.cda is a common

filename extension A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically ...

denoting a small (44

byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...

)

stub file A stub file is a computer file that appears to the user to be on disk and immediately available for use, but is actually held either in part or entirely on a different storage medium. When a stub file is accessed, device driver software intercep ...

generated by Microsoft Windows for each audio track on a standard "Red Book"

CD-DA Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA or CD-DA), also known as Digital Audio Compact Disc or simply as Audio CD, is the standard format for audio compact discs. The standard is defined in the ''Red Book'', one of a series of Rainbow Books (named ...

format audio CD as defined by the Table of Contents (ToC) (within the lead-in's subcode). These files are shown in the directory for the CD being viewed in the format ''Track##.cda'', where ## is the number of each individual track. The .cda files do not contain the actual PCM sound wave data, but instead tell where on the disc each track starts and stops. If the file is "copied" from the CD to a computer, it cannot be used on its own because it is only a shortcut to part of the disc. However, some audio editing and CD creation programs will, from the user's perspective, load .cda files as though they are actual audio data files, and allow the user to listen to them.

Organization of a CDA file

The size of a CDA file being fixed, as well as its organization, there is always only one and only chunk, named "CDDA" (meaning

Compact Disc The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in Oc ...

for Digital Audio). The identifier created by Windows is used by the

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...

and

Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to ...

CD drive (cdplayer.exe). This player cannot connect to

FreeDB Freedb was a database of compact disc track listings, where all the content was under the GNU General Public License. To look up CD information over the Internet, a client program calculated a hash function from the CD table of contents and used ...

CDDB CDDB, short for Compact Disc Database, is a database for software applications to look up audio CD (compact disc) information over the Internet. This is performed by a client which calculates a (nearly) unique disc ID and then queries the databas ...

. So that it can display the artist name and song title, you have to manually enter this information in the cdplayer.ini file (in the Windows installation directory), in a section named after that identifier. This identifier has no relation to the DiscId used by FreeDB or CDDB, it is a purely Microsoft creation, for the above use. The position and length of the tracks use frames as the unit. There are 75 frames per second. This is the smallest block of data that can be read from an audio CD, corresponding to a sector of the CD. All the information which requires several bytes is coded with the order-byte Intel (

Little-endian In computing, endianness, also known as byte sex, is the order or sequence of bytes of a word of digital data in computer memory. Endianness is primarily expressed as big-endian (BE) or little-endian (LE). A big-endian system stores the most si ...

Software that uses .cda format

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player (application software), media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing sound reproduction, audio, video and viewing images on personal computers runnin ...

Media Player Classic Media Player Classic (MPC), Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC), and Media Player Classic - Black Edition (MPC-BE) are a family of free and open-source, compact, lightweight, and customizable media players for 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft ...

KMPlayer K-Multimedia Player (commonly known as The KMPlayer, KMPlayer or KMP) is an Adware-supported media player for Windows and iOS that can play most current audio and video formats, including VCD, HDML, DVD, AVI, MKV, Ogg, OGM, 3GP, MPEG-1/2/4, ...

AIMP AIMP (Artem Izmaylov Media Player) is a freeware Audio player (software), audio player for Windows and Android (operating system), Android, originally developed by Russian developer Artem Izmaylov ( rus, Артём Измайлов, Artyom Izmajlo ...

Player *

Winamp Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014. Sinc ...

Player *

GOM Player GOM Player is a media player for Windows, developed by GOM & Company. With more than 100 million downloads, it is also known as the most used player in South Korea. Its main features include the ability to play some broken media files and find ...

* Foobar2000 *

XMPlay XMPlay is a freeware audio player for Windows. Initially released in 1998, it is often used as a reference player for tracker audio files. Overview Developed by ''Un4seen Developments'' in 1998, it originally only supported the XM file for ...

Zune Zune is a discontinued line of digital media products and services marketed by Microsoft from November 2006 until its discontinuation in June 2012. Zune consisted of a line of portable media players, digital media player software for Windows Per ...

for Windows * iTunes *

MusicMatch Jukebox MusicMatch Jukebox was an audio player made by San Diego-based MusicMatch, Inc. It contained features commonly found in jukebox software such as the ability to manage digital audio files and playlists, audio file conversion, an online music s ...

References

External links

File format
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061111223650/http://www.moon-soft.com/program/FORMAT/sound/cda.htm , date=2006-11-11 Computer file formats Compact disc

Organization of a CDA file

Software that uses .cda format

See also

References

External links