Glossary for Rosoft CD Extractor

ACM

An Audio Converter Module (ACM) is a module that converts audio format. Often mentioned along with CODEC. So called ACM CODEC. Windows Media Player uses ACM CODEC's to play audio files. If you for example use Rosoft Media Player to play files you must have an ACM CODEC installed to be able to play the files.

AD Converter

Analog Digital (AD) Converter is on of the main circuits on a sound card. It is this circuit that converts the audio signal into digital numbers. If you record music through the Line-In on your sound card this circuit is what makes the quality on the music you record. If you for example record with a high quality sound card, records an audio CD with a CD-R and play it in your stereo you will get a better sound than if you would use a AD converter of lower quality.

Adware

Adware is programs that are available free-of-charge as long as you use another program that displays advertisements. Adware is not the same as spyware. Adware programs like n-CASE from 180Solutions do not gather any personal information from the user and there for n-CASE is no spyware.

ASPI

Advanced SCSI Programming Interface (ASPI) is the interface programs use to communicate with SCSI devices. Since this is a standard interface many programs uses this interface to communicate with non-SCSI devices such as ATAPI CD-ROM's. To be able to extract an audio CD digitally you must have an ASPI driver installed on your PC.

If however the ASPI driver is failing your operating system may hang. If you use Windows NT472000/XP you may get a blue screen.

CDDA

Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA) is a standard format for audio CD's developed in the 70th by Philips. In the early 80th Sony and Philips decided that they should use the same format for audio CD's and that way it became the standard for audio CD's. If you want to extract audio CD's digitally without playing the CD the CD-ROM and your ASPI driver must be able to read CDDA.

CODEC

A COdec DECoder (CODEC) is generally a device driver for wave file, which are installed in the operating system. Every program that supports all installed wave formats can use this CODEC. For example you can use Fraunhofer's IIS Mpeg Layer 3 CODEC to encode and decode wave files and this way make them 10 to 12 times smaller.

Control

A Control is generally a button or any other graphic in a program that when you click it the program performs a certain type of action. Examples of Controls are buttons, menus and sliders.

DA Converter

The Digital Analog (DA) Converter is the circuit that converts the digital numbers into music. If you play files the DA converter is what makes the sound on the sound card. The better the converter the better the sound. If you compare a low quality DA converter such as the ones included on Sound Blaster cards with a high quality DA converter such as the ones included in M-Audio cards you will find a very big difference when you connect the PC to a stereo.

Driver

A driver is a program that acts as the interface between a program and the operating system. For example: To be able to play audio files you must have a driver installed for your sound card. The program that plays the file sends digital audio information to the driver. The driver then sends the information to the sound card. The drivers also send information back to the user program. For example: When you play an audio file the driver lets the program know when it should send information to the soundboard. The program can't just send the information to the sound card when it wants. The program must send the information when the buffers on the sound card have space for them. This way the audio data are synced so you get a steady stream of data and the sound are played in normal speed.

DSP

Digital Sound Processor (DSP) is an integrated circuit placed on the sound card that ads extra feature to the sound card. A DSP can include equalizer, phaser, echo and many other special effects. Some high quality sound card doesn't come with a DSP processor and with these cards installed you can not use the DSP functions in some programs.

EULA

End User License Agreement (EULA) is a document that describes the right to use the product. The document also describes what it is you are installing. By accepting the EULA you accept the install of all software described in the EULA. All programs that come with an adware program should include an EULA.

File Extension

File Extension is the three characters after the dot (.) that the file name ends with. This extension tells Windows how to access the file. For example a file that ends with .EXE or .exe is an executable program. A file that ends with .TXT or .txt is a text file that includes characters. Every byte in file is treated as a character

The Free Software Foundation

MP3

I guess most people have heard about mp3. For those ho haven't I will try go get a short introduction. MP3 is a way to compress digital audio. Digital is impossible to compress if you want the uncompressed information to be unchained. There fore you must cheat a little bit when compressing digital audio. The only way is to split the audio signal into frames. For every frame you then must find the frequencies and their values. Many frequencies can be removed because you do not hear them. For example man can only hear two signals at the same time if the differences between them are less than 50 dB, that is if one signal is 90 dB every signal less than 40 dB can be removes since you never hears those signals. At lest a normal person doesn't hear them. There is only one type of songs where I have heard the difference and that is songs with slide or steal guitar. So if you are a trained musician and have good hearing and also have a really good soundboard, maybe you should be able to hear the difference. In mp3 files you simply save what frequencies, their values and how long the are.

MP3Pro

MP3Pro is Fraunhofer's update of mp3. MP3Pro uses two data streams to compress the audio data. One for the lower frequencies and one for the higher. This way you can compress the audio ore so you can use lower bit rates at better quality. The key to MP3Pro is the huge patent fees mp3-licensing are charging for the right to use the patented functions.

TOC

The Table Of Contents (TOC) is the first part on an Audio CD or an ordinary CD that tells how the information is stopped and what is stored on a CD. The TOC tells how long the tracks are, how many tracks there is and where the track is starting on an Audio CD so called CDDA.

WAVE

File format that Windows uses to play and record audio. To read or write to a wave file you generally write or read to the WaveIO functions in Windows API

Windows API

Windows APplication Interface (API) is a set of functions that programmers use to read and write information to Windows Operating System (OS).

WMA

Windows Media Audio (WMA) is Windows own file format for compressed audio. With the new WMA 7.1 you the quality has been improved very much. You should compare WMA 7.1 and later with the quality of MP3Pro. WMA 7.1 is way better that mp3 if you compare the quality for the same bit rates for MP3 and WMA