Physical details

A CD is made from 1.2 mm thick (.047 inches), almost-pure polycarbonate plastic and weighs 15–20 grams.From
the center outward, components are: the center (spindle) hole, the first-transition area (clamping ring), the clamping
area (stacking ring), the second-transition area (mirror band), the information (data) area, and the rim.

A thin layer of aluminum or, more rarely, gold is applied to the surface making it reflective. The metal is protected
by a film of lacquer normally spin coated directly on the reflective layer. The label is printed on the lacquer layer.
Common printing methods for CDs are screen-printing and offset printing.

CD data are stored as a series of tiny indentations known as "pits", encoded in a spiral track moulded into the top of
the polycarbonate layer. The areas between pits are known as "lands". Each pit is approximately 100 nm deep by
500 nm wide, and varies from 850 nm to 3.5 µm in length.

The distance between the tracks, the pitch, is 1.6 µm. A CD is read by focusing a 780 nm wavelength (near
infrared)semiconductor laser through the bottom of the polycarbonate layer. The change in height between pits
(actually ridges as seen by the laser) and lands results in a difference in intensity in the light reflected. By measuring
the intensity change with a photodiode, the data can be read from the disc.

The pits and lands themselves do not directly represent the zeros and ones of binary data. Instead,Non-return-to-
zero, inverted (NRZI) encoding is used: a change from pit to land or land to pit indicates a one, while no change
indicates a series of zeros. There must be at least two and no more than ten zeros between each one, which is defined
by the length of the pit. This in turn is decoded by reversing the eight-to-fourteen modulation used in mastering the
disc, and then reversing the Cross-Interleaved Reed-Solomon Coding, finally revealing the raw data stored on the
disc.

CDs are susceptible to damage from both normal use and environmental exposure. Pits are much closer to the label
side of a disc, enabling defects and contaminants on the clear side to be out of focus during playback. Consequently,
CDs are more likely to suffer damage on the label side of the disk. Scratches on the clear side can be repaired by
refilling them with similar refractive plastic, or by careful polishing.

Diagram of CD layers.
A. A polycarbonate disc layer has the data encoded by using bumps.
B. A shiny layer reflects the laser.
C. A layer of lacquer helps keep the shiny layer shiny.
D. Artwork is screen printed on the top of the disc.
E. A laser beam reads the CD and is reflected back to a sensor, which converts it into
electronic data
Disc shapes and diameters

The digital data on a CD begins at the center of the disc and proceeds toward the edge, which allows adaptation to
the different size formats available. Standard CDs are available in two sizes. By far, the most common is 120 mm in
diameter, with a 74- or 80-minute audio capacity and a 650 or 700 MB data capacity. This diameter has been
adopted by subsequent formats, includingSuper Audio CD, DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray Disc. 80 mm discs ("Mini
CDs") were originally designed for CD singles and can hold up to 24 minutes of music or 210 MB of data but never
became popular. Today, nearly every single is released on a 120 mm CD, called a Maxi single.

Novelty CDs are also available in numerous shapes and sizes, and are used chiefly for marketing. A common variant
is the "business card" CD, a single with portions removed at the top and bottom making the disk resemble a business
card.

Audio CD-ROM Data

Physical size Note
Capacity Capacity

12 cm 74–99 min 650–870 MB Standard size

8 cm 21–24 min 185–210 MB Mini-CD size

85x54 mm - "Business card"

~6 min 10-65 MB
86x64 mm size

Understanding the CD: The Spiral

A CD has a single spiral track of data, circling from the inside of the disc to
the outside. The fact that the spiral track starts at the center means that the
CD can be smaller than 4.8 inches (12 cm) if desired, and in fact there are
now plastic baseball cards and business cards that you can put in a CD
player. CD business cards hold about 2 MB of data before the size and shape
of the card cuts off the spiral.

What the picture on the right does not even begin to impress upon you is
how incredibly small the data track is -- it is approximately 0.5 microns wide, with 1.6 microns separating one track
from the next. (A micron is a millionth of a meter.) And the bumps are even more miniscule.

Understanding the CD: Bumps

The elongated bumps that make up the track are each 0.5 microns wide, a minimum of 0.83 microns long and 125
nanometers high. (A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.) Looking through the polycarbonate layer at the bumps,
they look something like this:
You will often read about "pits" on a CD instead of bumps. They appear as pits on the aluminum side, but on the
side the laser reads from, they are bumps.

The incredibly small dimensions of the bumps make the spiral track on a CD extremely long. If you could lift the
data track off a CD and stretch it out into a straight line, it would be 0.5 microns wide and almost 3.5 miles (5 km)
long!

CD player Components

The CD player has the job of finding and reading the data stored as bumps on the CD. Considering how small the
bumps are, the CD player is an exceptionally precise piece of equipment. The drive consists of three fundamental
components:

•A drive motor spins the disc. This drive motor is precisely controlled to rotate between 200 and 500
rpm depending on which track is being read.

•A laser and a lens system focus in on and read the bumps.

•A tracking mechanism moves the laser assembly so that the laser's beam can follow the spiral track.
The tracking system has to be able to move the laser at micron resolutions.

Inside a CD player
What the CD Player Does: Laser Focus

Inside the CD player, there is a good bit of computer technology involved in forming the data into understandable
data blocks and sending them either to the DAC (in the case of an audio CD) or to the computer (in the case of
a CD-ROM drive).

The fundamental job of the CD player is to focus the laser on the track of bumps. The laser beam passes through the
polycarbonate layer, reflects off the aluminum layer and hits an opto-electronic device that detects changes in light.
The bumps reflect light differently than the "lands" (the rest of the aluminum layer), and the opto-electronic sensor
detects that change in reflectivity. The electronics in the drive interpret the changes in reflectivity in order to read
the bits that make up the bytes.

What the CD Player Does: Tracking

The hardest part is keeping the laser beam centered on the data track. This centering is the job of thetracking
system. The tracking system, as it plays the CD, has to continually move the laser outward. As the laser moves
outward from the center of the disc, the bumps move past the laser faster -- this happens because the linear, or
tangential, speed of the bumps is equal to the radius times the speed at which the disc is revolving (rpm). Therefore,
as the laser moves outward, the spindle motor must slow the speed of the CD. That way, the bumps travel past the
laser at a constant speed, and the data comes off the disc at a constant rate

Types Of CD

Recordable CD-Recordable Compact Discs, CD-Rs, are injection molded with a "blank" data spiral. A
photosensitive dye is then applied, after which the discs are metalized and lacquer-coated. The write laser of the CD
recorder changes the color of the dye to allow the read laser of a standard CD player to see the data, just as it would
with a standard stamped disc. The resulting discs can be read by most CD-ROM drives and played in most audio CD
players.

CD-R recordings are designed to be permanent. Over time the dye's physical characteristics may change, however,
causing read errors and data loss until the reading device cannot recover with error correction methods. The design
life is from 20 to 100 years, depending on the quality of the discs, the quality of the writing drive, and storage
conditions. However, testing has demonstrated such degradation of some discs in as little as 18 months under normal
storage conditions.This failure is known as CD rot. CD-Rs follow the Orange Book standard.

Recordable Audio CD- The Recordable Audio CD is designed to be used in a consumer audio CD recorder. These
consumer audio CD recorders use SCMS (Serial Copy Management System), an early form of digital rights
management (DRM), to conform to the AHRA (Audio Home Recording Act). The Recordable Audio CD is
typically somewhat more expensive than CD-R due to (a) lower volume and (b) a 3% AHRA royalty used to
compensate the music industry for the making of a copy.
High Capacity Recordable CD- A higher density recording format that can hold:

 98.5 minutes of audio on a 12 cm disc (compared to about 80 minutes for Red Book audio).

 30 minutes of audio on an 8 cm disc (compared to about 24 minutes for Red Book audio).

ReWritable CD- CD-RW is a re-recordable medium that uses a metallic alloy instead of a dye. The write laser in
this case is used to heat and alter the properties (amorphous vs. crystalline) of the alloy, and hence change its
reflectivity. A CD-RW does not have as great a difference in reflectivity as a pressed CD or a CD-R, and so many
earlier CD audio players cannot read CD-RW discs, although most later CD audio players and stand-
alone DVD players can. CD-RWs follow the Orange Book standard.

High Speed ReWritable CD- Due to technical limitations, the original ReWritable CD could be written no faster
than 4x speed. High Speed ReWritable CD has a different design that permits writing at speeds ranging
from 4x to 12x.

Original CD-RW drives can only write to original ReWritable CDs. High Speed CD-RW drives can typically write
to both original ReWritable CD discs and High Speed ReWritable CD discs. Both types of CD-RW discs can be
read in most CD drives.

Higher speed CD-RW discs, Ultra Speed (16x to 24x write speed) and Ultra Speed+ (32x write speed), are now
available.

DIAGRAMS-:

CD STRUCTURE- http://www.tanhowsay.com/Program/cdstruct.html

How the Compact Disc Work.- http://www.tanhowsay.com/Program/cdwork.html