On 16 Nov 2006 at 19:54, Aaron Sherber wrote:

> At 07:05 PM 11/16/2006, David W. Fenton wrote:
>  >Er, what? If I look at an audio CD with Windows Explorer it shows
>  >files. They aren't files of a type any audio program can read, but
>  >they are presented as files, nonetheless, with the track name and a
>  >CDA extension. 
> 
> You are correct that they are *presented* as files, but I don't think
> they are files in any commonly understood sense of the term. I think
> they are just represented that way by Windows.

They are data, 1s and 0s. They can be read and copied directly, with 
no conversion involved.

The fact that they are presented as files shows that Windows has 
software in it that can read the file system of an audio CD (whether 
it's original software or an add-on -- I suspect the former, since 
Windows was always able to *play* audio CDs). This is no different 
than use the Finale FILE OPEN dialog and displaying ALL FILES. You'll 
see non-Finale files that Finale can't do anything with, but Finale 
can still read the file listing.

It's all 1s and 0s.

All of it.

And nothing needs to be converted to copy those 1s and 0s.

However, all file systems use some form of error correction, and non-
lossy error correction will produce a result identical to the file 
that produced the read error. So, there's no loss of fidelity except 
if the error correction *fails*. If it does, then there will be 
audible artifacts, like skips, dropouts or pops and clicks. If you 
don't hear those, then the error correction worked.

-- 
David W. Fenton                    http://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates       http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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