HOW THINGS WORK

howthingswork.virginia.edu

Compact Disc Players

Louis A. Bloomfield, Professor of Physics, The University of Virginia
Think of this site as a radio call-in program that's being held on the WWW instead of the
radio. If you ask how something works, using the button below, I'll try to provide an
explanation. You'll find a more comprehensive discussion of many common objects in my
book: How Things Work: the Physics of Everyday Life. Feel free to create links to this site;
I'm trying to encourage everyone to learn about the physics and science of the world around
them. Please let me know what you think about this site. -- Lou Bloomfield

More How Things Work by Lou Bloomfield: "Dear Lou" at www.PhysicsCentral.com

and www.wiley.com/college/howthingswork
How does a phonograph work? -- MS
A phonograph record represents the air pressure fluctuations associated with sound
as surface fluctuations in long, spiral groove. This groove is V-shaped, with two
walls cut at right angles to one another--hence the "V". Silence, the absence of
pressure fluctuations in the air, is represented by a smooth portion of the V groove,
while moments of sound are represented by a V-groove with ripples on its two
walls. The depths and spacings of the ripples determine the volume and pitch of the
sounds and the two walls represent the two stereo channels on which sound is
recorded and reproduced.
To sense the ripples in the V-groove, a phonograph places a hard stylus in the
groove and spins the record. As the stylus rides along the walls of the moving
groove, it vibrates back and forth with each ripple in a wall. Two transducers
attached to this stylus sense its motions and produce electric currents that are related
to those motions. The two most common transduction techniques are
electromagnetic (a coil of wire and a magnet move relative to one another as the
stylus moves and this causes current to flow through the coil) and piezoelectric (an
asymmetric crystal is squeezed or unsqueezed as the stylus moves and this causes
charge to be transferred between its surfaces). The transducer current is amplified
and used to reproduce the recorded sound.
In instructions for cleaning CDs, it always specifies cleaning the CD by wiping radially
from the center out. Why does it matter? -- AB, Toronto, Canada

Whenever you wipe a CD to clean it, there is a chance that you will scratch its
surface. If that scratch is wide enough, it may prevent the player's optical system
from reading the data recorded beneath it and this loss of data may make the CD
unplayable. It turns out that tangential scratches are much more serious than radial
scratches. When the scratch is radial (extending outward from the center of the disc
to its edge), the player should still be able to reproduce the sound without a
problem. That's because sound information is recorded in a spiral around the disc
and there is error-correcting information included in each arc shaped region of this
spiral. Since a radial scratch only destroys a small part of each arc it intersects, the
player can use the error correcting information to reproduce the sound perfectly.
But when the scratch is tangential (extending around the disc and along the spiral),
it may prevent the player from reading a large portion of an arc. If the player is
unable to read enough of the arc to perform its error correcting work, it can't
reproduce the sound. That's why a tangential scratch can ruin a CD much more
easily than a radial scratch can. That's why you should never wipe a CD
tangentially. Always clean them by wiping from the center out.
How does a CD player pause a CD if the CD continues to turn? -- BC, Oxon, England
A CD player reads ahead of the sound it is playing so that it always has sound
information from at least one full turn of the disc in its memory. It has to read ahead
as part of the error correcting process--the sound information associated with one
moment in time is actually distributed around the spiral rather than squeezed into
one tiny patch. This reading ahead is particularly important for a portable CD
player, which usually saves several seconds of sound information in its memory so
that it will have time to recover if its optical system is shaken out of alignment.
When you pause the CD player, it reads ahead until its memory is full and then lets
its optical system hover while the disc continues to turn. When you unpause the
player, it uses the sound information it has saved in its memory to continue where it
left off and its optical system resumes the reading ahead process.
How can I clean a dirty CD which has a very difficult to remove stain? Which materials are
best for cleaning? -- AM, Mexico
Most CD's are made from polycarbonate plastic (though other plastics with the
same index of refraction are occasionally used). Polycarbonate is a pretty tough
material, so it should survive most common stain or gum removing solvents. Try
your favorite solvent on an unimportant CD first; such as one of the free discs that
come occasionally in the mail. However, if the stain molecules have diffused into
the plastic and have become trapped within the tangle of plastic molecules, you're
probably out of luck. Removing such a stain will require wearing away some of the
plastic. Since the disc's surface finish must remain smooth and the thickness of the
disc shouldn't change much, serious resurfacing is likely to make the disc
unplayable. Also, stay away from the printed side of the disc--it has only a thin layer
of varnish protecting the delicate aluminum layer from injury. Solvents can wreck
this side of the disc. Finally, if the stain is a white mark (or a scratch), you may be

able to render the disc clear again by filling the tiny air gaps that make it white with
another plastic. I'll bet that a clear furniture polish or liquid wax will soak into the
white spot, replace the air, and render the disc clear and playable.
Why do you hear different music coming from a compact disc when the laser of the CD
player is just going around the same part of the CD over and over again? -- KD,
McMinnville, OR
The CD player's laser doesn't really go over the same part of the CD over and over
again. As the disc turns, the laser slowly moves outward from the middle of the disc
toward its edge. The laser beam is focused to an extremely small spot inside the disc
and it is carefully following a tight spiral ridge in the aluminum layer inside. This
ridge runs continuously from the center of the disc to its edge. With each revolution
of the disc, the laser works its way outward by one more turn of the spiral. The
ridge has interruptions in it every so often and it is this pattern of interruptions that
contains the information needed to reproduce sound.
How do analog to digital converters change the analog input signal into a stream of
numbers? -- RME, Santa Monica, CA
A typical analog-to-digital converter (ADC) uses a process called "successive
approximation" to find a binary number that accurately represents the voltage on an
input wire. It samples the voltage on the input wire at one moment in time and then
gradually constructs a binary number representing that voltage. The ADC tries
various binary numbers and uses a digital-to-analog converter to form a voltage
from each number. It compares the two voltages, the original and its approximation,
to determine how close its current guess is to the correct value. With each
successive approximation, it adds a bit a precision to its measurement so that after
16 approximations, it has a 16 bit number that accurately represents the voltage on
the input wire.
For applications requiring even faster measurements, there are flash ADCs. These
devices synthesize the entire range of possible voltages and then compare the input
voltage directly with the complete collection of possible voltages. Since 8 binary
bits can represent 256 possible numbers, an 8 bit flash ADC synthesizes 255
different voltages and makes 255 voltage comparisons simultaneously. It instantly
determines where among the various voltages the input voltage falls and it reports
this value in billionths of a second.
Why is CD audio better than that of a cassette? -- MK, Baltimore, MD
CD audio is recorded in a digital form--as a series of numerical pressure
measurements. This digital recording is a very accurate representation of the air
pressure fluctuations associated with the original sounds that arrived at the
microphones. During playback, these air pressure measurements are read from the
CD and the original air pressure fluctuations are recreated by the speakers. While
there are imperfections in the whole process of measuring air pressure fluctuations

and recreating those fluctuations, the CD itself doesn't introduce any imperfections-the information read from the CD during playback is absolutely identical to the
information that was recorded on the CD at the manufacturer's plant.
The same isn't true of analog recording on a cassette tape. Cassette audio is recorded
in an analog form--as magnetizations of the tape surface that are proportional to the
air pressure fluctuations associated with the original sounds. During playback, these
magnetizations of the tape are analyzed and used to recreate the sounds. But the
tape itself introduces imperfections in the reproduced sound. The information read
from the tape during playback isn't quite the same as the information that was
recorded on the tape at the manufacturer's plant. The tape isn't perfect and the sound
that's reproduced by a tape player isn't quite the sound that was originally recorded.
How does a CD player work? -- NL, Dearborn, MI
A CD player uses a laser beam to determine the lengths of a series of ridges inside a
compact disc. Infrared light from a solid-state laser is sent through several lenses, a
polarizing beam splitter, and a special polarizing device called a quarter-wave plate.
It's then focused through the clear plastic surface of the compact disc and onto the
shiny aluminum layer inside the disc. Some of this light is reflected back through
the player's optical system so that it passes through the quarter-wave plate a second
time before encountering the polarizing beam splitter. The two trips through the
quarter-wave plate switches the light's polarization from horizontal to vertical (or
vice versa) so that instead of returning all the way to the laser, the light turns 90 at
the polarizing beam splitter and is directed onto an array of photodiodes. These
photodiodes measure the amount and spatial distribution of the reflected light. From
this reflected light, the CD player can determine whether the laser beam is hitting a
ridge or a valley on the disc's aluminum layer. It can also determine how well
focused or aligned the laser beam is with the aluminum layer and its ridges. The
player carefully adjusts the laser beam to follow the ridges as the disc turns and it
measures how long each ridge is. The music is digitally encoded in the ridge lengths
so that by measuring those lengths, the player obtains the information it needs to
reproduce the music.
In a CD player, how is the digital optical signal transformed into an electrical signal? -- IM,
Oxford, UK
The ridges and flat regions on a compact disc's aluminum layer determine how laser
light is reflected from that layer. As the disc turns and the player's laser scans across
ridges and flat regions, the intensity of the reflected light fluctuates up and down.
This reflected light is directed onto an array of silicon photodiodes that provide both
the signals needed to keep the laser focused tightly on the aluminum layer and the
signal that the player uses to recreate sound. The sound is encoded in the lengths of
the ridges. A computer monitors the amount of light returning from the disc to
determine how long each ridge is and how much spacing there is between it and the
next ridge. The computer uses this information to obtain a series of 16 bit binary
numbers for each of the two sound channels that are represented by an audio CD. A

digital-to-analog converter uses these 16 bit numbers to produce currents that are
eventually amplified and used to produce sound.
Will light going in two directions in the same space create destructive interference?
In general, the answer is no--there won't be large regions of space in which the two
light waves cancel one another. That's because, while the electric fields from the
two waves do add to one another at each moment, those fields go in and out of
phase with one another very rapidly as the waves pass and the end result is that they
do not interfere with one another over broad expanses. However, there can be points
or surfaces in space at which the electric fields from the waves at least partially
cancel for extended periods of time and at which there is destructive interference.
These points and surfaces are often observed in experiments with single frequency
laser beams.
Why do you need to separate the different polarizations of light?
Any light wave can be described in terms of horizontally and/or vertically polarized
light. For most things, these two polarizations are unimportant. But when light
reflects from surfaces or passes through certain materials, these polarizations
become important. The charges in surfaces and materials do not always respond
equally to the two polarizations of light. The two polarizations may even travel
through very different paths (e.g. in the polarization beam splitter).
Why do some CD players sound better than others even if the CD is seriously scratched on
the bottom half?
At this point, there should be very little difference between CD players that are
playing perfect CD's. They all create almost distortionless reproductions of the
original sound. However, different players use different tracking techniques and
optical systems and thus have different abilities to recover from imperfections in the
CD.
Why do CD's skip?
CD players must position their optical system very precisely, relative to the spinning
disk itself. It uses very sophisticated electromechanical devices to keep it in place.
But if you jar a player violently enough, it will lose its position and the audio may
suffer. Most modern CD players save a short amount of information so that they are
reading ahead of where they are playing. Even if they lose the track for a few
hundredths of a second, they have enough music saved up that they can keep
playing continuously. But if the upset is severe enough, they will run out of saved
music and will go silent for a moment or two.
Why can't I record songs directly onto CD's, like I can onto a tape?

To record CD's, you need a much more powerful laser and a blank recordable CD.
Both of these items cost lots of money. Reading a CD does not alter the CD but
writing it does. You need more laser power and a special CD disk. If you tried to
record a normal CD, you would not be able to restructure its aluminum layer. You
would not "erase" the old material on it and would not "write" new material onto it.
Why can't CD's be recorded onto other CD's?
Most of the CD's you encounter are prerecorded. These CD's were mass-produced
from a master, using plastic molding techniques, followed by metal deposition and
painting. Recordable CD's, which are used now in CD-ROM applications, are
written by an intense laser beam, which alters the reflectivity of the CD spot by spot
to create a disk that behaves just like a prerecorded CD. However, once a CD has
been "written", it cannot be cleaned for rewriting. At present, recordable CD's can
only be written once. There are some new optical and magneto-optical techniques
around that allow erasure, but I don't think these techniques have appeared in CD's
yet.
What is the deal with the new mini disc players?
I only know how the prerecorded mini disc players work: they work a lot like CD
players. However, they use a much smaller disk, made possible by intelligent data
reduction. Instead of using 16 bits to represent each current measurement, the mini
disk uses a variable number of bits. The recording equipment determines how many
bits are needed to represent the sound accurately and eliminates unnecessary (or
inaudible) details in the current measurements. The optical systems in mini disc
players are the same as CD players.
What does a cleaning CD do?
The optical system of the CD player must be very clean. If the final lens has dust on
it, the photodiode will not see the full range of light and dark patches that it expects.
A cleaning CD presumably cleans this final lens, although I'm not sure how. In
principle, the whole CD player should be pretty resistant to dust problems because
the laser beams are large except when they focus on the CD itself.
To what extent are laser disc players similar to CD players?
Optically, they are identical. However, the laser disc player uses an analog recording
technique (non-digital) to recreate the video signal. I think that the lengths of ridges
(or perhaps pits) in the aluminum surface are used to control the analog signal
strength.
How does the player (laser) read the whole disk at once?

It doesn't. It reads only a tiny portion of the disk at any given moment. The disk
spins and the reading system slowly works its way from the center of the disk
towards its edge, following a spiral path around the disk.
How does alternating current affect the laser? Does it make the laser reverse?
A diode laser will only emit light (lase) when current flows through it in the proper
direction. It is, after all, a diode and only conducts current in one direction. But
small fluctuations in current do affect the light emission. If you run a modest current
through a laser diode, so that it emits a steady stream of light, and then begin to
modulate that current up and down slightly, the light emitted by the laser will
modulate up and down slightly, too. In this manner, you can send sound or other
information over a laser beam. This technique is useful as a private means of
communicating over long distances. Only someone who can "see" the blinking laser
beam can detect the information that it contains.
How does a laser diode work?
A laser diode resembles a light emitting diode, in which electrons flowing across a
p-n junction (in a diode) find themselves in conduction levels of the p
semiconductor, with lots of excess energy. These excited electrons give up their
excess energy by emitting light and they drop down into empty valence levels with
much less energy. In a laser diode, the region in which this energy release occurs is
a very narrow channel with mirrored ends. Instead of emitting their light
spontaneously, the electrons experience stimulated emission. Light bounces back
and forth between the ends of the channel and is amplified as it passes new excited
electrons. Because all of the light produced by a laser diode emerges from one end
of this very narrow channel, it experiences severe diffraction and spreads out into a
wide, cone-shaped beam. To convert this cone of light into a narrow beam, a
converging lens is usually attached to the diode laser's housing and this lens bends
the beam into a fine pencil of light. Most laser diodes operate in the red or infrared
portion of the spectrum, although some laser diodes that emit blue light have
recently been developed.
How are the binary numbers represented in the ridges of the CD?
In principle, the binary numbers could be written as the presence or absence of
ridges (i.e. a 1000 nanometer long ridge could be a 1 while a 1000 nanometer long
flat area could be a 0). However, this technique has technical problems. The main
problem is that the number "0" would be a long flat region (16 adjacent flat regions
would be one 16000 nanometer flat region). If the flat region became too long, the
CD wouldn't be able to follow the track any more. So an encoding scheme is used to
make sure that ridges and flat areas are never too long. They use a length-encoding
scheme, where ridges of different lengths correspond to a short group of binary bits.
Furthermore, a very extensive error correcting arrangement makes sure that the
music can be read even if a great many bits are unreadable. About 25% of the CD's
surface is dedicated to this error correcting information.

Do you know anything about a special kind of digital tape that could replace the CD?
Digital audiotapes have been around for a few years. These tapes store sound as
digital information on a tape. Because of the digital recording and playback, the
reproduction is almost perfect. The digital process involves an enormous amount of
information each second; too much to be recorded in the conventional method used
in cassette tapes. Instead, I think that a helical technique is used, in which
information is written as diagonal stripes across the length of the passing tape. By
writing a closely spaced series of these stripes, the DAT (digital audio tape) player
uses much more of the tape's surface than a standard cassette and stores much more
information on that surface. I doubt that DAT tapes will replace CD's because CD's
are so easy to mass-produce. DAT tapes must be recorded one at a time.
Although I have heard that CD players are on average better at reproducing sound, I have
also heard that the best sound quality can still be had from high end phonographs. To what
extent is this true?
The digitization process does introduce some distortions into the sound signal,
including aliasing (confusion about high frequencies) and quantization error (roundoff errors in recording the softest sounds). However, these distortions should be so
small or at such high frequencies that they should be inaudible. Still, there are
always some audiophiles who can hear (or claim to hear) these imperfections.
Last Updated Monday, April 28, 2003 at 16:36:53
Copyright 1997-2002 Louis A. Bloomfield, All Rights Reserved

Copyediting by Patricia Clay