the SPARS codes were abandoned (at least temporarily) is that unscrupulous record companies would simply lie and emblazon old analog recordings with the "DDD" logo, and there was no enforcement to crack down on this misleading advertising.

This was especially true with the large, inexpensive collections of classical music on CDs that started appearing in the late '80s, which also often lied about which orchestras actually recorded the music on them. These discs claimed to be "DDD" even though some of the tracks were even copied from old records, and you could hear the pops and clicks!

And nowadays the opposite has happened, with Mobile Fidelity (MoFi) producing "100% analog" vinyl records for over a decade that were actually made from digital recordings. But even the golden-ears, digital-hating audiophiles couldn't tell the difference!

[appleinfl]

My Dad was one of the six people in the US that was into Super Audio CD or SACD. He built a full 5.1 surround system around it for the living room. Loved The Nightfly and Dark Side. Both sounded amazing, that high bitrate with good mastering made an unrivaled listening experience in the early 2000s.

[CatsMeowPaw]

4:55 People are weird. They were given a music standard that reproduced perfect music, every time, and many said 'No! I want the distortion and technical faults of the old media. Oh, and give me a format that degrades every time I use it!'

[RomeoG]

nice job! This brings back memories! The whole analog vs digital thing lasted a long time. And like you pointed out, it's ironic that now most audio people listen to, lossy compressed digital audio, is arguably lesser quality than a CD.

[Mike_Connor]

Feels like this should be a Techmoan video! Interesting departure from your usual 4 wheels based vids, but informative and entertaining as always :)

[NLBassist]

I am a car guy and a music guy. I worked in car business and now in music business. So great to see this. Also that it started with a Dutch CD, as it is a Dutch invention. I knew a bit about this. but you taught me some new stuff! I knew we always searched for DDD or at least ADD, and now I'm this old school tube amp bass player....

[stephenjones]

Nice video, thanks for sharing your thoughts. It's interesting that, according to blind listening tests, most people could not hear the difference between SACD standard audio CD. It seems that the Red Book standard, and probably stereo records had already approached or exceed the limits of human hearing back in the 1970's, all good for music collectors until the 'loudness war' ruined the sound quality of most pop and rock CDs from the late 1990's, those early silver discs are often worth significantly more.

[foreignparticle]

I was into Classical music as a teenager, and I remember being disappointed when I discovered the audible difference between AAD and DDD - that of the background hiss. Thereafter, I would opt for DDD recordings over the AAD/ADD. I appreciated the utter purity of sound in a good digital recording; with a good pair of headphones or speakers, it was as close to being in a room with the orchestra/performers as you could get.
It was only later that I learned to appreciate older albums for the performance, rather than just the sonic purity, and so many "A"s found their way into my collection, in all genres.

Great bit of nostalgia... thanks mate!

[bmrhnd_sol]

Love the content. Fell in love with digital when I bought my first Realistic CD-1600 Compact Disc Player. :) Today I continue to be blown away by digital playback with awesome new R2R DACs and supercut 10MHz master clocks. <3

[Niei]

Releasing modern day music on vinyl is insane!
All new recordings are digitally recorded and mixed. And then it's pressed on an analog medium because somehow some people believe it sounds "better" than the original recording...
It's like saying listening to someone singing in front of you sounds worse than recording them onto tape and listening to it afterwards.

[jasonschubert]

Ha, my copy of "Get a Grip" is labeled as AAA! Never noticed before.

[synthoelectro]

This is what inspired me to make my album - ATD - back in 2014.