Track01.cda? Erm... no actually my audio CD has WAV files on it!

[LeveL]

I put an audio CD in my drive on my PC and what do I see on the disc...

Track01.cda, Track02.cda, Track03.cda, Track04.cda, Track05.cda.

The CD does not contain "cda" files though it contains WAV files,

so why does Windows insist on showing you these useless cda

files?

These cda files are 44bytes in size - WHERE ARE THE WAV FILES?

If I copy the cda files to my hard disk all I have is a bunch

of stupid cda files that are 44bytes in size! These are NOT

what is on the CD, it has WAV files on it so why don't they

show?

Windows is absolutely hopeless - except you see, Microsoft has

deliberately coded this crap into the OS otherwise it would just

show the contents of the CD - WAV files.

My question therefore is, how can I get rid of this stupid cda extension

in the registry so when an audio CD is put in, it simply shows you whats

on the audio CD (WAV files) and not some pointless/useless/hopeless

extension?

Yeah, im gonna just copy a 44byte cda file and its gonna play from my HDD,

thanks Microsoft, yet again you manage to make me sick to my stomach with

your unwanted tampering.

NOTE: Please don't suggest "Audio Ripping" software. My audio CD's have WAV

files on them OK, not cda files. Something in XP is making it show up as .cda

when in reality the CD has WAV files on it, something in the registry has got

to go!

The classic "delete stuff from Windows to make it MORE functional" yet again I see.

It f**king sucks! Why do they feel the need to mess about with things and make

stuff HARDER to use? Its supposed to make life easier isn't it? I am d.a.m.n sure in

Windows 95 these files showed up as WAV files.

Edited December 10, 2006 by LeveL

[prx984]

Thats just the way the CD's work. I have an original print of "Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon" made in 1984 and it shows the same way.

You'll need a program such as Audiograbber to rip the cd to wav files that you can manipulate and encode to other formats.

You are wrong about Windows 95 showing up as wav files, it too showed them as *.CDA. The files are actually CD-DA, which is "Compact Disc - Digital Audio". It has been this way since the format was introduced.

If you still believe its the piracy protection of Windows, I'd be glad to show you a screenshot of my laptop and desktop both reading "Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon" in Explorer.

The Table of Contents (TOC) on an audio CD is what is actually displaying these files. Its not that Windows has removed anything, Linux shows the same things. Same with DOS.

Take a breather before posting here, it just makes you look like an fool (I'm not saying you are, you just seem to be acting like one is all.) and know something about what you are posting about. Just calm down and relax. You will need CD Ripping software to get to the *.Wav files. Simple as that.

Edited December 11, 2006 by Cygnus

[Sonic]

Audio CD doesn't contains any WAV files since ... always !!!!

To listen that CD on a computer, the operating system emulate files which media player can read directly.

If you want keep a track to a computer, you need use a software which convert the data to computer format : wav, that's it. Nowadays softwares can extract audio to compressed format directly to gain space on hard disk.

ps: sorry for my language ...

[prx984]

Audio CD doesn't contains any WAV files since ... always !!!!

To listen that CD on a computer, the operating system emulate files which media player can read directly.

If you want keep a track to a computer, you need use a software which convert the data to computer format : wav, that's it. Nowadays softwares can extract audio to compressed format directly to gain space on hard disk.

ps: sorry for my language ...

1.) Yup, totally right. An audio CD does not contain *.WAV files. The reason Windows user's usually think they are WAV files, is because thats the native Uncompressed audio format of Windows.

2.) Don't worry about language, its a forum

@LeveL, I hope that this information helps you out.

Here is a screenshot of my XP showing "Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon"

[LeveL]

But CDA is not a container for the audio, it is just a "placeholder"

hence the reason it is 44 bytes and not 60Mb like an normal CD

track would be.

If audio CD's don't have WAV files on them, what do they have?

You can burn WAV files directly to a CD and any normal Hi-Fi CD player

can play them!

So then, if they are not WAV files what are they?

I know they are not CDA files because such a thing does not exist,

apart from in the warped world of Windows.

All I want to do is drag the audio files (not a placeholder for the audio file

but the actual audio file itself) from the CD to my Desktop and there it is,

an audio FILE, not some crappy Windows thing.

OK then if you use Linux and open an audio CD what do you see?

Edited December 11, 2006 by LeveL

[prx984]

They do not use wav files. They may be similar, but they are not wav.

They use what is called Compact Disc - Digital Audio. Thats the format of the disc. They don't have wav files encoded onto them, because think of it this way. Wav files are Windows format, how can Compact Disc Digital Audio be wav format when wav format did not come out until Windows?

They use their own form of audio encoding, which is probably very close to what Wav is. Wav is just uncompressed audio, which is what a CD is.

Wav and CD are both, 44.1Khz and 16Bit Audio. (Wav can be more than just that however. But that format works out to be 1140 kbps if I remember correctly.)

Do some research for yourself, I'm tired and my girlfriend wants me

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc

edit: heres some more info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAV

PCM is the type on a CD, not wav. Its close, but not exact.

Edited December 11, 2006 by Cygnus

[LLXX]

Open a command prompt and do DIR Q: or whatever drive letter your CD-ROM drive is.

Now are you so sure there are WAVs on it?

Edited December 11, 2006 by LLXX

[Sonic]

You can burn WAV files directly to a CD and any normal Hi-Fi CD player

can play them!

Wrong.

For that you must choose Audio CD format, and after you can drop wav,mp3 or wma directly to the new audio cd and the software will convert data to audio data even if they are wav format.

Try to burn wav as data CD and play in your normal Hi-Fi CD player, that will not work.

[stickzilla]

At first I was thinking that maybe this poster had a legitimate problem - that these Audio CDs he was working with were custom CDRs that actually did have .WAV files.

But my my !

Listen to these fine folk and you'll be A-OK.

[bledd]

you're an id***.

why come in shooting all guns when you dont know if you're right or not, audio cd's have never had 'just wavs on them'

use EAC to extract them

[pepoluan]

Windows is absolutely hopeless - except you see, Microsoft has deliberately coded this crap into the OS otherwise it would just show the contents of the CD - WAV files.

Well, after all that posts above, you'll have to be thankful that Microsoft coded that 'crap', because without which you can't play Audio CD's easily from within Windows.

NOTE: Please don't suggest "Audio Ripping" software. My audio CD's have WAV files on them OK, not cda files. Something in XP is making it show up as .cda when in reality the CD has WAV files on it, something in the registry has got to go!

Just re-stressing the point: No, your Audio CD does not have WAV files in them. Just a 'raw PCM-encoded datastream'. In fact, Windows have to go head over heels, jumping through several hoops just to provide users a direct (i.e. from WinExplorer) access to an Audio CD.

Let's see: A 'Red Book' Audio CD has no filesystem. It only has a 'TOC' pointing *roughly* where each track starts. Somehow Windows Explorer slaps on a pseudo-filesystem on top of this TOC. When you doubleclick on a .cda file, Windows will read the TOC's pointer, and do some low-level acrobatics to have the CD drive to just start reading the pointed-at sector. Then Windows' driver will then redirect the 'raw' data being read from the CD to the sound driver to make audible sound.

Now, a CD Ripper does exactly the same, except that instead of redirecting the 'raw' data, it captures the data onto hard disk, properly packaging/encapsulating it within a 'container file', which most commonly in Windows is 'WAV'. The 'WAV' container provides additional data like bitrate, bits per samples, number of channels, etc. which are not available in the raw data (except intrinsically, i.e. 'Red Book' Audio CD is 44'100 samples per seconds, 2 channels per samples, 16 bits per channel-sample).

Edited December 11, 2006 by pepoluan

[Sonic]

LeveL perhaps you have installed CDFS.VXD ( http://www.sonicspot.com/alternatecdfsvxd/...atecdfsvxd.html ) for Windows 98, it allow showing the data as WAV files but this driver convert too.

[prx984]

Theres one more thing I would like to point out to LeveL. A normal audio cd holds 700mb / 80 minutes correct? Well, how come 80 minutes of WAV's are 800mb? So to follow this method would mean that he can only hold 70minutes of wav files, correct? Not 80?

There you have it.

80 Min / 700MB. There would be a difference of 10 minutes / 100MB

1 Min = roughly 10mb

Mathematically, it can't be WAV files. Just doesn't work out.

Edited December 11, 2006 by Cygnus

[pepoluan]

Theres one more thing I would like to point out to LeveL. A normal audio cd holds 700mb / 80 minutes correct? Well, how come 80 minutes of WAV's are 800mb? So to follow this method would mean that he can only hold 70minutes of wav files, correct? Not 80?

There you have it.

80 Min / 700MB. There would be a difference of 10 minutes / 100MB

1 Min = roughly 10mb

Mathematically, it can't be WAV files. Just doesn't work out.

Let's see... 80 minutes of PCM-encoded data. That would be:

80 (minutes) x 60 (seconds per minute) x 44'100 (samples per second) x 2 (bytes per sample) x 2 (channels)

= 846'720'000 bytes

= 846.7 MB = 807.5 MiB

Sooo... where does the 146 MB go to? That's because a CD's low-level structure, when storing files, is *radically* different from a CD's low-level structure when storing audio.

The number of data is the same, actually. In other words, the 'raw' capacity of a CD is 846.7 MB ( or 807.6 MiB ). But, there is a great overhead:

- Filesystem tables

- Lead-in / Lead-out

- More (much much more) ECC sectors

- etc.

All in all, a net capacity of 700 MB. With some burners, you can try living close to the edge (literally) to 750 MB, but those last 50 MB are either (1) extremely prone to damage, or (2) unreadable with some CD-ROM drives (up to the point of damaging them physically).

[saturndude]

LeveL,

I am going to bring together many things here. This might be hard for me to explain, so please bear with me.

I believe the 44-byte files are placeholders or headers (for the 16-bit ADPCM found on retail music CDs) as some people have said. And I believe when you copy them to your hard drive and then burn them to a CD-R, you will have another audio CD.

One question: when you copy the files to your hard drive, how much does the available free space go down? Does the free space go down by 4096 or 8192 bytes for each track (one cluster for each 44-byte track) or does it go down by 176,400 bytes [see footnote] for each second of music (some retail CDs reissued from vinyl records [maximum capacity about 40 minutes] don't fill the CD to capacity, so you might only use 350 megs on your hard drive, not 600 megs or whatever).

I thought some copy protection mechanisms (SafeDisc? -- not sure) tested Windows machines and gave Windows CD-ROM players a WAV file that was hidden in a second partition (lower quality, less incentive to "steal" the music). I think this is different from "Enhanced CD", but I'm not sure. FatChucks and other sites maintain lists of copy-protected music discs and the problems people have with them. Check to see if your disc is listed. But if you see 44 bytes, I'm basically 100 percent sure it is 16-bit ADPCM (whether you see 44 bytes copied or quite a few megs copied).

[footnote] 44,100 bytes * 2 bytes * 2 channels = 176,400 bytes.

(we need 2 bytes to contain 16 bits, that's why they call it 16-bit audio)

You asked how to remove the CDA from the registry. Is CDA associated with Windows CD Player? Personally, I'd leave it in the registry unless it was causing problems because of (a) conflicts with your preferred CD player program or (B) spyware issues (some classify Real Audio as spyware because it persistently alters preferences behind your back. If you have Real Audio, I do recommend treating it as spyware and removing it).

Edited December 19, 2006 by saturndude