cda format question

[mw_2316]

:hmm: Just trying to get a basic understanding of cda files here. I've been playing music off my HD for a while (flac, shn) and have just started to burn CD's with burrrn.exe. Everything seems to work fine and when I view the CD files on PC in Windows Explorer they are shown in cda format (commercial music CD's show this too as I'm sure everyone who knows a litlle bit knows). However, these cda files are shown to be of a very small size on the CD (1-2KB each). My understanding is that I'm writing up to like 700MB per full disk of what was originally flac and shn data expanded to wav but creating the CD only takes a few minutes (All this data is being written, isn't it? Please ease my mind here). I'm writing at 16X speed. There has to be a lot more data on the CD that these cda files either refer to or are related to. Why doesn't the bulk of this data show up when the CD contents are viewed on the PC? Also when burning flac and shn to CD and ending up with cda is there any loss or compression that I need to be aware of (my ears say no but that's a tough call unless the difference is dramatic)? Thanks appreciate any help in understanding this. This is a great site.

[Gizby]

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

An audio CD is different from a data CD in, well, more ways than I know. But one main difference is that on an audio CD, you don't directly see or interface with the information pressed or burnt onto it (when viewing it on a computer). The .cda files are just shortcuts for each track. Don't worry, the information is all there.

Now if you really want to wrap your head around something, look into read and write offsets, both learning how to calculate them and how to set them in Exact Audio Copy. Assuming you are using a PC with Windows, you really should learn to use Exact Audio Copy, as that is the custom around here and it's not a bad idea to let it bleed over into your personal practice. I'd link you to a whole bunch of stuff, but I'll just wait for Five and his sig o' useful information to find its way here and either the man or the sig can give you more instruction.

[Five]

^you said it

if you extract, burn, then re-extract you will get different results unless you have EAC configured correctly. it is also very difficult to verify audio cdrs for corruption.

well worth it to learn how to configure EAC (link in my signature)

[mw_2316]

Thanks Gizby and Five. I'll look into EAC, guess I'll have to shell out some postcard postage. ;)