User Manual

There are four types of organic dye used in CD-R discs:
Organic Dye Description
Cyanine Considered to be the standard in recording and is characterized by its bright emerald-green color.
Metal-stabilized Visually indistinguishable from cyanine, but it is more resistant to age degradation.
cyanine
Phthalocyanine Considered to be superior in longevity but, for the most part, is identical in quality to cyanine-based CDs. Pale blue in
color. To protect the dye and serve as the reflective conduit, a thin layer of gold is applied to the dye.
Azo As durable as phthalocyanine. The use of a silver reflective conduit produces a bright blue color.
Instead of carving the pits, the CD-R’s laser burns the organic dye to create optical marks on the disc's surface. The optical marks on the
CD-R disc alter the reflectivity of the metallic layer (gold on CD-R, aluminum on CD-ROM). To a CD player or CD-ROM drive, the CD-R’s
optical marks appear the same as the stamped pits on a standard CD-ROM. As a result, CD-R discs can be read by most CD players or CD-
ROM drives.
CD-Recordable standards
There are essentially two types of standards governing compact discs: physical and logical. The physical standard defines the
“container” in which the information is stored. The logical standard defines the information that can be held in the container and in what
particular sequence that information must be arranged.
Both the physical and logical standards are defined within the standards developed by Sony and Philips: Red, Yellow, Green, and Orange.
Although we’d like to provide a very technical and compelling reason why these books are named as they are, we cannot. The reasoning
is actually quite simple: the Red Book was so named because the color of the book cover was—you guessed it—red. The same applies
for the other three books—they had a yellow cover, a green cover, and an orange cover, respectively. As a musician dealing with audio,
you will primarily be concerned with the Red and Orange Book standards and their respective applications.
Standard Application
Red Book Audio
Yellow Book CD-Read Only Memory (CD-ROM)
Green Book CD-Interactive (CD-I)
Orange Book Recordable CDs
The Red Book defines the specifications of every audio compact disc in every music store throughout the world. Red Book specifications
define not only the information within the disc (digital audio recorded at 44.1 kHz), but also the disc size itself and the way in which the
audio is arranged. It is the Red Book standard—the foundation upon which all other CD standards are built—that enables all audio
compact discs to play in all audio compact disc players or drives. It is this interchangeability that has fueled the rapid growth of the CD
music industry.
The Red Book specification allows audio data to be placed into separate tracks on a disc. To further accommodate recordability, the
Orange Book Standard separates the CD-R into two primary areas: the system use area and the information area.
System use area
The system use areas contains both a power calibration area (PCA) and a program memory area (PMA).
Power calibration area
Within every recordable compact disc there is a PCA that is reserved specifically for testing the power of the CD-Recorder laser being
used, and a count area which keeps track of how much available space is left in this area. For each recording session, a calibration is
automatically performed to determine the optimal laser power for “burning” the disc. Over time, the power level of the laser will need to
be adjusted to properly respond to changes in recording speed, temperature, humidity, and the condition of the disc. Each time this
calibration occurs, it is incremented in the count area. A maximum of 99 calibrations can occur on one disc.
Program memory area
The program memory area (PMA) is used to record track numbers and their corresponding start and stop times. This area is updated
each time a track is written to a disc, up to a maximum of 99 tracks.
8 | CHAPTER 1