How To Get Music On CD w/o Mixing Down to MP3?

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yungboss

ILLIEN
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 1
The title is self explanatory. When you buy a music CD from the store, the files on it are labeled as .CDA format. After research, I learned .CDA isnt actually a format, but rather just a label the computer recognizes each track on the disc as. This would mean that the files aren't MP3s since it would be labeled as such and it cant be WAV since WAV files are too large. So ultimately, how do "professional" artists get their music onto CD without mixing them down into a format?

Mixing down a session to a MP3 file destroys some of the quality so figuring out a way to burn audio onto a disc without a format can ultimately preserve the sound quality.
 

Shonsteez

Gurpologist
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 33
Pretty sure most, if not all albums are finalized as either wav or aiff, usually wav though, and then burned to CD at 44.1/16 . I dont believe there is some elusive alternative format that engineers bounce to before pressing other then typically wav.

The reason your computer recognizes the CD's audio files as CDA's after being burned/pressed is becuase exactly what you mentioned - your computer simply recognizes those files as CDA at that point, that doesnt mean they didnt start as wavs though. The only way your computer would see those songs as wavs when inserting your disc is if the CD was burned as a "data" disc instead rather then an audio disc.
 

Shonsteez

Gurpologist
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 33
Ahh, I see what your asking. Not sure, I would assume that what ever files they are burning to the master would still have to meet the disc's maximum size limitations whether it be by song length, or file size. Dunno if theres any other logical answer to that one?
 

thedreampolice

A backwards poet writes inverse.
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 21
It is basically a wave file and audio cds can handle 74 minutes of wave files. The standard for CD's is called redbook, because they wrote all the specs in this giant red book (seriously) It is also technically PCM audio, but it is basically 74 minutes of 16-bit 44.1k Audio wave files.

Does that make sense.
 

yungboss

ILLIEN
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 1
Basically what I'm trying to get at is, how do I burn music and get it listed a .cda instead of .wav?
 

lion-ucs

ILLIEN
ill o.g.
Don't give up yungboss, I had the same problem until I found out the difference in data cd's and audio cd's. I thought it didn't matter but it does.

Same reason, albeit in reverse, why ppl can't figure out how to burn an mp3 cd for their mp3-cd player in their car.
 
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