File Extension CDA

File type: CD Audio Track Shortcut

About the CDA file type:

If Windows cannot find the appropriate program associated with .CDA files, then your registry may have errors. Check your Windows registry for errors (includes file association errors).

CDA is an acronym for CD Audio Tracks. They are audio files containing 44 bytes for every track and are stored in a CD media. Created by the Microsoft Windows as a shortcut, the files containing the CDA file extension do not really contain audio. Instead, they only contain indexing titles that include Track02.cda, Track03.cda, etc. Files with the file extension .cda could only be played in a CD-ROM drive. This is because the CDA files do not have the PCM information of the item of music that will be played. PCM stands for Pulse Code Modulation and is a standard form for the digital audio in computers. It is a digital representation of analog signals whose magnitude is sampled regularly at a uniform interval. PCM is the standard in CD red book, digital telephone systems and digital video as well.


Detailed information for file extension CDA

Category: Audio Files
File format: Proprietary/Open-Source
Open with Windows: Apple iTunes, Microsoft Windows Media Player, Nullsoft Winamp, RealNetworks RealPlayer, VideoLAN VLC media player, and other audio player or music "jukebox" software
Open with Linux: VideoLAN VLC media player, RealNetworks RealPlayer, Nullsoft Winamp
Files with the file extension .cda functions as pointers to the music item's audio. The music tracks in a CD are typically WAV files that users cannot see. Files with the said file extension would need to point to the hidden WAV files before the audio is heard. There are times when a number of software applications display files that contain audio that has been recorded on these files. When this happens, the one in operation is the software and not the CDA file extension's audio. Furthermore, when the user copies a file with the CDA file extension from the CD-ROM to the hard disk, the user would not be able to play the file because what had been copied are only pointers and not the actual data file in the WAV format.