8 Overview of the compact disc medium
It is the compact disc (CD) that has introduced most people to digital audio reproduction. Table 8.1 is a comparison of the LP and CD systems, showing that CD is far superior to LP in each aspect of dynamic range, distortion, frequency response, and wow and flutter specifications. In particular, CD exhibits a remarkably wide dynamic range (90 dB) throughout the entire audible frequency spectrum. In contrast, the dynamic range of the LP is 70 dB at best. Harmonic distortion of CD reproduction is less than 0.01%, which is less than one-hundredth of that of LP. Wow and flutter are simply too minute to be measured in a CD system. This is because, in playback, digital data are first stored in an RAM and then released ...
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