Extracting WAVs w/ EAC...is it really as good as CD?

[gplanet]

I was thinking about this today - if you extract an audio CD using a program such as EAC (Exact Audio Copy) at some point in the extraction the digital data on the CD must be converted to analog (which is a "Wave"). EAC doesn't have any options about my sound card. This means, I assume, that the data is being converted from digital to analog on the CD drive, NOT the sound card - CD drive probably has some cheap 1-bit DAC, after all the drives cost <$30.

If this is true, you can conclude that having a WAV on your hard drive is inferior to playing a CD through the digital out of your CD-Drive connected to your sound card. Now, if there's a way to do the conversion on the sound card, and then store the analog stream to disk, I'd love to know

 

[paralazarguer]

Your system likely doesn't convert to analogue at all. If you have a modern system it will do DAE through the IDE cable. No analogue enters the picture at all. unplug that nasty old fasioned audio cable from your cdrom and see if you can still rip. If you can, it's all digital. If you do it all in digital the soundcard will not enter the picture at all. In fact, in modern systems the only time the DAC or ADC in your soundcard will be used is if recording from external source. Do only DAE and the copy will be identical to the original. For more information click here

 

[Workin']

You make some erroneous assumptions! Extracting digital audio from a CD using EAC or any other ripper doesn't use ANY analog steps. CD audio is simply a .wav file with the data header stripped and the bits reorganized into a different sector size to meet the CD audio data format.

Assuming there were no read errors during extraction, the .wav file from EAC is identical in quality to the original CD audio track.

 

[ElFenix]

heck, EAC will probably be better because it scans the disc several times in trouble spots to get the best quality, as opposed to your CD player which will pop and skip.

 

[gplanet]

Are you saying WAV files are digital? If this is the case why do they appear as analog waves when opened in a WAV editor?