I am of course aware of the different laser wavelength requirements for different optical disc formats and what you suggest might actually be true (so that would indeed be an assumption on my part).

I was under the impression, though, that Sony would not use its own drives for the PS5 this time (like it did for the PS4 where it did in fact not support audio CDs on a hardware level) but some other manufacturer's because, to my knowledge, it does not even build a UHD/BD-XL reader drive. I am not aware of a single model of theirs that can read anything beyond BD-R 50.

So I always thought that other manufacturers' drives would support audio CDs as there would be no telling where they could end up in. The Xbox Series X optical drive, for instance, *does* support audio CDs (users confirm it), so the drive Microsoft chose obviously does too. iFixit's teardown does not name the model, unfortunately, but it will be known at some point.

We might have to wait for PS5's iFixit teardown, then, or some fearless Youtuber's video in order to find out for sure... but I suspect that any revelations will not change a thing.

Sony's official position with the PS4 was that they did not include audio CD support because nobody was taking advantage of it on the PS3. Whether that was true or not only Sony knows... but with digital content services (which the company sure is interested in promoting) already all the rage in 2013 and audio CDs on the way out there was little to no criticism.

That can only be true in 2020 for the PS5 as well. So I am expecting Sony to not support audio CDs or other forms of music CDs even if the optical drive itself does. Which is a shame because, in fact, I know several people (myself included) who would happily do what they did on the PS3: insert a CD, rip it to the internal SSD on the spot (remember that?) and listen to that music while playing games. Now we can only do that through USB on the PS5 (without copying the files on the SSD) but the whole interface is far from ideal.

Point taken, though, I will keep an eye out for confirmed information on the optical drive inside the PS5 and update the story accordingly.