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 auxde
vice] [-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
example /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 vari
able 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.
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 jit
ter 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 sec
tor 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
(sectors) 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.
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 sam
ples.
-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.
+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
|Power | Description |
+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 1 | show table of contents |
| 2 | show a summary of the recording parameters |
| 4 | determine 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 debug
ging 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
frontends.
-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.
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 (cur
rently CDDA_DEVICE ).
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
CDDA_DEVICE is used to set the device name. The device
naming is compatible with Jörg Schilling's cdrecord pack
age.
DISCUSSION
cdda2wav is able to read parts of an audio CD or multime
dia CDROM (containing audio parts) directly digitally.
These parts can be written to a file, a pipe, or to a
sound device.
cdda2wav stands for CDDA to WAV (where CDDA stands for
compact disc digital audio and WAV is a sound sample for
mat 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 sim
ply 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 limited. 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
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 generic SCSI interface however are now
addressed with their SCSI-Bus, SCSI-Id, and SCSI-
Lun instead of the generic SCSI device descrip
tor!!! 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
) 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 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
interface, the latter uses the ioctl of the CDROM
driver. The latter variant works only when the ker
nel 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 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 cor
respond to lower pitches, i.e. -p 50 transposes
the audio output one octave lower. See also the
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 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 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 every
thing 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 spe
cific 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 addi
tional information) is 2352 Bytes. In order to fin
ish summing for an output sample at sector bound
aries the rates above have to be choosen. Arbi
trary 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.
-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. Record
ing can advance through the following tracks as
well (limited by the optional end track or other
wise 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 record
ing 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 sam
ples, 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). Differ
ences can occur by the usage of the -o option (see
below). Notice that recording time will be short
ened, 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
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
trol. 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 pas
sages 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 extrem 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 for
mat).
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 pro
gram the result is printed. Differences in the
channels indicate stereo, otherwise when both chan
nels are equal it will indicate mono.
Undo the pre-emphasis in the input samples
-T Some older audio CDs are recorded with a modi
fied frequency response called pre-emphasis. This
is found mostly in classical recordings. The cor
rection 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 header
less 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 compat
ible to Wind*ws sound files, they have lsb,msb byte
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 easi
est '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 information in this format, the sample
parameters can only be identified 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
initial overlap sampling for jitter correction. Two
cases are to be distinguished. 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 cdpara
noia 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 over
lapped samples, cdda2wav reduces the overlap set
ting, resulting in a higher reading speed. The
argument given has to be lower than the total num
ber 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 (not scratched) audio cds.
Set the transfer size
-n sectors will set the transfer size to the
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" 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
positions 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 sec
tor 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. preempha
sis shows if that track has been given a non linear
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. chan
nels 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 com
mands. This will produce a lot of output (when SCSI
devices are being used), which is needed for debug
ging purposes. The format is the same as being used
with the cdrecord package from Jörg Schilling. I
will not describe it here.
Quiet option
-q suppresses all screen output except error mes
sages. That reduces cpu time resources.
Just show information option
-J does not write a file, it only prints informa
tion 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
sample player software and sound card hardware. I experi
enced problems with very low sample rates (stereo <= 1575
Hz, mono <= 3675 Hz) when trying to play them with stan
dard WAV players for sound blaster (maybe they are not
legal in WAV format). Most CD-Writers insist on audio sam
ples in a bigendian 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
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
extensions 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 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 infor
mation 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.
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
interpolation, 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 Fraun
hofer Institut für 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 con
tributed by Monty xiphmont@mit.edu.
AUTHOR
Heiko Eissfeldt heiko@colossus.escape.de
DATE
11 Feb 2000
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