This revised edition of Ken Pohlmann's classic survey of the compact disc world celebrates the 10th birthday of the most successful consumer electronics product ever produced. New material updates the user on the latest technological advances and gives insight into new formats and applications.

An expert team from SONY Europe explains the technology behind today's major digital audio consumer products, including the Compact Disc, MiniDisc, Super Audio CD, DVD-Audio, MP3 and Digital Audio Tape. Beginning with a fascinating overview of the history of audio technology, this fourth edition addresses the principles and technologies which underpin the various formats currently available. Considerable technical detail is provided, with extensive use of illustrations to enhance understanding. Audio engineers, students and hi-fi enthusiasts who want to gain an understanding of the way these technologies have been developed will find no better introduction than this authoritative guide from SONY, a forerunner in the digital audio industry.

In March 1979, a prototype of a ‘Compact Disc (CD) digital audio system’ was publicly presented and demonstrated to an audience of about 300 journalists at Philips in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. This milestone effectively marked the beginning of the digital entertainment era. In the years to follow, the CD-audio system became an astonishing worldwide success, and was followed by successful derivatives such as CD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD, and recently Blu-ray Disc. Today, around the thirtieth anniversary of the milestone, it is taken for granted that media content is stored and distributed digitally, and the analog era seems long gone. This book retraces the origins of the CD system and the subsequent evolution of digital optical storage, with a focus on the contributions of Philips to this field. The book contains perspectives on the history and evolution of optical storage, along with reproductions of key technical contributions of Philips to the field.

Digital Audio and Compact Disc Technology, Second Edition presents the principles behind the development of the compact disc digital audio system. The book discusses the aspects of digital audio and compact disc technology, which has revolutionized the way music is recorded and consumed. The text contains chapters that discuss the principles of digital signal processing, such as, sampling, quantization and error correction; codes for digital magnetic recording; an overview of the compact disc medium; compact disc encoding; and digital audio recording systems. Electronics enthusiasts and engineers will find the book informative.

Introduction to digital audio and compact disc technology, which includes a technical description of digital audio tape

This work assesses how information technology will work in people's home in the near future. Among the topics it covers are home automation, electronic messaging, interactive compact-disk multimedia products and other innovations in home consumption of information technology products.