Do You Know How Many Different CD Formats Are Available Today? It's Impressive the Number!

By John Cooper

Let's write a short summary about this great technology (CD) that changed the technological world in first years of 1980.

First we talk about CD-Text, an extension of the Red Book specification for audio CD that allows for storage of additional text information on a standards-compliant audio CD. The information is stored either in the lead-in area of the CD, where there is roughly five kilobytes of space available, or in the subcode channels R to W on the disc, which can store about 31 megabytes.

Then there is the CD + Graphics, a special audio Compact Disc that contains graphics data in addition to the audio data on the disc. The disc can be played on a regular audio CD player, but when played on a special CD+G player, can output a graphics signal.

These graphics are almost exclusively used to display lyrics on a television set for karaoke performers to sing along with. The CD+G format takes advantage of the channels R through W.

The CD + Extended Graphics is an improved variant of the Compact Disc + Graphics (CD+G) format. Like CD+G, CD+EG utilizes basic CD-ROM features to display text and video information in addition to the music being played. This extra data is stored in subcode channels R-W. Very few, if any, CD+EG discs have been published.

The Super Audio CD is a high-resolution read-only optical audio disc format that provides much higher fidelity digital audio reproduction than the Red Book. Introduced in 1999, it was developed by Sony and Philips, the same companies that created the Red Book. SACD was in a format war with DVD-Audio, but neither has replaced audio CDs.

In contrast to DVD-Audio, the SACD format has the feature of being able to produce hybrid discs; these discs contain the SACD audio stream as well as a standard audio CD layer which is playable in standard CD players, thus making them backward compatible. - 32518

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