Method and apparatus for compensating variation of read data in an

Abstract

When recording domains are formed locally on a recording medium and information is recorded and reproduced by using rise and fall in a reproduced waveform obtained from the recording domains as data, timing patterns indicating start of demodulation are recorded for the lead-edge and the tail-edge of the recording domains, respectively; time interval between the timing signal for starting demodulation detected from the rise in the reproduced waveform and the timing signal for starting demodulation detected from the fall in the reproduced waveform is detected; time shifts of the signals detected from the lead-edge and the tail-edge of the recording domains succeeding the timing patterns for starting demodulation by using the time interval thus detected; and the information is stably detected as time sequential data having no jitter.