User Commands CDDA2WAV(1)
NAME
cdda2wav - dumps CD audio data into sound files with extra
data verification
SYNOPSIS
cdda2wav [ options ][ dev=device ] [file(s) or directories]
DESCRIPTION
cdda2wav can retrieve audio tracks from CDROM drives which
are capable of reading audio data digitally via SCSI (CDDA).
As cdda2wav implements strategies to work around typical
defects on audio CDs it reads many disks that cannot be read
by other software. As cdda2wav can use libparanoia (see
-paranoia option below) to verify the data that has been
read from the medium, it delivers superior quality even if
the medium is dusty, scratched or if other problems occur.
As cdda2wav may be directed to write the audio data to
stdout, it writes all its informational output to stderr by
default. See out-fd=descriptor option below.
Default settings
Cdda2wav defaults to read the first audio track from the
medium and the default verbose level is set to
-vtoc,summary,sectors,titles and cdda2wav by default writes
*.inf files. To extract all audio tracks with quality
verification, it is recommended to call:
cdda2wav -vall cddb=0 -paranoia -B
Device naming
Most users do not need to care about device naming. If no
dev= option was specified, cdda2wav implements auto target
support and automagically finds the drive when exactly one
CD-ROM type drive is available in the system. When more
than one CD-ROM type drive exists, a list of possible device
name parameters may be retrieved with cdda2wav -scanbus or
from the target example from the output of cdda2wav
dev=help, then the dev= parameter may be set based on the
device listing.
The device parameter to the dev= option explained below
refers to scsibus/target/lun of the CD/DVD/BluRay-Recorder.
If a file /etc/default/cdrecord exists, the parameter to the
dev= option may also be a drive name label in said file (see
FILES section).
OPTIONS
Informative options
-h
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-help
display version information for cdda2wav on standard
output.
-version
display version and Copyright information.
Audio options
-a divider
-divider divider
sets rate to 44100Hz / divider. Possible values are
listed with the -R option.
The default divider value is 1.
-B
-bulk
-alltracks
copies each track into a separate file.
The default is not to extract all tracks.
-b bits
-bits-per-sample bits
sets bits per sample per channel: 8, 12 or 16.
The default is 16 bits per sample.
-c channels
-channels channels
use:
1 for mono recording
2 for stereo recording
s for stereo recording with both channels swapped
The default is stereo recording.
-C endianess
-cdrom-endianess endianess
sets endianess of the input samples to 'little', 'big',
'machine' or 'guess' to override defaults. The value
'machine' or 'host' is evaluated as the actual byte
order of the host CPU in the current OS.
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The default is to detect cdrom endianess automatically.
-cuefile
Create a CDRWIN compatible CUE file. A CUE file that
completely follows the CDRWIN documentation can only be
used to create 1:1 copies if there is a single file
with audio data for the whole disk. The *.inf file
format implements more audio CD features than the
CDRWIN CUE format and it allows to create 1:1 copies if
there is one audio data file per track. Use the CUE
file format for meta data only if you really need this
format.
To allow cdda2wav to create CUE files, you must also
specify -t all to switch cdda2wav into a mode that
creates a single audio data file for the whole CD.
-T
-deemphasize
undo the effect of pre-emphasis in the input samples.
The default is to keep the audio data in the same state
as on the medium and to mark the pre-emphasis state in
the *.inf files.
-L cddb mode
-cddb cddb mode
does a cddbp album- and track title lookup based on the
cddb id. The parameter cddb mode defines how multiple
entries shall be handled.
_______________________________________________________________________
| Parameter| Description |
|__________|___________________________________________________________|
| -1| disable cddb queries. This is the default. |
| 0| interactive mode. The user selects the entry to use. |
| 1| first fit mode. The first entry is taken unconditionally.|
|__________|___________________________________________________________|
cddbp-server=servername
sets the server to be contacted for title lookups.
cddbp-port=portnumber
sets the port number to be used for title lookups.
-d duration
-duration duration
sets recording time in seconds or frames (sectors).
Frames are indicated by a 'f' suffix (e.g. 75f for 75
sectors). 0 sets the time for whole track.
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The default is to extract the whole track.
-E endianess
-output-endianess endianess
sets endianess of the output samples to 'little', 'big'
or 'machine' to override the default which is 'network
byte order' (big endian). The value 'machine' or
'host' is evaluated as the actual byte order of the
host CPU in the current OS.
-F
-find-extremes
finds extreme amplitudes in samples.
-G
-find-mono
finds if input samples are in mono.
-g
-gui reformats the output for parsing by gui frontends.
-H
-no-infofile
does not write info file, cddb file or cdtext file.
-i index
-index index
selects the start index.
-J
-info-only
does not write to a file, it just gives information
about the disc.
-M
-md5 enables calculation of MD-5 checksum for all audio
bytes from the beginning of a track. The audio header
is skipped when calculating the MD-5 checksum to allow
comparison of MD-5 sums for files with different header
types.
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-m
-mono
sets to mono recording.
-no-hidden-track
Ignore hidden tracks on the CD. By default, cdda2wav
checks whether there might be a hidden track before
track 1. This check may take a few seconds and thus
can be disabled with -no-hidden-track.
-N
-no-write
does not write to a file, it just reads (e.g. for
debugging purposes). If this option is used together
with the -e option, the CD is read and the audio con-
tent is played back to the sound device without creat-
ing output files with audio data.
-no-textdefaults
By default, cdda2wav replaces empty CD-Text fields from
tracks with the related CD-Text field (when defined)
for the whole CD. If the option -no-textdefaults is
used, cdda2wav leaves the track related CD-Text fields
empty in such a case.
-no-textfile
If cdda2wav encounters useful CD-Text information on
the CD, it writes a .cdtext file. The option
-no-textfile allows to suppress the creation of the
.cdtext file.
-o offset
-offset offset
starts offset sectors behind start track (one sector
equivalents 1/75 seconds).
-O audiotype
-output-format audiotype
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).
The default output format is now wav for all platforms
as it has become the most common format. Note that
former versions of cdda2wav made an exception and by
default created au type files on Solaris.
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-p percentage
-playback-realtime percentage
changes pitch of audio data copied to sound device.
-P sectors
-set-overlap sectors
sets the initial number of overlap sectors for jitter
correction in non-paranoia mode. Note that overlapped
reads are handled differently in paranoia mode.
The default overlap in non-paranoia mode is 1.
-paranoia
use the paranoia library as a filter on top of
cdda2wav's routines for reading. In paranoia mode, the
latency time for the -interactive mode is increased to
typically 5..10 seconds. This is due to the paranoia
code reading everything at least twice and having to
empty the cache RAM of the CD-ROM drive.
If the paranoia mode is used, cdda2wav displays some
quality statistics for each extracted track. The fol-
lowing items appear in the list:
___________________________________________________________________
| Value| Description |
|________|_________________________________________________________|
| rderr| Number of hard read errors |
| skip| Number of sectors skipped due to exhausted retries |
| atom| Number of intra sector jitters (frame jitters) detected|
| edge| Number of jitters between sectors detected |
| drop| Number of dropped bytes fixed |
| dup| Number of duplicate bytes fixed |
| drift| Number of drifts detected |
| overlap| Number of dynamic overlap size raises |
|________|_________________________________________________________|
-paraopts=list
List is a comma separated list of suboptions passed to
the paranoia library.
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_______________________________________________________________________________
| Option| Description |
|______________|______________________________________________________________|
| help| lists all paranoia options. |
| disable| disables paranoia mode. Libparanoia is still being used |
| no-verify| switches verify off, and static overlap on |
|retries=amount| set the number of maximum retries per sector |
|overlap=amount| set the number of sectors used for statical paranoia overlap|
|minoverlap=amt| set the min. number of sectors for dynamic paranoia overlap |
|maxoverlap=amt| set the max. number of sectors for dynamic paranoia overlap |
| proof| set maxoverlap=sectors-per-request-1,retries=200 |
|______________|______________________________________________________________|
-q
-quiet
quiet operation, no screen output.
-r rate
-rate rate
sets rate in samples per second. Possible values are
listed with the -R option.
-R
-dump-rates
shows a list of all sample rates and their dividers.
-S speed
-speed speed
sets the cdrom device to one of the selectable speeds
for reading. For maximum extraction quality, it is
recommended to use speed values of 8 or below.
The default is to extract at maximum speed.
-s
-stereo
sets to stereo recording.
-start-sector sector
set an absolute start sector. This option is mutually
exclusive to -track and -offset.
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-t track[+endtrack]
-track track[+endtrack]
-track track+max
-track all
selects the start track and optionally the end track.
If -t all is used, all audio tracks are selected. If
-t 2+max is used, all audio tracks starting with track
2 are selected.
-v itemlist
-verbose-level itemlist
Retrieves and prints verbose information about the CD.
Level is a list of comma separated suboptions. Each
suboption controls the type of information to be
reported.
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_______________________________________________________________________________
| Suboption| Description |
|____________|________________________________________________________________|
| !| invert the meaning of the following string |
| not| invert the meaning of the following string |
| disable| no information is given, warnings appear however |
| all| all information is given |
| toc| show table of contents |
| summary| show a summary of the recording parameters |
| indices| determine and display index offsets |
| catalog| retrieve and display the media catalog number MCN |
| mcn| retrieve and display the media catalog number MCN |
| trackid| retrieve and display all Intern. Standard Recording Codes ISRC|
| isrc| retrieve and display all Intern. Standard Recording Codes ISRC|
| sectors| show the table of contents in start sector notation |
| titles| show the table of contents with track titles (when available) |
|audio-tracks| list the audio tracks and their start sectors |
|____________|________________________________________________________________|
The default verbose-level is toc,summary,sectors,titles
.
-w
-wait
waits for signal, then start recording.
-x
-max sets maximum (CD) quality.
SCSI options
dev=device
-D device
-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 if given
(see -I and -interface option below).
If no -I or -interface option has been specified, the
interface setting is derived from the device name syn-
tax. A device name that is in the form Bus,ID,Lun or
contains a colon (':') defaults to the generic_scsi
interface.
Using the cooked_ioctl is not recommended as this makes
cdda2wav mainly depend on the audio extraction quality
of the operating system which is usually extremely bad.
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For this reason, avoid using parameters like
dev=/dev/cdrom for the device.
The setting of the environment variable CDDA_DEVICE is
overridden by this option.
If no dev= option is present, or if the dev= option
only contains a transport specifier but no address,
cdda2wav tries to scan the SCSI address space for CD-
ROM drives. If exactly one is found, this is used by
default.
For more information, see the description of the dev=
option from cdrecord(1).
debug=#
debug-scsi=#
Set the debug level for the libscg SCSI OS abstraction
layer.
kdebug=#
kdebug-scsi=#
kd=# Set the kernel debug level for the kernel driver called
by the libscg SCSI OS abstraction layer. This option is
not supported on all platforms.
-scanbus
Scan all SCSI devices on all SCSI buses and print the
inquiry strings. This option may be used to find SCSI
address of the CD/DVD-Recorder on a system. The
numbers printed out as labels are computed by: bus *
100 + target
ts=# Set the maximum transfer size for a single SCSI command
to #. The syntax for the ts= option is the same as for
cdrecord fs=# or sdd bs=#.
If no ts= option has been specified, cdda2wav defaults
to a transfer size of 3 MB. If libscg gets lower values
from the operating system, the value is reduced to the
maximum value that is possible with the current operat-
ing system. Sometimes, it may help to further reduce
the transfer size or to enhance it, but note that it
may take a long time to find a better value by experi-
menting with the ts= option.
Some operating systems return wrong values for the max-
imum transfer size. If the transfer totally hangs or
resets occur, it may be appropriate to reduce the
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transfer size to less than 64 kB or even less than 32
kB.
-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.
OS Interface options
-A auxdevice
-auxdevice auxdevice
uses auxdevice as CDROM drive to allow to send the
CDROMMULTISESSION ioctl on Linux although the
generic_scsi interface is in use.
-I interface
-interface interface
specifies the interface to use for accessing the CDROM:
generic_scsi
for sending SCSI commands directly to the drive.
cooked_ioctl
for using the programming interface supplied by
the OS kernel.
The latter is not recommended as it gives lower quality
and only works on a limited number of platforms.
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-interactive
Go into interactive mode that reads commands from stdin
and writes the textual replies to stderr, or the file
descriptor specified by the out-fd option. This mode
has been introduced mainly to allow cdrecord to be
called by gstreamer plugins.
If cdda2wav was called with the option -interactive, it
reads the TOC from the medium and then waits for com-
mand input as if it has been issued a stop command. If
the next command is a cont command, then cdda2wav
extracts the whole audio part of the medium. If the
next command is a read command, then cdda2wav starts
extracting from the position that was indicated by the
read command parameter.
____________________________________________________________________________
|Command| Parameters | Description |
|_______|_______________________|__________________________________________|
| cont | | continue processing at current position |
| exit | | exit processing |
| help | | print command help and wait for input |
| quit | | exit processing |
| read | sectors sector number| read sectors starting from sector number|
| read | tracks track number | read sectors starting from track number |
| stop | | stop processing and wait for new input |
|_______|_______________________|__________________________________________|
out-fd=descriptor
Redirect informational output to the file descriptor
named by descriptor. The parameter descriptor speci-
fies a UNIX file descriptor number. By default,
cdda2wav sends informational output to stderr.
Redirecting the informational output to a different
file descriptor helps guis and other programs that call
cdda2wav via pipes.
audio-fd=descriptor
In case that the file name for the audio data file is
"-", redirect audio output to the file descriptor named
by descriptor. The parameter descriptor specifies a
UNIX file descriptor number. By default, cdda2wav
sends audio data to stdout if the output is not
directed into a file. Redirecting the audio output to
a different file descriptor helps guis and other pro-
grams that call cdda2wav via pipes.
-no-fork
Do not fork for extended buffering. If -no-fork is used
and cdda2wav is used to play back audio CDs in paranoia
mode, the playback may be interrupted due to lack of
buffering. On the other hand, allowing cdda2wav to
fork will increase the latency time for the
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-interactive mode.
-e
-echo
copies audio data to the operating system's sound dev-
ice e.g. /dev/dsp.
sound-device=sounddevice
set an alternate sound device to use for -e.
-n sectors
-sectors-per-request sectors
reads sectors per request.
-l buffers
-buffers-in-ring buffers
uses a ring buffer with buffers total.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
Some defaults for cdda2wav are compiled in and depend on the
Makefile others on the environment variable settings.
CDDA_DEVICE
is used to set the device name. The device naming is
compatible with cdrecord(1).
CDDBP_SERVER
is used for cddbp title lookups when supplied.
CDDBP_PORT
is used for cddbp title lookups when supplied.
RSH If the RSH environment variable is present, the remote
connection will not be created via rcmd(3) but by cal-
ling the program pointed to by RSH. Use e.g.
RSH=/usr/bin/ssh to create a secure shell connection.
Note that this forces cdda2wav to create a pipe to the
rsh(1) program and disallows cdda2wav to directly
access the network socket to the remote server. This
makes it impossible to set up performance parameters
and slows down the connection compared to a root ini-
tiated rcmd(3) connection.
RSCSI
If the RSCSI environment variable is present, the
remote SCSI server will not be the program
/opt/schily/sbin/rscsi but the program pointed to by
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RSCSI. Note that the remote SCSI server program name
will be ignored if you log in using an account that has
been created with a remote SCSI server program as login
shell.
EXIT STATUS
cdda2wav uses the following exit codes to indicate various
degrees of success:
_______________________________________________________________________________
|Exitcode| Description |
|________|____________________________________________________________________|
| 0| no errors encountered, successful operation. |
| 1| usage or syntax error. cdda2wav got inconsistent arguments. |
| 2| permission (un)set errors. permission changes failed. |
| 3| read errors on the cdrom/burner device encountered. |
| 4| write errors while writing one of the output files encountered. |
| 5| errors with soundcard handling (initialization/write). |
| 6| errors with stat() system call on the read device (cooked ioctl). |
| 7| pipe communication errors encountered (in forked mode). |
| 8| signal handler installation errors encountered. |
| 9| allocation of shared memory failed (in forked mode). |
| 10| dynamic heap memory allocation failed. |
| 11| errors on the audio cd medium encountered. |
| 12| device open error in ioctl handling detected. |
| 13| race condition in ioctl interface handling detected. |
| 14| error in ioctl() operation encountered. |
| 15| internal error encountered. Please report back!!! |
| 16| error in semaphore operation encountered (install / request). |
| 17| could not get the scsi transfer buffer. |
| 18| could not create pipes for process communication (in forked mode).|
|________|____________________________________________________________________|
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 in WAV or other for-
mats.
Some versions of cdda2wav may 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.
If you only have one CDROM and it is loaded with an audio
CD, you may simply invoke cdda2wav and it will create the
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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 limited. For details see files README and
README.INSTALL.
If you have more then one CD-ROM type drive in the system,
you need to specify the dev= option.
HINTS ON OPTIONS
Most of the options are used to control the format of the
WAV file. In the following text most of them are discussed
in a more verbose way.
Select Device
dev=device selects the CDROM drive device to be used. The
specifier given should correspond to the selected interface
(see below). For the cooked_ioctl interface this is the
cdrom device descriptor. The SCSI devices used with the
generic SCSI interface however are addressed with their
SCSI-Bus, SCSI-Id, and SCSI-Lun instead of the generic SCSI
device descriptor. One example for a SCSI CDROM drive on bus
0 with SCSI ID 3 and lun 0 is dev=0,3,0.
Select Auxiliary device
-A auxdevice may be needed in some rare cases for CD-Extra
handling. Cdda2wav usually has no problem to get the
multi-session information for CD-Extra using raw SCSI com-
mands. For Non-SCSI-CDROM drives this is the same device as
given by dev= (see above). For SCSI-CDROM drives it is the
CDROM drive (SCSI) device (i.e. /dev/sr0 ) corresponding 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 communication method.
This interface method is typically automatically selected
from the device name. For SCSI drives generic_scsi is used
(cooked_ioctl may not be available for all devices). Valid
names are generic_scsi and cooked_ioctl. The first uses the
generic SCSI interface, 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 critical, so it
works best with the -q option. To use cdda2wav as a pseudo
CD player without recording in a file you could use
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cdda2wav -q -e -t2 -d0 -N
to play the whole second track or
cdda2wav -q -e -B -N
to play the whole disk. This feature reduces the recording
speed to at most onefold speed.
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 percen-
tages 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. Parame-
ter 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 chan-
nel; -b 12 specifies 12 bit (2 Byte) for each sample in each
channel; -b 16 specifies 16 bit (2 Byte) for each sample in
each channel (Ensure that your sample 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 samples, so they waste some disk space.
Select sample rate
-r samplerate selects a sample rate. samplerate can be in a
range between 900 and 44100. Option -R lists all available
rates.
Select sample rate divider
-a divider selects a sample rate divider. divider can be
from 1 to 50.5 in steps of 0.5. Option -R lists all avail-
able 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
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higher frequencies. Standard sector size of an audio CD
(ignoring additional information) is 2352 Bytes. In order to
finish summing for an output sample at sector boundaries the
rates above have to be chosen. 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 follow-
ing 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 duration
-d n sets recording time to n seconds or set recording time
for whole track if n is zero. In order to specify the dura-
tion 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 all tracks of a complete audio CD in separate files
-B copies each track into a separate 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.
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-d99999).
Set start sector offset
-o sectors increments start sector of the track by sectors.
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 output at
startup, reducing possibly file size. cdda2wav will watch
for any signal in the output signal and switches on writing
to file.
Find extreme samples
-F Turning on this option will display the most negative 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, other-
wise 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 fre-
quency 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 record-
ings, 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 subse-
quently 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
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format). This holds for all audio formats. Wav files are
compatible to Wind*ws sound files, they have lsb,msb byte
order which is the opposite byte order to the one 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 compatible. 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 'format', 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 informa-
tion in this format, the sample parameters can only be iden-
tified by playing the samples on a soundcard or similar. The
default filename extension is '.cdr' or '.raw'.
Select cdrom drive reading speed
-S speed allows to switch the cdrom drive to a certain
speed in order to reduce read errors. The argument is
transferred 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.
Use Monty's libparanoia for reading of sectors
-paranoia selects an alternate way of extracting audio sec-
tors. Monty's library is used with the following default
options:
PARANOIA_MODE_FULL, but without PARANOIA_MODE_NEVERSKIP
for details see Monty's libparanoia documentation. In this
case the option -P has no effect.
Do linear or overlapping reading of sectors
(This applies unless option -paranoia is used.) -P sectors
sets the given number of sectors for initial overlap sam-
pling for jitter correction. Two cases are to be dis-
tinguished. For nonzero values, some sectors are read twice
to enable cdda2wav's jitter correction. If an argument of
zero is given, no overlap sampling will be used. For
nonzero overlap sectors cdda2wav dynamically adjusts the
setting during sampling (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 overlap setting,
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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 otherwise. The case of zero sectors
is nice on low load situations or errorfree (perfect) cdrom
drives and perfect (unscratched) audio cds.
Set the transfer size
-n sectors will set the transfer size to the specified sec-
tors 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 "little",
"big" or "machine" or to the automatic endianess detection
based on voting with "guess".
Set endianess of output samples
-E endianess (endianess can be "little", "big" or
"machine") will override the default settings of the output
format.
Verbose option
-v itemlist prints more information. A list allows selec-
tion of different information items.
help Print a summary of possible members of the dif-
fopts list.
! Invert the meaning of the following string. No
comma is needed after the exclamation mark.
not Invert the meaning of all members in the diffopts
list i.e. exclude all present options from an ini-
tially complete set compare list. When using
csh(1) you might have problems with ! due to its
strange parser. This is why the not alias exists.
disable disables verbosity
all all information is given
toc displays the table of contents
summary displays a summary of recording parameters
indices invokes the index scanner and displays start
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positions of indices
catalog retrieves and displays a media catalog number
trackid retrieves and displays international standard
recording codes
sectors displays track start positions in absolute sector
notation
To combine several requests just list the suboptions
separated with commas.
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 fol-
lowing 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 frequency
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). This is needed for debugging purposes. The format is
the same as being used with the cdrecord program, see
cdrecord(1) for more information.
Quiet option
-q suppresses all screen output except error messages. That
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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.
CDDBP support
Lookup album and track titles option
-L cddbp mode Cdda2wav tries to retrieve performer, album-,
and track titles from a cddbp server. The default server
right now is 'freedb.freedb.org'. It is planned to have
more control over the server handling later. The parameter
defines how multiple entries are handled:
0 interactive mode, the user chooses one of the entries.
1 take the first entry without asking.
Set server for title lookups
cddbp-server servername When using -L or -cddb, the server
being contacted can be set with this option.
Set portnumber for title lookups
cddbp-port portnumber When using -L or -cddb, the server
port being contacted can be set with this option.
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. Use a filename of - to let
cdda2wav output its samples to standard output.
Conversion to other sound formats is possible using the sox
program package (it should no longer be necessary to use sox
-x to change the byte order of samples; see option -E to
change the output byteorder).
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If you want to sample more than one track into different
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 .wav, .au, .aifc, .aiff, and .cdr according to the
selected sound format. 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, .cdindex and .cdtext files are gen-
erated 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.musicbrainz.org and www.freedb.com.
Inf files:
The inf files describe the sample files and the part of the
audio cd it was taken from. They are a means to transfer
information to a cd burning program like cdrecord. For exam-
ple, if the original audio cd had pre-emphasis enabled, and
cdda2wav -T did remove the pre-emphasis, 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-
emphasis 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
The index scanner may give timeouts.
The resampling (rate conversion code) uses polynomial inter-
polation, which is not optimal.
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Cdda2wav should use threads.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks go to Project MODE (http://www.mode.net/) and
Fraunhofer Institut fuer 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. Libparanoia contributed by
Monty (Christopher Montgomery) xiphmont@mit.edu.
AUTHOR
Heiko Eissfeldt heiko@colossus.escape.de (1993-2004)
2004-today:
Joerg Schilling
Seestr. 110
D-13353 Berlin
Germany
DATE
12 Jan 2010
INTERFACE STABILITY
The interfaces provided by cdda2wav are designed for long
term stability. As cdda2wav depends on interfaces provided
by the underlying operating system, the stability of the
interfaces offered by cdda2wav depends on the interface sta-
bility of the OS interfaces. Modified interfaces in the OS
may enforce modified interfaces in cdda2wav.
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