The process of direct reading the audio data is called CD Digital Audio (CD-DA) or sometimes referred to as "Digital Audio Extraction" (DAE) or as "CD ripping" . CoffeeCup CD & MP3 Ripper uses CD-DA to read the audio data of the audio CD disc and write the resulting data into a WAV file or a MP3 file. The advantage of CD-DA above recording the file using your sound card is that there is no loss of music quality; the data in the WAV file is an exact copy of the data on the disc. (In technical terms, using your sound card, the digital data from the audio CD is converted to an analog signal, which is then digitized again by the sound card. Often the sound quality will deteriorate when going this route, and producing noisy WAV files.)
