CD Image?

[BVD]

There's a utility called Virtual Drive
that says it makes an image of a CD and
thereafter eliminates needing to insert
a CD ..just use the image. Can anyone explain what IMAGE means? .. how can I access
600+ mb of a CD's data if the CD is not in the drive? The program also says you can use
the image of over 20 CD's, data or audio, all
at once without ANY CD's in the drive. What
am I missing here?

[techs]

many programs require you to have the cdrom inserted in the drive to run all or part of the program. You cannot just copy the cdrom to a directory on your hard drive because it only looks for cdrom type drive letters. the program in question allows you to copy the contents of the cd to a folder and assigns a drive letter to it, fooling the program into thinking it is reading a drive, not a directory on a hard disk. You can have up to 20 because you must have a unique drive letter for each cd and windows supports up to 26(?) but a and b are reserved for floppy type media, and your hard drive needs a letter also. You are limited however in the fact that at a max of 650 mb per cd you can fill up your hard drive quickly.
Hope this helps.

[BVD]

Thanx TECHS.

So I'd actually be reading/using the same
files on the CD except that they have been
copied to the hard drive .. just like you copy any CD contents to a hard drive for faster access .. correct? It also says
that it uses compression to a VCD file. I
assume this is to try and cut down the
space needed to store 100's of MB on the
HD.

[techs]

yes, the VCD is probably Virtual CD, and compression would definitely help. Just for your info some people create these virtual drives for faster access, hard drive vs. cdrom, and some do it to save time if they have a few cds they routinely use, and don't want to keep changing the disk.

[sonusman]

Your audio will also sound better coming off the hard drive bacause audio coming off a CD inserted in the CD Rom drive uses the Digital to Audio (D/A) converters off the CD Rom drive to feed to the soundcards audio output. The D/A converters on a computers CD Rom drive are pretty much the worst D/A converters on the market.

On the other hand, audio that is on the hard drive utilizes your soundcards D/A converters, which are generally much much better the then D/A converters on a CD Rom drive.

Another option you have is to make high resolution mp3's of your CD's. By high resolution, I mean mp3's that are at least 192kbs. The compression ratio of 192kbs mp3's is about 8:1, meaning a 8mb .wav file (what the audio on a CD actually is more or less) would only be 1mb as a 192kbs mp3. Nice!!!

But be careful when making these mp3's!!! You of course have to get the music from the CD to the hard drive as a .wav file without doing any extra digital to analog,then analog to digital conversions, like what a lot of the ripping software does (Like Music Match or whatever.....). If you have a SCSI CD Rom drive, then you are set because SCSI technology provides the proper drivers for the CD Rom drive to transfer digitally the music on a CD to the hard drive. You can do this also with many newer IDE CD Rom drives too, but you have to make sure you have the proper driver to do this. Also, I have found that this ripping process with IDE CD Rom drives tends to produce some errors in the resulting .wav file.

Anyway, just an idea....

Oh, my credentials to be authorative on this subject? Glad you asked.... http://www.echostarstudio.com

Ed