NAME
cdda2wav - a sampling utility that dumps CD audio data into
wav sound files
SYNOPSIS
cdda2wav [-c chans] [-s] [-m] [-b bits] [-r rate] [-a
divider] [-t track[+endtrack]] [-i index] [-o offset] [-d
duration] [-x] [-q] [-w] [-v] [-V] [-Q] [-J] [-R] [-P sec-
tors] [-F] [-G] [-T] [-e] [-p percentage] [-n sectors] [-l
buffers] [-N] [-J] [-H] [-g] [-B] [-D device] [-A auxdevice]
[-I interface] [-O audiotype] [-C input-endianess] [-E
output-endianess] [-M count] [-S speed] [audio.wav]
DESCRIPTION
cdda2wav can retrieve audio tracks from CDROM drives (see
README for a list of drives) that are capable of reading
audio data digitally to the host (CDDA).
OPTIONS
-D device --device
uses device as the source for CDDA reading: For exam-
ple /dev/cdrom for the cooked_ioctl interface and
Bus,ID,Lun for the generic_scsi interface. The device
has to correspond with the interface setting (see
below). The setting of the environment variable
CDDA_DEVICE is overridden by this option.
-A auxdevice --auxdevice
uses auxdevice as CDROM drive for ioctl usage.
-I interface --interface
specifies the interface for CDROM access: generic_scsi
or (on Linux, and FreeBSD systems) cooked_ioctl.
-c channels --channels
uses 1 for mono, or 2 for stereo recording, or s for
stereo recording with both channels swapped.
-s --stereo
sets to stereo recording.
-m --mono
sets to mono recording.
-x --max
sets maximum (CD) quality.
-b bits --bits-per-sample
sets bits per sample per channel: 8, 12 or 16.
-r rate --rate
sets rate in samples per second. Possible values are
listed with the -R option.
-a divider --divider
sets rate to 44100Hz / divider. Possible values are
listed with the -R option.
-R --dump-rates
shows a list of all sample rates and their dividers.
-P sectors --set-overlap
sets the initial number of overlap sectors for jitter
correction.
-n sectors --sectors-per-request
reads sectors per request.
-l buffers --buffers-in-ring
uses a ring buffer with buffers total.
-t track+endtrack --track
selects the start track and optionally the end track.
-i index --index
selects the start index.
-o offset --offset
starts offset sectors behind start track (one sector
equivalents 1/75 seconds).
-O audiotype --output-format
can be wav (for wav files) or aiff (for apple/sgi aiff
files) or aifc (for apple/sgi aifc files) or au or sun
(for sun .au PCM files) or cdr or raw (for headerless
files to be used for cd writers).
-C endianess --cdrom-endianess
sets endianess of the input samples to 'little', 'big'
or 'guess' to override defaults.
-E endianess --output-endianess
sets endianess of the output samples to 'little' or
'big' to override defaults.
-d duration --duration
sets recording time in seconds or frames. Frames (sec-
tors) are indicated by a 'f' suffix (like 75f for 75
sectors). 0 sets the time for whole track.
-B --bulk
copies each track into a seperate file.
-w --wait
waits for signal, then start recording.
-F --find-extremes
finds extrem amplitudes in samples.
-G --find-mono
finds if input samples are in mono.
-T --deemphasize
undo the effect of pre-emphasis in the input samples.
-e --echo
copies audio data to sound device e.g. /dev/dsp.
-p percentage --set-pitch
changes pitch of audio data copied to sound device.
-v level --verbose-level
prints verbose information about the CD. Level is a
sum of powers of two in the range 0 up to 63. Each
power of two controls the type of information to be
reported. center box ; r| l|.
Power Description _ 1 show table of contents
2 show a summary of the recording parameters 4 deter-
mine and display index offsets 8 retrieve and display the
media catalog number MCN 16 retrieve and display all
Intern. Standard Recording Codes ISRC 32 show the table of
contents in start sector notation 64 show the table of
contents with track titles (when available)
-N --no-write
does not write to a file, it just reads (for debugging
purposes).
-J --info-only
does not write to a file, it just gives information
about the disc.
-H --no-infofile
does not write an info file and a cddb file.
-g --gui
formats the output to be better parsable by gui fron-
tends.
-M count --md5
enables calculation of MD-5 checksum for 'count' bytes
from a beginning of a track.
-S speed --speed-select
sets the cdrom device to one of the selectable speeds
for reading.
-q --quiet
quiet operation, no screen output.
-V --verbose-SCSI
enable SCSI command logging to the console. This is
mainly used for debugging.
-Q --silent-SCSI
suppress SCSI command error reports to the console.
This is mainly used for guis.
-J --version
display version of cdda2wav on standard output.
Defaults depend on the
Makefile and environment variable settings (currently
CDDA_DEVICE ).
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
CDDA_DEVICE is used to set the device name. The device nam-
ing is compatible with Jörg Schilling's cdrecord package.
DISCUSSION
cdda2wav is able to read parts of an audio CD or multimedia
CDROM (containing audio parts) directly digitally. These
parts can be written to a file, a pipe, or to a sound dev-
ice.
cdda2wav stands for CDDA to WAV (where CDDA stands for com-
pact disc digital audio and WAV is a sound sample format
introduced by MS Windows). It allows copying CDDA audio
data from the CDROM drive into a file on your ram-, hard-,
floppy- or whatever-disk in WAV or other formats.
The latest versions try to get higher real-time scheduling
priorities to ensure smooth (uninterrupted) operation. These
priorities are available for super users and are higher than
those of 'normal' processes. Thus delays are minimized.
Please note that you need newer kernels and c libraries to
take advantage of this feature.
If your CDROM (not yet for SCSI drives) is on device
/dev/cdrom and it is loaded with an audio CD, you may simply
invoke cdda2wav and it will create the sound file audio.wav
recording the whole track beginning with track 1 in stereo
at 16 bit at 44100 Hz sample rate, if your file system has
enough space free. Otherwise recording time will be lim-
ited. SCSI drives have to use different devices (see files
README and README.INSTALL for details).
HINTS ON OPTIONS
Options
Most of the options are used to control the format of
the WAV file. In the following text all of them are
described.
Select Device
-D device selects the CDROM drive device to be used.
The specifier given should correspond to the selected
interface (see below). CHANGE! For the cooked_ioctl
interface this is the cdrom device descriptor as
before. The SCSI devices used with the addressed with
their SCSI-Bus, SCSI-Id, and SCSI device descriptor!!!
One example for a SCSI CDROM drive on bus 0 with SCSI
ID 3 and lun 0 is -D0,3,0.
Select Auxiliary device
-A auxdevice is necessary for CD-Extra handling. For
Non-SCSI-CDROM drives this is the same device as given
by -D (see above). For SCSI-CDROM drives it is the
CDROM drive (SCSI) device (i.e. /dev/sr0 ) correspond-
ing to the SCSI device (i.e. 0,3,0 ). It has to match
the device used for sampling.
Select Interface
-I interface selects the CDROM drive interface. For
SCSI drives use generic_scsi (cooked_ioctl may not yet
be available for all devices): generic_scsi and
cooked_ioctl. The first uses the generic SCSI inter-
face, the latter uses the ioctl of the CDROM driver.
The latter variant works only when the kernel driver
supports CDDA reading. This entry has to match the
selected CDROM device (see above).
Enable echo to soundcard
-e copies audio data to the sound card while recording,
so you hear it nearly simultaneously. The soundcard
gets the same data that is recorded. This is time crit-
ical, so it works best with the -q option. To use
cdda2wav as a pseudo CD player without recording in a
file you could use cdda2wav -q -e -t2 -d0 -N to play
the whole second track. This feature reduces the
recording speed to at most onefold speed. You cannot
make better recordings than your sound card can play
(since the same data is used).
Change pitch of echoed audio
-p percentage changes the pitch of all audio echoed to
a sound card. Only the copy to the soundcard is
affected, the recorded audio samples in a file remain
the same. Normal pitch, which is the default, is given
by 100%. Lower percentages correspond to lower
pitches, i.e. -p 50 transposes the audio output one
octave lower. See also the script pitchplay as an
example. This option was contributed by Raul Sobon.
Select mono or stereo recording
-m or -c 1 selects mono recording (both stereo channels
are mixed), -s or -c 2 or -c s selects stereo recording
(doubles file size). Parameter s will swap both sound
channels.
Select maximum quality
-x will set stereo, 16 bits per sample at 44.1 KHz
(full CD quality). Note that other format options
given later can change this setting.
Select sample quality
-b 8 specifies 8 bit (1 Byte) for each sample in each
channel; -b 12 specifies 12 bit (2 Byte) for each sam-
ple in each channel; -b 16 specifies 16 bit (2 Byte)
for each sample in each channel (Ensure that your sam-
ple player or sound card is capable of playing 12-bit
or 16-bit samples). Selecting 12 or 16 bits doubles
file size. 12-bit samples are aligned to 16-bit sam-
ples, so they waste some disk space.
Select sample rate
-r samplerate selects a sample rate. samplerate can be
in a range between 44100 and 900. Option -R lists all
available rates.
Select sample rate divider
-a divider selects a sample rate divider. divider can
be minimally 1 and maximally 50.5 and everything
between in steps of 0.5. Option -R lists all available
rates.
To make the sound smoother at lower sampling rates,
cdda2wav sums over n samples (where n is the specific
dividend). So for 22050 Hertz output we have to sum
over 2 samples, for 900 Hertz we have to sum over 49
samples. This cancels higher frequencies. Standard
sector size of an audio CD (ignoring additional infor-
mation) is 2352 Bytes. In order to finish summing for
an output sample at sector boundaries the rates above
have to be choosen. Arbitrary sampling rates in high
quality would require some interpolation scheme, which
needs much more sophisticated programming.
List a table of all sampling rates
-R shows a list of all sample rates and their dividers.
Dividers can range from 1 to 50.5 in steps of 0.5.
Select start track and optionally end track
-t n+m selects n as the start track and optionally m as
the last track of a range to be recorded. These tracks
must be from the table of contents. This sets the
track where recording begins. Recording can advance
through the following tracks as well (limited by the
optional end track or otherwise depending on recording
time). Whether one file or different files are then
created depends on the -B option (see below).
Select start index
-i n selects the index to start recording with.
Indices other than 1 will invoke the index scanner,
which will take some time to find the correct start
position. An offset may be given additionally (see
below).
Set recording time
-d n sets recording time to n seconds or set recording
time for whole track if n is zero. In order to specify
the duration in frames (sectors) also, the argument can
have an appended 'f'. Then the numerical argument is to
be taken as frames (sectors) rather than seconds.
Please note that if track ranges are being used they
define the recording time as well thus overriding any -
d option specified times.
Recording time is defined as the time the generated
sample will play (at the defined sample rate). Since
it's related to the amount of generated samples, it's
not the time of the sampling process itself (which can
be less or more). It's neither strictly coupled with
the time information on the audio CD (shown by your
hifi CD player). Differences can occur by the usage of
the -o option (see below). Notice that recording time
will be shortened, unless enough disk space exists.
Recording can be aborted at anytime by pressing the
break character (signal SIGQUIT).
Record a complete audio CD in one go in different files
-B copies each track into a seperate file. A base name
can be given. File names have an appended track number
and an extension corresponding to the audio format. To
record all audio tracks of a CD, use a sufficient high
duration (i.e. -d99999).
Set start sector offset
-o sectors increments start sector of the track by sec-
tors. By this option you are able to skip a certain
amount at the beginning of a track so you can pick
exactly the part you want. Each sector runs for 1/75
seconds, so you have very fine control. If your offset
is so high that it would not fit into the current
track, a warning message is issued and the offset is
ignored. Recording time is not reduced. (To skip
introductory quiet passages automagically, use the - w
option see below.)
Wait for signal option
-w Turning on this option will suppress all silent out-
put at startup, reducing possibly file size. cdda2wav
will watch for any signal in the output signal and
switches on writing to file.
Find extrem samples
-F Turning on this option will display the most nega-
tive and the most positive sample value found during
recording for both channels. This can be useful for
readjusting the volume. The values shown are not reset
at track boundaries, they cover the complete sampling
process. They are taken from the original samples and
have the same format (i.e. they are independent of the
selected output format).
Find if input samples are in mono
-G If this option is given, input samples for both
channels will be compared. At the end of the program
the result is printed. Differences in the channels
indicate stereo, otherwise when both channels are equal
it will indicate mono.
Undo the pre-emphasis in the input samples
-T Some older audio CDs are recorded with a modified
frequency response called pre-emphasis. This is found
mostly in classical recordings. The correction can be
seen in the flags of the Table Of Contents often. But
there are recordings, that show this setting only in
the subchannels. If this option is given, the index
scanner will be started, which reads the q-subchannel
of each track. If pre-emphasis is indicated in the q-
subchannel of a track, but not in the TOC, pre-emphasis
will be assumed to be present, and subsequently a
reverse filtering is done for this track before the
samples are written into the audio file.
Set audio format
-O audiotype can be wav (for wav files) or au or sun
(for sun PCM files) or cdr or raw (for headerless files
to be used for cd writers). All file samples are coded
in linear pulse code modulation (as done in the audio
compact disc format). This holds for all audio formats.
Wav files are compatible to Wind*ws sound files, they
have lsb,msb byte order as being used on the audio cd.
The default filename extension is '.wav'. Sun type
files are not like the older common logarithmically
coded .au files, but instead as mentioned above linear
PCM is used. The byte order is msb,lsb to be compati-
ble. The default filename extension is '.au'. The AIFF
and the newer variant AIFC from the Apple/SGI world
store their samples in bigendian format (msb,lsb). In
AIFC no compression is used. Finally the easiest 'for-
mat', the cdr aka raw format. It is done per default in
msb,lsb byte order to satisfy the order wanted by most
cd writers. Since there is no header information in
this format, the sample parameters can only be identi-
fied by playing the samples on a soundcard or similiar.
The default filename extension is '.cdr' or '.raw'.
Select cdrom drive reading speed
-S speed allows to switch the cdrom drive to a certain
level of speed in order to reduce read errors. The
argument is transfered verbatim to the drive. Details
depend very much on the cdrom drives. An argument of 0
for example is often the default speed of the drive, a
value of 1 often selects single speed.
Enable MD5 checksums
-M count enables calculation of MD-5 checksum for
'count' bytes from the beginning of a track. This was
introduced for quick comparisons of tracks.
Do linear or overlapping reading of sectors
-P sectors sets the given number of sectors for ini-
tial overlap sampling for jitter correction. Two cases
are to be distinguished. For nonzero values, some sec-
tors are read twice to enable cdda2wav's jitter correc-
tion. If an argument of zero is given, no overlap sam-
pling will be used. For nonzero overlap sectors
cdda2wav dynamically adjusts the setting during sam-
pling (like cdparanoia does). If no match can be
found, cdda2wav retries the read with an increased
overlap. If the amount of jitter is lower than the
current overlapped samples, cdda2wav reduces the over-
lap setting, resulting in a higher reading speed. The
argument given has to be lower than the total number of
sectors per request (see option -n below). Cdda2wav
will check this setting and issues a error message oth-
erwise. The case of zero sectors is nice on low load
situations or errorfree (perfect) cdrom drives and per-
fect (not scratched) audio cds.
Set the transfer size
-n sectors will set the transfer size to the specified
sectors per request.
Set number of ring buffer elements
-l buffers will allocate the specified number of ring
buffer elements.
Set endianess of input samples
-C endianess will override the default settings of the
input format. Endianess can be set explicitly to "lit-
tle" or "big" or to the automatic endianess detection
based on voting with "guess".
Set endianess of output samples
-E endianess (endianess can be "little" or "big") will
override the default settings of the output format.
Verbose option
-v level prints more information. A binary mask allows
selection of different information.
0 keeps quiet
1 displays the table of contents
2 displays a summary of recording parameters
4 invokes the index scanner and displays start posi-
tions of indices
8 retrieves and displays a media catalog number
16 retrieves and displays international standard
recording codes
32 displays track start positions in absolute sector
notation
To combine several requests just add the numbers and
give the sum as argument.
The table of contents
The display will show the table of contents with number
of tracks and total time (displayed in mm:ss.hh format,
mm=minutes, ss=seconds, hh=rounded 1/100 seconds). The
following list displays track number and track time for
each entry. The summary gives a line per track
describing the type of the track.
track preemphasis copypermitted tracktype chans
The track column holds the track number. preemphasis
shows if that track has been given a non linear fre-
quency response. NOTE: You can undo this effect with
the -T option. copy-permitted indicates if this track
is allowed to copy. tracktype can be data or audio. On
multimedia CDs (except hidden track CDs) both of them
should be present. channels is defined for audio
tracks only. There can be two or four channels.
No file output
-N this debugging option switches off writing to a
file.
No infofile generation
-H this option switches off creation of an info file
and a cddb file.
Generation of simple output for gui frontends
-g this option switches on simple line formatting,
which is needed to support gui frontends (like xcd-
roast).
Verbose SCSI logging
-V this option switches on logging of SCSI commands.
This will produce a lot of output (when SCSI devices
are being used), which is needed for debugging pur-
poses. The format is the same as being used with the
cdrecord package from J ö rg Schilling. I will not
describe it here.
Quiet option
-q suppresses all screen output except error messages.
That reduces cpu time resources.
Just show information option
-J does not write a file, it only prints information
about the disc (depending on the -v option). This is
just for information purposes.
HINTS ON USAGE
Don't create samples you cannot read. First check your sam-
ple player software and sound card hardware. I experienced
problems with very low sample rates (stereo <= 1575 Hz, mono
<= 3675 Hz) when trying to play them with standard WAV
players for sound blaster (maybe they are not legal in WAV
format). Most CD-Writers insist on audio samples in a bigen-
dian format. Now cdda2wav supports the -E endianess option
to control the endianess of the written samples.
If your hardware is fast enough to run cdda2wav uninter-
rupted and your CD drive is one of the 'perfect' ones, you
will gain speed when switching all overlap sampling off with
the -P 0 option. Further fine tuning can be done with the -
n sectors option. You can specify how much sectors should
be requested in one go.
Cdda2wav supports pipes now. Use a filename of - to let
cdda2wav output its samples to standard output.
Conversion to other sound formats can be done using the sox
program package (although the use of sox -x to change the
byte order of samples should be no more necessary; see
option -E to change the output byteorder).
If you really want to sample more than one track into dif-
ferent files in one run, this is currently possible with the
-B option. When recording time exceeds the track limit a new
file will be opened for the next track.
FILES
Cdda2wav can generate a lot of files for various purposes.
Audio files:
There are audio files containing samples with default exten-
sions These files are not generated when option (-N) is
given. Multiple files may be written when the bulk copy
option (-B) is used. Individual file names can be given as
arguments. If the number of file names given is sufficient
to cover all included audio tracks, the file names will be
used verbatim. Otherwise, if there are less file names than
files needed to write the included tracks, the part of the
file name before the extension is extended with '_dd' where
dd represents the current track number.
Cddb and Cdindex files:
If cdda2wav detects cd-extra or cd-text (album/track) title
information, then .cddb and .cdindex files are generated
unless suppressed by the option -H. They contain suitable
formatted entries for submission to audio cd track title
databases in the internet. The CDINDEX and CDDB(tm) systems
are currently supported. For more information please visit
www.cdindex.org and www.cddb.com.
Inf files:
The inf files are describing the sample files and the part
from the audio cd, it was taken from. They are a means to
transfer information to a cd burning program like cdrecord.
For example, if the original audio cd had pre-emphasis
enabled, and cdda2wav -T did remove the pre-emphase, then
the inf file has pre-emphasis not set (since the audio file
does not have it anymore), while the .cddb and the .cdindex
have pre-emphase set as the original does.
WARNING
IMPORTANT: it is prohibited to sell copies of copyrighted
material by noncopyright holders. This program may not be
used to circumvent copyrights. The user acknowledges this
constraint when using the software.
BUGS
Performance may not be optimal on slower systems.
The index scanner may give timeouts.
The resampling (rate conversion code) uses polynomial inter-
polation, which is not optimal.
Cdda2wav should use threads.
Cdda2wav currently cannot sample hidden audio tracks (track
1 index 0).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks goto Project MODE (http://www.mode.net/) and
Fraunhofer Institut f ür integrierte Schaltungen (FhG-IIS)
(http://www.iis.fhg.de/) for financial support. Plextor
Europe and Ricoh Japan provided cdrom disk drives and cd
burners which helped a lot to develop this software. Rammi
has helped a lot with the debugging and showed a lot of
stamina when hearing 100 times the first 16 seconds of the
first track of the Krupps CD. Paranoia patches contributed
by Monty xiphmont@mit.edu.
AUTHOR
Heiko Eissfeldt heiko@colossus.escape.de
DATE
11 Feb 2000
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