What exactly are WAV files?

S

smitty2424

New member
I thought WAV files were what is on any cd that we listen to. I'm using the Korg d16 to export wav files to a cd. My Sony computer recognizes the WAV files from the cd's I create and plays them. However, My Tascam cd-rw5000 gives me a message that no audio files are on the cd. Are WAV files something that only a computer recognizes? Is the music on a standard cd in some other format? Why can't my Tascam or my car cd player recognize the WAV files on these cd's I create?

Any info is appreciated!!

I use Memorex cd-r!
 
.wav is data audio. When you burn an audio Cd, the computer will recognize them as .cda files, not as wavs. Too convert them to wav you have to rip them.

If you burn a DATA Cd, than you can burn .wav files on a CD-R and read those wav files on your PC, but you won't be able to play them on a regular CD-player.

I don't know about the technical theory about it, but that's the short summary.
 
I'm sure the data format is very similar, but WAVs are computer data file formats. Audio CDs have a different format that can be read by audio CD players. Audio CD players were not designed to read any other format (though newer ones will play MP3 files, no doubt burned in a particular way.)

CD burners will give you the choice among a variety of possible ways to write a CD. One of these is "audio disk" or "Red Book audio." You can only use 16-bit, 44.1 kHz WAV files as your source material, then the burner write these to the CD in the correct audio CD format.

Look at your CD burner's documentation, I'm 99.9% sure that whatever you have is capable of writing to this format.
 
Note that there is a difference between AUDIO and DATA cdr's. You can write wav files to a data cdr and the disc will *not* play in any CD player, but you will be able to retreive the files from your CDROM drive. To burn audio that will play in an audio cd player, you must specify that you are burning an *audio* cd in your cd burning application. In this case you will not be able to retrieve the files from using the CDROM in your computer without an "audio ripping" application. Note that audio ripping is not a precise form of transfer, and it is always recommended that you *backup* wav files on a DATA cd.

When you put an audio CD into the CDROM drive on your computer and explore it, you'll notice a bunch of files like Track01.cda , Track02.cd , etc. These are *not* real files, but headers created by windows.

Also, many cd burning applications will allow you to burn an audio CD from MP3 and WMA files, but be assured that the burning application first converts these files to wav format prior to burning.

The wav file format is basically just raw, uncompressed, interleved (if stereo) samples. It contains the exact data that is eventually sent to the soundcard (with some header information).

Slackmaster 2000
 
I became interested in this same information when I got the flash idea that the 16-bit information that my chemical process control computer was collecting could be used as a weird .wav "sample" beacuse visually it resembled a stand-up bass waveform as seen in Sound Forge.

If you do a google search you'll find a very detailed definition of the .wav format.
 
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