Members rasputin1963 Posted June 23, 2008 Members Share Posted June 23, 2008 Bear with me if this seems like a dumb n00B question: You know what a *.CDA is... It's that thing that CD music disks are made of. A CD is comprised of WAV's which have been configured to 44.1kHz/16 bits, correct? But if the tracks are essentially WAV's-- and relatively filesize heavy ones at that-- then how come WINDOWS, when you insert a CD into your hard-drive, lists all the tracks with the file extension *.CDA ? Not only that, Each CDA track is shown to have only 44bytes, and One cannot just copy-and-paste a CDA track onto, say, a folder on one's hard-drive.So it's apparent that a CDA track is actually just a filing system, right? just a "stand-in" for the REAL file (which would probably clock in at least around 70--90Mb or something, or even more.) What is the wisdom and purpose of a CDA file? Is non-piracy its only raison d' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members John Sayers Posted June 23, 2008 Members Share Posted June 23, 2008 a cda file is a streaming wave file - if it glitches it keeps playing despite errors whereas a wave file would normally stop and show an error sign. To get a cda file onto your hard drive you have to rip it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deanmass Posted June 23, 2008 Members Share Posted June 23, 2008 Not sure if this is what you are looking for, but a neat question.. CDA explained Then..CD specs Specifically, the part about the info regarding the frame size might give the answer to the data loss/audio interpolation, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members franknputer Posted June 23, 2008 Members Share Posted June 23, 2008 A CD Audio Track or .cda file is a small (44 bytes) file generated by Microsoft Windows for each track on an audio CD. The file contains indexing information that programs can use to play or rip the disc. The files are given names in the format Track??.cda.The .cda files do not contain the actual PCM wave data, but instead tell where on the disc the track starts and stops. If the file is copied from the CD-ROM to the computer, it becomes useless, since it is only a shortcut to part of the disc. However, some audio editing and CD creation programs will, from the user's perspective, load .cda files as though they are actual audio data files. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_Audio_track Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rasputin1963 Posted June 23, 2008 Author Members Share Posted June 23, 2008 However, some audio editing and CD creation programs will, from the user's perspective, load .cda files as though they are actual audio data files. I see.... and just what programs might those be, I wonder? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members yermej Posted June 24, 2008 Members Share Posted June 24, 2008 I'm not sure about editing programs that seem to load the .cda files, but if you're just wanting to get a track off a CD as a wav file, try CDEX or Exact Audio Copy. Both are free and work well on Windows. They will rip the audio to a wav file or even rip and compress in one step to leave you with flac, ogg ,mp3, etc. Also, it's probably in one of the links mentioned above, but you don't see the actual audio files in Explorer because there aren't really any files on an audio CD. The data on an audio CD is not organized into any sort of computer file system because it wasn't originally meant to be read like computer files. It's not a DRM sort of thing; it's just the way audio CDs were designed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members franknputer Posted June 24, 2008 Members Share Posted June 24, 2008 I think the key phrase there was "from the user's perspective". No doubt the programs referred to simply read the .wav file according to the .cda's pointers, just like a CD player would, and extract the audio. There used to be a .dll file floating around the net for Windows 9x that replaced a system file & allowed you to see .wav files on CDs. There never was one for the later NT versions, though (must have changed something under the hood...). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members yermej Posted June 24, 2008 Members Share Posted June 24, 2008 Also, it's probably in one of the links mentioned above, but you don't see the actual audio files in Explorer because there aren't really any files on an audio CD. The data on an audio CD is not organized into any sort of computer file system because it wasn't originally meant to be read like computer files. It's not a DRM sort of thing; it's just the way audio CDs were designed. Sorry; I didn't phrase things properly there. I was trying to give sort of an explanation for why you don't see the audio data as files. I just wanted to point out that it isn't because of DRM/anti-piracy (as asked about in the original post). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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