CD Players

A CD player, also reffered to as a compact disc player is an important electronic audio source device that plays audio Compact Disc. CD players are often one of the key source components in which a high fidelity home audio system is centered around. Many but not all CD players can also playback MP3 CDs.

A CD player has three major components: a drive motor, a lens system, and a tracking mechanism. The drive motor rotates the disc between 200 and 500 revolutions per minute. The tracking mechanism moves the lens system along the spiral tracks in which information is encoded, and the lens reads the information using a laser beam, typically produced by a laser diode. The laser reads information by focusing a beam on the CD, which is reflected back to a sensor. The sensor detects changes in the beam, and interprets these changes to read the data. This data is output as sound using adigital-to-analog converter (DAC).

A subcode in an audio CD contains information on the total number of audio tracks, the running time on the CD, running time of each track, and other information. This information allows the drive motor to speed up or slow down as needed to read data at a constant rate.

Audio CDs that CD players play have been commercially available since October 1982. In 2009, they remain the standard physical storage medium for audio. Standard CDs have a diameter of 120 mm and can hold up to 80 minutes of uncompressed audio (700 MB of data). The format is a two-channel 16-bit PCM encoding at a 44.1 kHz sampling rate per channel.

When shopping for a high-quality CD player, look for high quality digital-to-analog conveters (DACs), even units with multiple DACs and units with upsampling processors for the best audio fidelity. We carry several award-winning choices from quality makers like Marantz, YBA Design and Teac Reference.