Digital audio
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Encoding formats
- MP3
- WMA
- OGG
- WAV (most often uncompressed PCM as in standard audio CDs)
- AIFF
Overview of CD Formats
Most of these are called CD Rainbow Books (referring to the color of the specification documents)
- Red Book (CD Digital Audio). The basic standard for all CDs, including music CDs. Digital audio encoding: 2-channel signed 16-bit PCM sampled at 44,100 Hz.
- Yellow Book (CD-ROM and CD-ROM XA). CDs designed for a PC to read.
- Orange Book (CD-R and CD-RW). CDs recordable by a PC.
- White Book (Video CD). CDs with video content that plays in most DVD players.
- Blue Book (Enhanced CD, CD+G, and CD-Plus). Music CDs with extra features like videos or photos.
- Beige Book (Photo CD). Kodak's format for storing photos on a CD.
- Green Book (CD-i). Rarely used. CD-Interactive contains educational material and games.
- Purple Book (DDCD) hold more storage than CDs and require a special reader, not popular
- High Density CD (HDCD), an alternative to DDCD, not popular
- Scarlet Book (SACD). Super Audio CDs uses Direct Stream Digital (DSD) recording, a proprietary Sony/Philips format. Quality is superb but needs a special player to work. There are three separate versions, one of which includes a red-book layer so that music will also play on an old CD player.
- DVD-Audio (DVD-A) is a Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) format that is specifically designed to hold high-quality audio data. An alternative to SA-CD
Links
Overviews
- Digital Audio (Wikipedia).
- High fidelity (Wikipedia)
Information about audio formats
- Description of popular audio formats (Streaming media FAQ
Information about CD standards
- Red Book (audio CD standard) (Wikipedia)
- DVD-Audio (Wikipedia)
- SA-CD FAQ. Quote: This FAQ aims to be the most comprehensive concerning SA-CD on the web, but also independent, unbiased, practical and readable
Other
- ProAudio Review. Online journal with reviews of products (some open access)
- DVD Primer, at DVDForum, 2000