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>The design is nearly identical to what one would get if one simply literally (almost) digitized a vinyl record. I don't really agree with that, or at least it

by simias 8y ago

>The design is nearly identical to what one would get if one simply literally (almost) digitized a vinyl record. I don't really agree with that, or at least it only makes sense to me if you're willing to go at a level of abstraction so high that makes it relatively meaningless. For one thing CDs store digital data, zeroes and ones, not analog like a vinyl. On top of that the data is written using 8-to-14 modulation (every 8 bits of data is written using a unique 14 bit pattern on disc). This provides very basic error correction and ensures that you never have very long stretches of zeroes. Then on top of that you have a cross-interleaved Reed–Solomon coding. You also have subchannel data that contains things like position in the track and other metadata. You also have a table of content at the beginning of the session to easily seek to individual tracks. Besides the fact that it's disc shaped and read in a spiral I don't find many similarities with vinyls. Sure the format itself is largely driven by the music track format (which is why you still address CD-ROMs with "minutes" and "seconds" even though it's meaningless there) but then so is Spotify.

cityroasted 8y ago
What's interesting is that LaserDisc (the optical ancestors of DVDs that look like giant CDs) are analog. The video and audio streams are encoded with Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)
notriddle 8y ago
> For one thing CDs store digital data, zeroes and ones, not analog like a vinyl. That's not a counterargument. That's literally what "digitized a vinyl record" means.
- simias 8y ago
  Well that's what the rest of my comment was about, "digitizing a vinyl record" makes it sound like you take a vinyl, pass the analog audio through an ADC and output that directly onto an other disc and you get a CD. In practice it's a lot more complicated than that so I disagree with your original comment: >The design is nearly identical to what one would get if one simply literally (almost) digitized a vinyl record. The rotating disc format is simply due to technical constraints and not caused by vinyl mimicry (unless you also consider that hard disc drives and floppies are nearly identical to vinyls as well). The rest is completely different from a vinyl on almost every level, besides the fact that they both store stereo audio.

by simias 8y ago

cityroasted 8y ago

What's interesting is that LaserDisc (the optical ancestors of DVDs that look like giant CDs) are analog. The video and audio streams are encoded with Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)

notriddle 8y ago

> For one thing CDs store digital data, zeroes and ones, not analog like a vinyl. That's not a counterargument. That's literally what "digitized a vinyl record" means.

simias 8y ago
Well that's what the rest of my comment was about, "digitizing a vinyl record" makes it sound like you take a vinyl, pass the analog audio through an ADC and output that directly onto an other disc and you get a CD. In practice it's a lot more complicated than that so I disagree with your original comment: >The design is nearly identical to what one would get if one simply literally (almost) digitized a vinyl record. The rotating disc format is simply due to technical constraints and not caused by vinyl mimicry (unless you also consider that hard disc drives and floppies are nearly identical to vinyls as well). The rest is completely different from a vinyl on almost every level, besides the fact that they both store stereo audio.