trying to read .wav files off of a CD

Adam McCaulley

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I am trying to read .wav files off a CD a co-worker burned. When I pull up the files they all say Track**.cda and are 1kb long he burned them as a .wav file. I need to know the actual file name not just Track** and I need to convert them into a .vox format, I did read some of the thing being said on this site but most seemed to be going in a different way burning to .cda from .wav or ripping them to .wav which I could do but I still need the names of the files. is this a windows thing? Because when I open explorer the format of the files on the disk read .cda which is odd because they should read .wav Also the titles of the files read correctly on a CD player. Anyone have any suggestions?

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You have the right idea that (uncompressed) .wav files and tracks on audio CD’s have a one-to-one correspondence, but they’re not exactly the same. Windows Explorer does not allow direct copying of the tracks by design (it’s old, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the RIAA had a hand in it). If you drag and drop, you’ll only get a shortcut to the track.
I think the best tool to use for this is CDDex (it’s freeware). It can extract audio tracks as wav or mp3 (they may have added more formats... it’s been years since I’ve tested it).
Windows Media Player, iTunes, Real Player, and maybe WinAmp also have ways of ripping the audio tracks, but I’m not sure if any of them allow saving to .wav (they tend to save to .ra, .wma, .aac, or .mp3 instead I believe).
As for knowing the name, that’s usually done by looking up databases. My guess is they look up the series of tracks and their duration and compare that list against known commercially sold audio CD’s out there. It’s unlikely you’ll get the names if the CD was custom burned (unless it was an exact copy of a commercial audio CD).
If you’re referring to CD-text, perhaps CDDex or other utilities could extract the text. I’m not very knowledgeable with those. See here for more information.

Disclaimer: Of course I’m assuming you’re doing this legitimately (like for backup purposes).