The short answer: Yes!
A longer answer:
First, the monkey would indeed be busy for a very long time, as a typical CD contains something like six or seven billion 1’s and 0’s (referred to as "bits," which is short for "binary digits"). The bits being physically represented by transitions or lack of transitions between the pits and lands Geoff referred to.
Some of those bits don’t represent data, but rather are provided for control purposes, i.e., to make it possible for the laser mechanism and associated circuitry to identify, track, and read the data. Numerous bits are also provided in the form of "error correcting codes," which allow most and in many cases all erroneous reads that may occur for various hardware-related reasons to be mathematically corrected to bit perfect accuracy by the subsequent processing circuitry in the player.
The rest of my answer, though, pertains just to the bits which represent musical data. We are all familiar with decimal numbers, where each digit in the number can range from 0 to 9. Computers and most digital circuitry uses binary numbers instead, where each digit in the number is represented by either a 0 or a 1. Any decimal number has a binary equivalent; decimal and binary are simply different ways of expressing the same quantities. (It’s actually a little more complicated than that, as numbers expressed by 0’s and 1’s can be in various formats such as "2’s complement," or "offset binary," or "straight binary," but you needn’t get into those distinctions for the purposes of your question).
The musical data on a CD conforming to the standard "Redbook" format contains for each of the two channels 44,100 samples per second that are proportional to the amplitude of the music signal at the instant the sample was taken. While "amplitude" can be thought of as volume, keep in mind that for an audio signal it can be either positive or negative.
Each of those 44,100 data samples that are present for each channel during each second of the recording consists of 16 bits, i.e., a group of 16 digits each of which can be either a 1 or a 0, representing a number that if expressed in decimal form would be integers (i.e., whole numbers) ranging from -32,768 to +32,767. With each such number, as I said, being proportional to the amplitude of the music signal in the corresponding channel at a given instant of time.
So, yes, given enough time and given appropriate and accurate playback hardware and software, an accurate transcription of those numbers by the monkey would allow the music to be reproduced consistently with the data on the CD.
Regards,
-- Al
A longer answer:
First, the monkey would indeed be busy for a very long time, as a typical CD contains something like six or seven billion 1’s and 0’s (referred to as "bits," which is short for "binary digits"). The bits being physically represented by transitions or lack of transitions between the pits and lands Geoff referred to.
Some of those bits don’t represent data, but rather are provided for control purposes, i.e., to make it possible for the laser mechanism and associated circuitry to identify, track, and read the data. Numerous bits are also provided in the form of "error correcting codes," which allow most and in many cases all erroneous reads that may occur for various hardware-related reasons to be mathematically corrected to bit perfect accuracy by the subsequent processing circuitry in the player.
The rest of my answer, though, pertains just to the bits which represent musical data. We are all familiar with decimal numbers, where each digit in the number can range from 0 to 9. Computers and most digital circuitry uses binary numbers instead, where each digit in the number is represented by either a 0 or a 1. Any decimal number has a binary equivalent; decimal and binary are simply different ways of expressing the same quantities. (It’s actually a little more complicated than that, as numbers expressed by 0’s and 1’s can be in various formats such as "2’s complement," or "offset binary," or "straight binary," but you needn’t get into those distinctions for the purposes of your question).
The musical data on a CD conforming to the standard "Redbook" format contains for each of the two channels 44,100 samples per second that are proportional to the amplitude of the music signal at the instant the sample was taken. While "amplitude" can be thought of as volume, keep in mind that for an audio signal it can be either positive or negative.
Each of those 44,100 data samples that are present for each channel during each second of the recording consists of 16 bits, i.e., a group of 16 digits each of which can be either a 1 or a 0, representing a number that if expressed in decimal form would be integers (i.e., whole numbers) ranging from -32,768 to +32,767. With each such number, as I said, being proportional to the amplitude of the music signal in the corresponding channel at a given instant of time.
So, yes, given enough time and given appropriate and accurate playback hardware and software, an accurate transcription of those numbers by the monkey would allow the music to be reproduced consistently with the data on the CD.
Regards,
-- Al