What is a redbook CD?

Yo Bigwavedave, The Dutch giant Phillips has a whole rainbow of colors that set forth the standards for digital disks:
Red Book Compact = Disc Digital Audio
Yellow Book = CD-ROM & CD-ROM XA
Green Book = CD-i specification
Orange Book = CD-R, CD-RW and CD-MO
White Book = Video CD specification
Blue Book = Enhanced Music CD
Direct your browser to: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,289893,sid9_gci503642,00.html
and read all about it.

craig's response is the standard one, tho, i've been told that the term originated during the cultural revolution in china. it originally referred to a very small number of cd's that were favored by chairman mao. surprisingly to some, most selections are overdubs of bob marley and the wailers and harry nilsson. -kelly

A "Redbook" CD is the standard CD that has been around since the early 1980's. The "Redbook" just defines the technical specifications for this format. For example it specifies a (maximum) 16 bit word length at a sampling freguency of 44.1 KHZ. Today, the Redbood CD stands in contrast to the newer SACD, DVD, DVD-A and others that have different specs. Cheers. Craig.