The standard is defined in the Red Book technical specifications, which is why the format is also dubbed "Redbook audio" in some contexts.

[1] CDDA utilizes pulse-code modulation (PCM) and uses a 44,100 Hz sampling frequency and 16-bit resolution, and was originally specified to store up to 74 minutes of stereo audio per disc.

[8] In the music industry, audio CDs have been generally sold as either a CD single (now largely dormant), or as full-length albums, the latter of which has been more commonplace since the 2000s.

[12] More than thirty years later, American inventor James T. Russell has been credited with inventing the first system to record digital media on a photosensitive plate.

[16] The compact disc is an evolution of LaserDisc technology,[17] where a focused laser beam is used that enables the high information density required for high-quality digital audio signals.

Unlike the prior art by Optophonie and James Russell, the information on the disc is read from a reflective layer using a laser as a light source through a protective substrate.

[20] In 1979, Sony and Philips set up a joint task force of engineers to design a new digital audio disc.

[22][23] The success of the compact disc has been credited to the cooperation between Philips and Sony, which together agreed upon and developed compatible hardware.

A year later, in September 1977, Sony showed the press a 30 cm (12 in) disc that could play an hour of digital audio (44,100 Hz sampling rate and 16-bit resolution) using modified frequency modulation encoding.

Technical details of Sony's digital audio disc were presented during the 62nd AES Convention, held on 13–16 March 1979, in Brussels.

[31] In 1979, Sony and Philips set up a joint task force of engineers to design a new digital audio disc.

Led by engineers Kees Schouhamer Immink and Toshitada Doi, the research pushed forward laser and optical disc technology.

The task force consisted of around 6 persons,[19][32] though according to Philips, the compact disc was "invented collectively by a large group of people working as a team".

[33] Early milestones in the launch and adoption of the format included: The first artist to sell a million copies on CD was Dire Straits, with their 1985 album Brothers in Arms.

The temporary use of a lower-resolution signal simplified circuit design and improved efficiency, which is why it became dominant in CD players starting from the early 1990s.

In 1983, following the CD's introduction, Immink and Joseph Braat presented the first experiments with erasable compact discs during the 73rd AES Convention.

However neither of these were adopted partly due to increased relevance of digital (virtual) music and the apparent lack of audible improvements in audio quality to most human ears.

[54] With the advent and popularity of Internet-based distribution of files in lossy-compressed audio formats such as MP3, sales of CDs began to decline in the 2000s.

[55] Despite rapidly declining sales year-over-year, the pervasiveness of the technology lingered for a time, with companies placing CDs in pharmacies, supermarkets, and filling station convenience stores to target buyers less likely to be able to use Internet-based distribution.

[63] Automakers viewed CD players as using up valuable space and taking up weight which could be reallocated to more popular features, like large touchscreens.

[70] In France in 2023, 10.5 million CDs were sold, almost double that of vinyl, but both of them represented generated 12% each of the French music industry revenues.

As of 2013[update], Philips outsources licensing of the standard to Adminius[citation needed], which charges US$100 for the Red Book, plus US$50 each for the Subcode Channels R-W and CD Text Mode annexes.

[80] The audio contained in a CD-DA consists of two-channel signed 16-bit LPCM sampled at 44,100 Hz and written as a little-endian interleaved stream with left channel coming first.

When the Sony/Philips task force designed the Compact Disc, Philips had already developed a 14-bit D/A converter (DAC), but Sony insisted on 16-bit.

[19] Sony vice-president Norio Ohga suggested extending the capacity to 74 minutes and 33 seconds[19] to accommodate the recording of Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at the 1951 Bayreuth Festival.

PolyGram had set up a large experimental CD plant in Hannover, Germany, which could produce huge numbers of CDs having a diameter of 115 mm.

In this final practice, maximum CD playing time crept higher by reducing minimum engineering tolerances.

The lead-in's subcode contains repeated copies of the disc's table of contents (TOC), which provides an index of the start positions of the tracks in the program area and of the lead-out.

The Red Book does not refer to sectors, nor does it distinguish the corresponding sections of the disc's data stream except as "frames" in the MSF addressing scheme.

This is done by intentionally introducing errors onto the disc that the embedded circuits on most stand-alone audio players can automatically compensate for, but which may confuse CD-ROM drives.