Red Book audio requires the entire processing power of the CD-ROM drive—your title can't transfer any other data when CD-DA is being played. The digital sound format used by audio CDs can also be used in Windows with Multimedia applications. Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA), known as Red Book audio, uses a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz and stores 16 bits of information for each sample.
Multimedia PCs can play standard Red Book audio CDs. Windows controls the audio playback, but the audio is not played through the computer, it is played through special chips in the CD-ROM drive. This capability provides a potential source of high-quality sound for Multimedia PC title developers.
You can include CD-DA with other information in a CD-ROM multimedia title for use with Windows with Multimedia. This lets you use the highest quality audio in your applications without requiring any special hardware or software. Before making this decision, however, you need to weigh the increased quality against the following factors:
Red Book audio requires the entire processing power of the CD-ROM drive—your title can't transfer any other data when CD-DA is being played.
Red Book audio uses a lot of space on the disc. Fifteen minutes of CD-DA sound digital can require about 80 MB of storage.
CD-ROM titles that use Red Book audio are often called mixed mode CD-ROMs. Sound stored in CD-DA format is separated from the other data on a CD-ROM and requires a separate access when retrieved. Your title must pre-load program, image, and other data into memory (or into a cache area on the hard disk), and then dedicate the CD-ROM drive's circuitry to access the CD-DA sound as the application runs.