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CD Audio Introduction
Compact Discs were designed for high quality
noise-free music using a consumer friendly physical format. |
CD Audios were designed to
hold over an hour of high quality stereo audio, stored in a digital
format so that noise is virtually
non-existent. Under normal use CDs also do not wear out.
The compact disc was the first consumer format to use digital
techniques to represent audio. This fact is often overlooked and digital
music tends to mean MP3, or similar, files downloaded via the Internet.
The Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard was developed by
Philips and Sony and introduced into the market in Japan in October 1982
and in USA and Europe in early 1983.
Features of the Compact Disc
Compact Discs are superior to vinyl discs and cassettes in a number of
ways:
- Superior sound quality without clicks, hiss or other defects
- Fast random access to any track
- Long-life; compact discs do not wear out
- Compact size: only 12cm in diameter so they take up little storage
space
The superior quality of CDs and their compact size is made possible by
the use of digital technology.
CD digital audio should provide the quality needed for all audio
applications, but for the purist this is not always enough. For this
reason an enhanced format (HDCD) has been introduced and the new
DVD-Audio
format incorporates new features including higher sampling rate, more bits
per sample and multi-channel surround sound.
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