@(#)cdda2wav.1 1.66 20/05/21 Copyright 1998,1999,2000 Heiko Eissfeldt, Copyright 2004-2020 J. Schilling
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.
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.
The device parameter to the dev= option explained below refers to the SCSI CAM standard notation for 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).
-h
-help display version information for cdda2wav on standard output.
-version display version and Copyright information.
-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 calculating 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 purposes). 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 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.
-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 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 sufficient with drives built after year 2000. See readahead= parameter 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 sectors-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 sectors. This should never happen, but whenever a non-correctable 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 positioning 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 percentage 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 paranoia 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 cdparanoia (1) command.
readahead= amount Set the number of sectors to use for the read ahead buffer. 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, better 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 overlapping. 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. If you encounter a drive where cdda2wav is not able to auto-detect whether c2check is usable, please report. 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,\e
" retries=200,readahead=600 If sectors-per-request\f-1 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 supports exact streaming. It is recommended to run experiments 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 and thus c2check was disabled by default. Current versions of cdda2wav auto-detect whether the actual drive supports the c2check feature and use it if possible.
-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 .
-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 |
-w
-wait waits for signal, then start recording.
-x
-max sets maximum (CD) quality.
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 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
scgopts= list A comma separated list of SCSI options that are handled by libscg. The implemented options may be uptated indepentendly from applications. Currently, one option: ignore-resid is supported to work around a Linux kernel bug.
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.
-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.
-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 "-", 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 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.
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 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 /opt/schily/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.
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). |
cdda2wav stands for CDDA to WAV (where CDDA stands for compact 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 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. 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.
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.
"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.
10 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.
10 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.
1 "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.
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 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).
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.
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.
If cdda2wav detects cd-extra or cd-text (album/track) title information, then .cddb, .cdindex and .cdtext files are generated 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.
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 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.
2004-today:
J\*org Schilling D-13353 Berlin Germany
http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/
The download directory is:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/
Check for the schily-*.tar.bz2 archives.
Less frequently updated source code for the cdrtools is at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/
and http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/alpha
Separate project informations for the cdrtools project may be retrieved from:
http://cdrecord.org