Red Book is the name given to the compact disc digital audio (a common audio cd) format. Its name comes from the series of books, also called the 'Rainbow Books' that define all compact disc formats. The one that defines the compact disc digital audio format happens to be bound in red. You can get a copy from Sony/Phillips for somewhere around $5,000 or a downloadable .pdf for a much more reasonable $260. There are several specifications that the standard lays out, here are a few:
- Audio is encoded as PCM (Pulse Code Modulation)
- 2 channels
- 16 bit signed integer samples
- 44.1 kHz sample rate
- 74 minute maximum length (this has changed to almost 80 mins.)
- minimum 4 seconds per track
- maximum 99 tracks per disc
- maximum 99 indexes per track
- ISRC should be included
- the disc must be replicated (burned copies are not red book)