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century tek
Addicted Member
CD's can also be in MP3 format.
JoeESP9
ESL's & tubes since 83
Both wav and FLAC files decode to bit perfect copies of the original.
What's on a commercial CD is not wav files. If you don't believe this, insert a commercial CD into a computer's optical drive and do a DIR on the disk. The listing will show a bunch of zero byte CDA files.
What's on a commercial CD is not wav files. If you don't believe this, insert a commercial CD into a computer's optical drive and do a DIR on the disk. The listing will show a bunch of zero byte CDA files.
sqlsavior
Lunatic Member
sKiZo
Hates received: 92644 43.20°N 85.50°W
All WAV aren't created equal. Standard (default encoders) WAV format is lossy. What you want is "lossless" WAV for a bit for bit copy. Same holds true for WMA ...
FLAC only encodes lossless
MP3 only encodes lossy, although MP3 VBR ain't bad for sound quality.
If that helps any.
Lossless WAV and FLAC are about the same size, so might as well stick with FLAC, which is more universally accepted?
FLAC only encodes lossless
MP3 only encodes lossy, although MP3 VBR ain't bad for sound quality.
If that helps any.
Lossless WAV and FLAC are about the same size, so might as well stick with FLAC, which is more universally accepted?
DaveVoorhis
Addicted Member
Strictly speaking, a typical audio CD is what's called "Red Book format", which specifies how digital data is laid out on the disk. The data is organised into tracks, which typical computer operating systems see as empty or short CDA files, but that a CD player recognises as typically containing Pulse Code Modulated audio sample at 44.1khz and 16 bits of resolution. These can be read by computer software into WAV files or other popular formats, which if they're lossless (as are WAV, AIFF, and others) can be read from a CD with bit-for-bit accuracy.
DaveVoorhis
Addicted Member
Typical WAV is lossless and uncompressed PCM audio. Compressed WAV is not necessarily lossy. (Re compression not being lossy, .ZIP is a popular lossless general-purpose compression method; it's bit-perfect in and out.) You can use WAV as a container for just about anything, including lossy audio, but it's rarely used that way.
cpt_paranoia
Addicted Member
The TOC points to sensible L/R pair alignment points, rather than random bit positions (it might even be to a CIRC frame boundary). A CD isn't simply a stream of bits; there is a complex CIRC frame structure as well. After all, the whole purpose of the recorded bitstream is to deliver error-corrected 16-bit sample pairs to a DAC.
When ripping, most software starts with simple, 16-bit PCM WAV files, as they're the most appropriate format to store the extracted track data.
Name one album released on CD that was in MP3 format.
cpt_paranoia
Addicted Member
Quote a few audio books.
But they are not CDs (i.e. not Red Book CDs), and will not bear the CDDA logo.
century tek
Addicted Member
Yeah, not albums, I was thinking self made CD's.
That’s a horse of a different color.
Correct, the quote states “...but consist essentially of a stream of bits...”
Gazdatronik
Super Member
In short terms a CD is sorta like a 44100 rate 16 bit wav, except without a parity bit, which is why a wav file is slightly larger.
A CD player used a different error correction system so a parity bit was not needed.
That is how I understand it.
A CD player used a different error correction system so a parity bit was not needed.
That is how I understand it.
The Red Book CD standard uses parity bits. Usually a hard drive rip copy will be bigger because files sizes are summed by the number of blocked used for data, and you inevitably end up with less than completely used data blocks.
D. 
Artie
Super Member
A CD is not a file, per se. The bits are arranged in what's called the Reed-Solomon Interleave Code. In other words, the bits are scrambled across the CD so that a scratch won't wipe out a chunk of data in one place. This allows for more coherent error correction. A wav file is PCM data in a "wav" container. That is, it has header info that tells the computer what to expect.
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