Hello--

I just bought a new portable CD player for the office, and I notice that
it proudly proclaims "8 TIMES OVERSAMPLING" on the box.  Now while I think
I understand what oversampling is (the rate of discrete "samples"
exceeds the highest frequency component of interest by some factor),
I don't understand this "8 TIMES" business...  It seems to me that when
I bought my first CD player (was it REALLY 10 years ago?!), the specs
said "4 TIMES" ...  Could someone please tell me whether I'm getting
senile?  If I'm not, then what good does it do for the player to take
samples at a higher rate?  If I really wanted better fidelity, wouldn't
I have to have the same higher rate of sampling during the recording
process?  Furthermore, am I wrong in interpreting the sampling rate
(from the player's point of view) as being the same thing as the data
rate for the bit stream coming off the optical medium?  Does this mean
that the data rate (related to the rotational speed of the disk) has 
changed since 1983?

I'm so confused...  

--Cliff
