Whats the diffrence between these two CD types?

[Megaman00001]

Does anybody know the diffrence between a "CD extra" and "Mixed CD"? They both seem to put data and audio on the same CD. I have realised one minor diffrence between them is a mixed cd puts the data track at the beginning and a cd extra puts it at the end of the disc. Other than that I dont see a diffrence between the two. Does anybody know any other diffrence?

[Cornucopia]

CDExtra (done in standard way):
2 sessions, All Audio tracks in 1st session, 1 Data track in 2nd session. If done as "BlueBook-compliant", data track is XA M2F1 or MixedForm with links to 1st session (requires special authoring apps), otherwise non-BlueBookCompliant is usually Mode1 or M2F1.

Data within data track can be whatever the author wants to put on there: PDFs, Web app, Flash, Proprietary program...

MixedModeCD (done in standard way):

(Only) 1 session, 1st track is Data track, all subsequent tracks are Audio tracks. No linking/referencing of tracks unless done as VideoCD/MusicCD-compliant (done with VCDTkt or VideoPak, etc). Data track is usually XA Mode2Form1.

Data, again, can be any number of types of materials, depending upon author's choice.

There's not supposed to be a HUGE difference between these types. The main difference is supposed to be hardware support, which is why they changed authoring styles in the 1st place.

Scott

[Rich86]

adding to this - in my experience -

Standalone cd players run straight to the first session on the cd and try to play it. My cd players react badly to the data track in a "mixed mode cd" - but handle a "cd-extra" (also referred to as "enhanced cd") where session #1 is all standard digital audio tracks and the data track is in session #2, just fine, because they never see session #2.

Maybe some standalone players handle mixed mode cd's better than mine do - but for wider compatibility, you might want to stick with cd-extra/enhanced cd.