Binary Language

Many things besides computers use binary, such as CDs, which have a series of hills and valleys on the surface. These either reflect the light of the thin laser beam shone on them, representing a one, or do not, representing a zero. However these hills and valleys do not directly represent user-accessible data bits. This media-level signal is decoded into 14 bit words that are further decoded into 8 bit bytes of user data by a lookup table (audio data goes through Reed-Solomon decoding after this step). The 8-to-14 encoding (run-length limited) is done to prevent long runs of 1's or 0's at mediMany things besides computers use binary, such as CDs, which have a series of hills and valleys on the surface. These either reflect the light of the thin laser beam shone on them, representing a one, or do not, representing a zero. However these hills and valleys do not directly represent user-accessible data bits. This media-level signal is decoded into 14 bit words that are further decoded into 8 bit bytes of user data by a lookup table (audio data goes through Reed-Solomon decoding after this step). The 8-to-14 encoding (run-length limited) is done to prevent long runs of 1's or 0's at media level so that the signal won't be susceptible to sync drift and dropouts.a level so that the signal won't be susceptible to sync drift and dropouts.Many things besides computers use binary, such as CDs, which have a series of hills and valleys on the surface. These either reflect the light of the thin laser beam shone on them, representing a one, or do not, representing a zero. However these hills and valleys do not directly represent user-accessible data bits. This media-level signal is decoded into 14 bit words that are further decoded into 8 bit bytes of user data by a lookup table (audio data goes through Reed-Solomon decoding after this step). The 8-to-14 encoding (run-length limited) is done to prevent long runs of 1's or 0's at media level