What is .cda.

CD Audio aka .cda tracks are not really tracks at all, but the .cda files are only representations of CD audio tracks and do not contain the actual information. However the only difference between the audio data encoded on a CD and a raw 44.1KHz 16-bit stereo WAV file is the byte ordering.

Cda files can be played only from a CD-ROM, your computer can't store files in CDA format, so you still have to convert CDA files to another format to store on your hard disk.

Extract (Rip) the CD to my Hard Drive

Sound Juicer CD Extractor is capable of ripping CDs. When you insert a CD Sound Juicer should start automatically, but to start Sound Juicer manually, choose Applications → Sound & Video → Sound Juicer CD Extractor.

To Begin ripping your audio CD, make sure the tracks that you want to rip are selected, then click the Extract button or press Ctrl+Enter. The ripping process may take a while to complete so do not panic. You can safely minimize Sound Juicer or move to another workspace and continue using your computer while the audio is being extracted.

The preferences window (Edit → Preferences from main window) will allow you to designate exactly where the extracted audio files are to be stored on your computer, wildcards regarding the filename of extracted audio files such as track name number etc, and the file format and codec used for the files.

Sound Juicer can extract audio files to a variety of formats. Your options include

Different types of files Sound Juicer can Create

m4a - CD Quality, AAC is used to convert to CD-quality audio with the lossy AAC codec. This would be used this for preparing files for devices that only support the AAC codec.

flac (The Free Lossless Audio Codec) - can compress audio files up to 50% without removing any information from the audio stream. Great for editing audio files and for burning back to cd at a later time with no degradation of format.

ogg (Ogg Vorbis) - A patent-free lossy audio compression format, which typically produces higher quality and greater compression than MP3.

mp3 - A Very popular audio compression format. The drawbacks are it does sacrifice some quality for size. It is a lossy format.

WAV - Typically used for voice recording and other low quality recording. Sound Juicer uses this format for low quality mono audio files.

spx - Used for converting to lossy voice-quality audio. Use this for recording speech that don't need to be edited.

Disclaimer: AAC and MP3 are propietary formats and some actions may be illegal in your jurisdiction.