In the rare case we listen to an audio CD these days, we typically rely on off-the-shelf hardware to decode the 1s and 0s into the dulcet tones of Weird Al Yankovic for our listening pleasure. [Lukas] ...

On October 1, 1982, Sony ignited a digital audio revolution with the release of the world’s first commercial compact disc player, the CDP-101 (above), in Japan. It signaled the dawn of a new audio ...

A cable used to send audio CD sound to the computer's sound card. When playing audio CDs, CD-ROM drives output analog sound to both a headphone jack and external connector just like a CD player. This ...

At $4,000, the Michi Prestige Q430 CD Player targets compact disc fans with ESS DAC and balanced outputs, but was omitting SACD playback a mistake?

Despite the regularly proclaimed death of physical media, new audio albums are still being published on CD and vinyl. There’s something particularly interesting about Lorde’s new album Virgin however ...

When you look at the excitement that Dolby Digital and dts 5.1-channel soundtracks from DVDs can generate played over a good home theater system, it’s not surprising that Sony/Philips and the DVD ...

Debates rage over whether hi-res music is a gimmick. Three Guardian writers put four music formats – and their ears – to the test Why are we still listening to over-compressed music through ...