DragonFly On-Line Manual Pages
CDDA2WAV(1) CDDA2WAV(1)
NAME
cdda2wav - dumps CD audio data into sound files with extra data verifi-
cation
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 qual-
ity 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 speed=4 -paranoia paraopts=proof -B
For hints on how to specify better parameters manually, see the
paraopts= description below.
Device naming
Most users do not need to care about device naming. If no dev= option
was specified, cdda2wav implements auto target support and automagi-
cally 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 scsi-
bus/target/lun of the CD/DVD/BluRay-Recorder. If a file
/usr/local/etc/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
-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.
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.
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 cal-
culating the MD-5 checksum to allow comparison of MD-5 sums for
files with different header types.
-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 pur-
poses). If this option is used together with the -e option, the
CD is read and the audio content is played back to the sound
device without creating 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 sup-
press 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.
-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 rou-
tines for reading. In paranoia mode, the latency time for the
-interactive mode and with a read ahead buffer size of 150..300
sectors, 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.
The size of the read ahead area must be larger than the size of
the RAM of the drive in order to allow libparanoia to empty the
cache RAM in the drive. As the size of the read ahead area in
former times was a constant compiled into the libparanoia code,
the extract quality with using libparanoia was no longer suffi-
cient with drives built after year 2000. See readahead= parame-
ter to the paraopts= option below.
If the paranoia mode is used, cdda2wav displays some quality
statistics for each extracted track. The following 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 |
| c2 | Number of sectors with C2 errors |
| reads | Number of readahead blocks read and percentage to track size |
|overlap | Number of dynamic overlap size raises |
+--------+--------------------------------------------------------------+
The quality indicators in detail:
rderr The number of failed low level read requests. Each read
appears for sectors-per-request sectors. The sec-
tors-per-request size is typically less than the read
ahead size.
skip The number of sectors that have been skipped because the
read error retry count was exhausted and no successful
read was possible.
atom The number of jitters that have been detected inside sec-
tors. This should never happen, but whenever a non-cor-
rectable C2 error occurs, the drive could lose streaming.
Increasing the read ahead buffer size may reduce the
results from atom errors.
edge The number of jitters that have been detected at the
edges of sectors. This could be caused by sector posi-
tioning errors. Increasing the read ahead buffer size
may reduce the results from edge errors.
drop The number of dropped samples. This could be caused by
sector positioning errors. Increasing the read ahead
buffer size may reduce the results from edge errors.
dup Duplicated samples could be caused by sector positioning
errors like dripped samples. Increasing the read ahead
buffer size may reduce the results from edge errors.
drift This is the amount of drifts detected when checking the
overlap area.
c2 The number of sectors with C2 errors seen when reading
the last track. As the paranoia code tends to read bad
parts of the disk many times, this number usually is
above the number that would appear when the disk is just
read once in a linear way. Use paraopts=disable,c2check
to see a number that represents the state of the medium.
reads The number of read ahead blocks read for the last track
by the upper layer and the percentage of the amount of
data read compared to the size of the track. This per-
centage is typically 200% because the paranoia code reads
all data at least twice. If there is a lot of overlap and
a lof of read problems, this percentage raises.
overlap
The number the overlap size has been raised. This happens
when the overlap size is below the maximum overlap size
and errors in the overlap area are detected.
-paraopts=list
List is a comma separated list of suboptions passed to the para-
noia library.
+-----------------+------------------------------------------------------------+
| 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 |
|readahead=amount | set the number of sectors to use for the read ahead buffer |
| overlap=amount | set the number of sectors used for static overlap |
| minoverlap=amt | set the min. number of sectors for dynamic overlap |
| maxoverlap=amt | set the max. number of sectors for dynamic overlap |
| c2check | check C2 pointers from drive to rate quality |
| proof | set minoverlap=20,retries=200,readahead=600,c2check |
+-----------------+------------------------------------------------------------+
The paraopts= parameters in detail:
disable
The paranoia corrections are disabled, but the data is
still directed through the code from libparanoia. This
allows to switch on C2 error detection and to check the
C2 error statistics for a CD.
no-verify
This switches off the verification of the data integrity
in the overlap area and turns off dynamic overlap control
in favor of a static overlap value.
retries=amount
Set the maximum number of read retries per sector in case
of hard read errors. The default value for this parameter
is 20. This is the same value as used by the old cdpara-
noia(1) command.
readahead=amount
Set the number of sectors to use for the read ahead buf-
fer. Except when at the end of the medium, libparanoia
never requests less than this amount of data from the low
level I/O code. The size of the read ahead buffer is
usually bigger than the maximum size for a single DMA in
the system. For this reason, libparanoia calls several
read operations in order to fill the read ahead buffer.
The default value used by cdda2wav is 400, which is more
than the 150 sectors that cdparanoia(1) uses but still a
compromise for not requiring too much memory.
It is recommended to use a read ahead buffer size that is
not less than the RAM size in the CD-ROM drive. If the
drive has more than 1MB of RAM, use 425 sectors per MB of
RAM in the drive.
Note that as long as the readahead= value is too small,
the extract quality varies a lot with the value in use.
The value used by cdparanoia(1) may cause an extract
quality below what cdda2wav delivers without libparanoia.
overlap=amount
Set the number of sectors used for static overlap. This
switches dynamic overlap off. It is recommended not to
use static overlapping. To get a larger overlapping, bet-
ter use a higher minoverlap= value.
minoverlap=amount
Set the minimum number of sectors for dynamic overlap.
The default value used by cdda2wav is 0.5, this is more
than the default used by cdparanoia(1) which is 0.1.
For old drives that do not support accurate streaming, it
is not recommended to specify a minoverlap= value greater
or equal to the maximal DMA size.
For best results on other drives, it is recommended to
use a minoverlap= value that is not less than half of the
readahead size.
The extract quality varies a lot with the minoverlap=
value, but increasing the value also increases the
extract time.
maxoverlap=amount
Set the maximum number of sectors for dynamic overlap.
If maxoverlap= was not specified and a large minoverlap=
value was specified, this results in a quasi static over-
lapping. The default value used by cda2wav is 32.
c2check
Turn on C2 error checking. For now, this just results in
printing C2 error statistics.
Warning: some drives have been reported to fail reading
hidden tracks when the c2check mode is in effect. When
you plan to use c2check while extracting hidden tracks,
first verify that your drive will report hidden tracks
the same with and without the c2check option.
proof This option is a macro for better extract parameters than
used by default. The macro proof expands to:
paraopts=minoverlap=sectors-per-request-1,\
retries=200,readahead=600
If sectors-per-request1 is more than 20, 20 is used as
minimal overlap value.
The parameters used by proof are still not the best and
there is no best parameter set for all cases. A larger
value for the read ahead buffer size may e.g be too large
for the available RAM in the system and the best value
for the minimal overlap depends on whether the drive sup-
ports exact streaming. It is recommended to run experi-
ments with larger values for the parameters minoverlap=
and readahead= to get the best results for a specific
platform.
Note that previous versions did include c2check with the
proof macro, but this has been reported to fail on some
drives.
-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 read-
ing. 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.
-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.
+-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 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 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 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 syntax. 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. For this reason, avoid
using parameters like dev=/dev/cdrom for the device.
The setting of the environment variable CDDA_DEVICE is overrid-
den by this option.
If no dev= option is present, or if the dev= option only con-
tains 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 operating 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
experimenting with the ts= option.
Some operating systems return wrong values for the maximum
transfer size. If the transfer totally hangs or resets occur,
it may be appropriate to reduce the 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 CDROMMULTI-
SESSION 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.
-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 command 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 specifies 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 "-", redi-
rect audio output to the file descriptor named by descriptor.
The parameter descriptor specifies a UNIX file descriptor num-
ber. By default, cdda2wav sends audio data to stdout if the
output is not directed into a file. Redirecting the audio out-
put to a different file descriptor helps guis and other programs
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 -interactive mode.
-e
-echo copies audio data to the operating system's sound device 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 connec-
tion will not be created via rcmd(3) but by calling 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 initiated rcmd(3) connection.
RSCSI If the RSCSI environment variable is present, the remote SCSI
server will not be the program /usr/local/sbin/rscsi but the
program pointed to by 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 (con-
taining 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 format introduced by MS Win-
dows). It allows copying CDDA audio data from the CDROM drive into a
file in WAV or other formats.
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 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. Oth-
erwise 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 commands. 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 inter-
face 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 sup-
ports 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 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 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. 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 speci-
fies 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 sam-
ples). 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 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 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 sophis-
ticated 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 con-
tents. 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 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 duration in frames (sec-
tors) 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 gen-
erated 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). Differ-
ences 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 suffi-
cient 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 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, 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 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 men-
tioned above linear PCM is used. The byte order is msb,lsb to be com-
patible. 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 information in this format, the sample parame-
ters can only be identified 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 sectors. 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 sampling for jitter correc-
tion. Two cases are to be distinguished. For nonzero values, some sec-
tors 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, 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 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 "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 selection of dif-
ferent information items.
help Print a summary of possible members of the diffopts 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 initially 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 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 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 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 multime-
dia 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 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 con-
tacted 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 sample 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
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 uninterrupted and your
CD drive is one of the 'perfect' ones, you will gain speed when switch-
ing 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 sec-
tors 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).
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 extensions .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 informa-
tion, then .cddb, .cdindex and .cdtext files are generated unless sup-
pressed by the option -H. They contain suitable formatted entries for
submission to audio cd track title databases in the Internet. The CDIN-
DEX 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 burn-
ing program like cdrecord. For example, 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 copy-
rights. The user acknowledges this constraint when using the software.
BUGS
The index scanner may give timeouts.
The resampling (rate conversion code) uses polynomial interpolation,
which is not optimal.
Cdda2wav should use threads.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks go to Project MODE (http://www.mode.net/) and Fraunhofer Insti-
tut 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
2014/03/03
INTERFACE STABILITY
The interfaces provided by cdda2wav are designed for long term stabil-
ity. As cdda2wav depends on interfaces provided by the underlying
operating system, the stability of the interfaces offered by cdda2wav
depends on the interface stability of the OS interfaces. Modified
interfaces in the OS may enforce modified interfaces in cdda2wav.
Version 3.0 CDDA2WAV(1)