Rippinga CD

[Anonymous]

What is the best way to rip a cd. They are cda files.Should they be burnt to back up cd ad cda? Also the when I look at a music cd in my computer I see a listing of track numbers, but all their sizes is just 1 Kb.How can this be?

[Detmek]

Use CD Ripper like EAC, CUETools, Dbpoweramp ect.

[El Heggunte]

What is the best way to rip a cd. They are cda files.Should they be burnt to back up cd ad cda? Also the when I look at a music cd in my computer I see a listing of track numbers, but all their sizes is just 1 Kb.How can this be?

I recommend Foobar2000

Nope, there are NO .cda files on an Audio CD, because Audio CDs do not have a filesystem,
only a "Table Of Contents" with pointers to the physical tracks. It's Windows (the operating system) that was designed to present the non-existent .CDA files to the end-user, perhaps in order to prevent piracy (yes, M$ is well-known for being extremely smart ).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cda_file

[Keyser]

I would recommend Exact Audio Copy (EAC).

As for the .cda files, they are virtual files that contain the 44 bytes long header of each track. In truth, CDDA tracks are in raw format (no header), but Windows generates a .cda file for each track acting as a header, making it possible to retrieve tracks properties from a virtual filesystem.

[netmask56]

Lots of program to rip your CD's to hard disk - those mentioned as well as Windows Media Player - iTunes etc etc.. It is important that you do not go with the default settings - decide the format and quality you want and change as necessary in Settings. I would select wav format as the format to save to hdd and then you can decide if you want to compress them to a smaller and lower quality format. The cda files are only pointers to make it harder for the casual user to copy - there was a dll file around years ago that showed up the actual wav files on the disc.. you could then just drag n drop. But it is best to use something like EAC or similar..

[hello_hello]

It's probably a good idea to use a program with some sort of "secure" ripping mode. CDs don't have the same error correction as DVDs so there's no way for the ripping program to verify it's ripped the tracks without error. Secure ripping modes read the disc more than once to make sure the data is the same each time. Foobar2000 (for example) has two secure ripping modes. Standard and paranoid. Most CD ripping software would have a secure ripping mode. Some can check with an online database to confirm your rip of the CD matches everyone else's rip of the same CD. I don't bother with that myself. I just use "standard" secure ripping mode.

I also think it's a good idea to rip to a lossless format. That way if you want to change to a different file type (mp3 or m4a etc) you don't need to rip the CD again. Just convert the lossless files, assuming you keep them. I rip to flac myself, then convert to MP3.

Most ripping programs can check CDs against an online database and automatically name the tracks for you, if a match is found.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for feed back How is is that when viewed in my computer the cd looks empty, there is no zero bytes free of zero bytes

[hech54]

Thanks for feed back How is is that when viewed in my computer the cd looks empty, there is no zero bytes free of zero bytes

It has zero bytes FREE meaning you cannot burn/add anything to it.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for feed back How is is that when viewed in my computer the cd looks empty, there is no zero bytes free of zero bytes

It has zero bytes FREE meaning you cannot burn/add anything to it.

Ok how do you know how big the cd is then?

[El Heggunte]

Thanks for feed back How is is that when viewed in my computer the cd looks empty, there is no zero bytes free of zero bytes

It has zero bytes FREE meaning you cannot burn/add anything to it.

Ok how do you know how big the cd is then?

1 minute of "Red Book" audio = 10,584,000 bytes (that is to say, 10.09368896484375 megabytes)

So, just multiply the total playing time (in minutes) by 10.09368896484375 megabytes.

[hello_hello]

Ok how do you know how big the cd is then?

By ripping it.

CDs don't use the same file system as data CDs/DVDs and all Windows will show you is the table of contents.
Depending on the software you're using, you might be able to get the total playing time, and you could work it out from there. 80mins would be the maximum (officially 74minutes, but I think 80min CDs are somewhat common now). This is foobar2000 showing the properties for all the tracks of a CD loaded into a playlist.