(Untitled)

[christymarx]

While I was home for my father’s funeral, my brother found some old 33 records that my father had recorded (radio performances), probably back in the 1950s. My brother took them home where he used a special turntable to convert the records to .cda files which can be played by iTunes

Comments

[wyldemusick]

.cda files are indeed shortcuts, about 1k in size, and they go to, ta da, CD Audio. They're what you'll see if you put an audio CD in your drive and open it as a drive.

To actually get the audio out of the CDs he'll need to use a regular CD ripper -- the iTunes one should work fine, although it's not the best. If he still has the original .WAV (or .AIFF) files on disc (if he didn't use an LP unit that writes directly to CD) he can compress those to MP3 if needs be; there's plenty of free converters around.

[christymarx]

Hmmm...I'm not sure he'll follow this. I'm not sure that I follow it.

He has a turntable that does the conversion for him, but I have no idea how it works or what type of files it creates.

[wyldemusick]

Basically, .cda files link directly to audio track on audio CDs. To get files usable in a Win7 media player of any kind, the audio discs would need to be run through a program that takes the audio from the CDs and turns it into MP3 or M4A files -- iTunes can do this, as can WinAmp, Foobar, Window Media Player, and so on (although WiMP defaults to .wma unless you tell it otherwise.)

[christymarx]

Talked to Eric. He's sending me a CD with the real audio files, so I'll have to wait for that.