CD-ROM uses the same basic technology as the audio CD with which you're already familiar. An audio CD contains music translated from analog into digital information and pressed onto a plastic disk as a sequence of pits and level areas. A laser beam from the CD player scans the CD surface and translates this information into digital data. This data is converted back to an analog waveform and then amplified. Eventually, beautiful music comes out your speakers.
CD-ROM is based on the same principle. But along with audio, it can also hold other types of digital information, such as text, graphics, and animation—the data types that make a multimedia title special.