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

[LLXX]

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.

You don't make any sense. How can copying a 44-byte header represent tens of Mb of audio data?

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).

The only part you have correct is the ~176Kb/s. Everything else depends on your HDD's filesystem.

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).

SafeDisc is not for protecting audio. It's a (rather weak) protection for programs.

[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)

Right answer wrong terminology. 44100 samples/second * 2 bytes/sample * 2 channels.