How to Work With Audio CD .CDA Files

Ripping your CD to WAV files using Exact Audio Copy and then burning them to a blank CD will give you a near-perfect copy of your original CD. No additional hardware is required.

High end sound cards can of course improve the quality of sound that goes to your PC speakers but they will have virtually no impact on the CD copying process itself. Specialist audio cards are generally only needed if you are doing high-quality multi-channel work, working with DVD sound or doing studio work on a home PC.

For copying standard CDs the hardware found on most PCs and laptops is entirely adequate and capable of producing a copy that is indistinguishable from the original. So save you money and don't blow it on expensive hardware that you don't really need.

EAC is the best free ripper for those who want the highest quality rips. However not everyone wants (or needs) this quality and for such users convenience is likely to be a more more important factor when selecting a ripper.

Also be aware the even EAC cannot rip a scratched or damaged CD. Nor can it improve the quality of a poorly recorded CD.

Here's some information on the data contained within .cda "files"

http://www.moon-soft.com/program/FORMAT/sound/cda.htm

Gizmo

You will need a CD ripper to rip the tracks to either mp3 or wav. Look here for such programs :

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-cd-ripper.htm

You must be creating audio CDs, right? When you burn audio CDs, tracks are built on the CD, which are represented by the cda files. These are small files, that contain the track information.

If your CD player is able to play audio CDs, then it should be able to play the CD you have written. If any problem is there, check your CD player specifications. I hope you are not using the rewritable CDs, because your CD player won't play them.

You can run a virtual CD/DVD emulation program without the need of a physical cd/dvd drive, useful for a netbook.

Create an image of the cd in an iso file using a desktop/notebook with a physical drive, then copy the iso file over to the netbook's hard disk and use the emulator to mount the iso file. It works like you have a cd rom drive with the netbook.

See: http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-cd-emulator.htm

You will have to create an audio CD for that. CD/DVD burners would be able to do so. Freeware burners like BurnAware Free, CDBurnerXP, InfraRecorder etc, can make an audio CD.

Anupam

It is possible to determine some things from removal media but depending on the circumstances of your situation this would be a job for either a private IT technician or the police.

.cda is nothing but an information file about the track. Making an audio CD is the right way to do it, which you did. Did you make an audio CD, or audio DVD? Maybe you made an audio DVD, and that's why it cannot play on the CD player? Because, if its playing on a DVD player, the CD should play on the CD player too.

Anupam

You raise an interesting issue but it is a quite separate one to the topic of this article.

In essence it is quite possible to create a WAV file that is a bit perfect replication of the digital data on a CD. Exact Audio Copy is a free program that attempts to do just that.

However a bit perfect WAV copy may still sound slightly different to the original CD. That's usually because the software and hardware involved when you play a WAV file is different to that involved when you play a CD. The digital data may be perfect but the performance of the equipment that reproduces that data is far from perfect.

More intriguing is the oft-reported differences between bit perfect copied CDs and the original CD when played back through the same equipment.

Some hard core engineers claim that these differences are imagined. The differences are certainly small and I can't hear any difference between an original and copied CD when played through my PC speakers.

However with a high resolution hi-fi I can definitely hear differences, albeit small.

Various theories have been put forward why two bit perfect copies of a CD can sound different. These include differences in the shape and depth of the pits burned into the CD or differences in the CD reflective coating.

Another possible explanation is differences in the amount of "digital jitter" embedded in the CD and its copy. That is, very small timing variations in the delivery of the digital data.

These timing differences are possible because digital samples of audio data do not contain the timing data in the sample itself but rely on the use of an external clock to provide the timing reference.

So with a CD recorded at the standard 44,000 samples per second these samples are extracted at a rate determined by an external clock. This equates to one sample every one 44000th of a second so you can see the clock need to be very precise.

Well electronic clock circuits are precise but not perfect so it is possible for very small variations in the clock accuracy to effect the timing of the delivery of the digital data stream. These small variations may show up as a distortion of the original audio signal. This is called digital jitter.

Digital jitter can become embedded in a digital signal at many different point during a CD copy operation and this certainly opens the possibility that two otherwise bit perfect CDs may sound different.

Some engineers believe clocks are so accurate that the resultant digital jitter is too small to be audible. Other engineers believe it to be an important variable in the quality of digital audio reproduction and a major cause of the hard, metallic quality often present in digitally recorded audio material. It is a contentious issue.

Contentious or not it is a subject well outside of the scope of this article or indeed this website. If you want to talk more about this issue I suggest this is best done on an engineering or audiophile forum or website.

Gizmo

I 2nd that... Gizmo has an incredible gift for making the "complicated" understandable! Thanks Giz!

RJK Canada

The CD you are using is a RW (re-writable) CD. Most car CD players MUST HAVE THE RECORDING ON A "R" CD. Copy the CD-RW disk to a CD-R disk. That will play in your car.

You might want to check if the PC's sound device is working, the volume is too low or mute, or audio cable loosens, etc. If tested OK, then try another CD on the CD drive to check if it's in order. Hope this helps.

That is the question.
Is it possible to change MP3 to a CDA file.
Then play the CD,s in my car???

Lee

If you are talking about digital CDs the answer is quite simple. The data on the spiral track consists of samples of digital data that alternate between left and right channels. Each sample has a header that identifies the channel it belongs to, so things don't get mixed up.

Separating data like that is easy with digital but with analog it's more of a challenge.

With old mono vinyl disks the groove containing the music wiggles from side to side in time with the music. The movement is all in the horizontal plane.

With stereo the second track is recorded at right angles to the first; for the sake of argument consider it as being recorded with the wiggles all in the vertical plane.

As the two planes are at right angles they are effectively independent of each other, so you can record two separate tracks in one grove.

In practice the two tracks are not in the horizontal and vertical planes but rather tilted sideways 45 degrees, so the end results looks like a V rather than an L

The reason for V arrangement is the mechanical wear is more even between the channels. In an L arrangement the vertical channel would wear much faster due to the effect of gravity.

Gizmo

.cda files don't contain information such as album name, title, duration, artist, etc.

They only contain information on what part of a CD the track is located on.

The album name, title, duration, artist, etc. is laser-written (burned) on the CD. There are software specially made to get that information, I think.