Posted 04/16/2009 at 02:38:07pm

First of all, all CDs are digital.  Whether you call a CD audio or data is just a matter of labeling with a few flags set here and there to allow devices to recgnize the CD type.  What you don't seem to understand is that in terms of audio extraction, the Red Book standard does not require block-accurate addressing when the CD drive is in audio mode.  This provides a certain level of tolerance so that the user experience is not terribly interrupted when the device has a problem reading the CD.  So if you press the play button the CD drive, you may or may not get the correct bits, resulting in those little clicks.

Data extraction is subject to Yellow Book standard and requires software/driver to automatically perform data correction.  As an engineer, you should know that data is data, and audio is nothing than data that is packaged in a certain format.  When an audio CD is extracted, especially to the uncompressed WAV format, either in software or via drivers performing overlapping reads, incorrect bits (seek jitters) are eliminated. In other words, the same audio CD when opened/browsed/accessed by the computer in data mode will behave as if it were a data CD (thus you can always extract audio CDs as ISO's).

Like the original author stated, unless there is a bug, or the CD is unreadable, audio extraction is guaranteed to be 100% accurate.

Stick to audio hardware next time okay?