CD Players

A car audio system consists of various components and with the collaboration of all these components; we are able to produce high quality sound. The first thing that comes in the array of car audio system is called receiver. There are different types of receivers available in the market having distinctive features like some can just play an audio cassette, called cassette receiver but some receivers can play CD, DVD and MP3 called CD receivers. So a CD player is very common in the latest car audio systems and is available in various compatibilities, such as some can just play CD while some can play all audio formats available in the market like CD-R, CD-RW, MP3, WMA and WAV.

The CD player is an abbreviation of Compact Disk Player.

A CD player is basically an electronic device that plays audio CDs. The CD players can be installed in home audio systems, car audio systems and computers. The CD players are also manufactured as portable devices.

Usually the CD players are contained in plastic cases. They also have electric circuit and user interface enclosed in them. The CD players used for car audio systems and computers have front casing and exposed back and sides.

Their exposed parts are covered in dash board or computer casing. The Portable CD players also contain ports for power supply and for connection with speakers or headphones. But the portable CD players contain internal battery also for power supply. In the CD player, tray style is critical to load the CD properly. So many times tray loading style has changed during the evolution of CD tray.

Car CD players are manufactured by several companies across the world. Car CD players are available in variety of designs, functions and price ranges.

In 1981 during the Japanese audio fair, Sony manufactured first prototype CD player with vertical loading style. After that in 1982, Sony released world’s first CD player called CDP-101 and introduced slide out tray design for CD players that was adopted by various other electronics device manufacturers operating these days. But there were some prominent exceptions. After that in 1983, Philips introduced first top loading CD tray design. A CD player has basically three significant components; a drive motor, a tracking mechanism and a lens system. The drive motor rotates the disc between 200 and 500 revolutions per minute. The tracking mechanism moves the lens system along the spiral tracks in which information is encoded, and the lens reads the information using a laser beam. The laser reads information by focusing a beam on the CD, which is reflected back to sensor. The sensor detects changes in the beam, and interprets these changes to read the data. This data is output as sound using a digital-to-analog converter.