Constant Linear Velocity is a term describing how a media disk rotates throughout playing. The motor speed of the media player diminishes as the read / write head moves from the centre to the outside or increases if the read / write head moves from the outside to the centre.

A changing speed of rotation. CD-ROM disk drives use a CLV encoding scheme to make sure that the data density remains constant.

Refers to the way in which a CD operates. CLV means that the CD rotation speed is modified so that there is a constant transfer speed from all tracks of a CD. CLV drives are more expensive to produce because they need to have motors which run at variable speeds. The advantage of these drives are that they produce an even transfer rate no matter what track is being read.