On Fri, Jun 13, 2003 at 01:06:47PM -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
From my
reading, which hasn't been that deep, all of these sorts of problems
add up to
a few bad bits here and there. When we 'play' a CD using a modern
drive, it is my understanding that we read the disk one time and play what
ever we read.
I'm no expert on the physical layer of CDs, but I've read something
about it. There is error correction built into the mechanism of reading
data from the physical medium of a CD.
CDs have multiple kinds of error protection. Data mode CDs use a coding
called Eight-to-Fourteen Modulation that uses fourteen physical bits to
encode eight data bits. In addition, the CD data framing uses two
interleaved Reed Solomon codes (CIRC). These codings allow CD-ROMs to
always reproduce the exact same bits in a deterministic fashion.
Audio sample are stored somewhat differently. The EFM coding doesn't
really apply, but dual interleaved Reed Solomon codes are still used.
The first application of RS is used to correct the kinds of burst errors
you're talking about. The second application is used to correct random
erros, and even problems with the first attempt at error correction.
All said and done, CDs can replace something like 3500 lost bits in a
row. Of course more bits than that, and you'll start loosing the
bit-identical-ness of the CD.
(Google for "cd circ" for some decent links)
--
Ross Vandegrift
ross(a)willow.seitz.com
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