CDFS.VXD Driver
5. FAQ
CDFS - FAQ - Page 5
So the wave rippers programs are dead?
Not Yet. I think EAC is still the more accurate WAVE Ripper. Since it has error
correction routines inside can really produce ripped wav's as the originals.
Why i should use CDFS?
CDFS can be really helpfull especially for making Mp3 directly from CD Rom
(Open Mp3 Encoder, press add wavs and then go to CD and select them..) CDFS
can also help drives that they don't have great DAE speed. Also CDFS is completly
free!
Why i shouldn't use CDFS?
If you got scratched or CDs with surface problems forget CDFS. Use EAC instead.
How about NT/Win2k/Me?
NT doesn't' use VXD files as Win9x does. The CDFS driver is called "CDFS.SYS"
and is located in the System32\Drivers folder. So it will not work with NT.
I did run some tests and I got better (or worst) results..
Why is that?
Can't tell for sure.. for example I got this e-mail from Stephen..
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"..I really liked your review of the cdfs vxd - very thorough. I too have been using the Teac 532E-A with cdfs, EAC 0.7b, AudioGrabber, WinDAC32 and while I'm impressed, my own results are quite different to yours and I believe the differences are due to factors related to how the 532 interacts with the the EIDE interface and the hard disk being ripped to. I can get rock solid DAE at up to x16.3 with all rippers in some configurations - much better than you, and yet in other setups, speed and reliability drops to the levels you are reporting. The critical factor for me is how the CD-ROM is connected to the IDE interface. I have used this drive under Linux, Win98 and NT on my AMD K6 300/Via VPX system and my observations generally hold true over the 3 os'es - only NT behaves slightly differently. What I've found is that DAE is generally poor if the CD-ROM is connected as secondary master, and perfect if connected as a slave and ripping is performed to the hard disk on the same IDE channel. This is true whether or not bus master drivers or DMA is used on disks/CD ROM, except that on NT, when a slave, ripping works to either drive, and that on Win98, enabling BM and DMA can make DAE better when ripping to the hard disk on the opposite IDE channel with some rippers. My fastest of all rips are achieved on Win98 with (U)DMA on when the 532 is primary slave and I rip to the secondary master using AudioGrabber - here I get around x16.3 perfect on outer tracks. My most stable setup is ripping to the primary master when the Teac is primary slave - all rippers on all os'es produce perfect DAE at around x9-x14 here. I would conclude that the Teac is highly dependent on the synchronization performed by the IDE bus and it may even be dependent on the motherboard or chipset of the PC. I'd be interested to know if you've tried your Teac as a slave and what results you get with this setup. To get back to cdfs.vxd, I think it is a brilliant piece of work but not a magic bullet for DAE when the CD-ROM isn't up to it in the first place. However, aside from EAC's secure mode, it does at least as well as other rippers and one now must question their continued usefulness. I can even use cdfs to rip on the fly to my 7502 with CDRWin - something that CDRWin's author has not supported to date. It seems that for DAE at least, cdfs.vxd and EAC are all that are needed.." |
I tried to move Teac 532 from Secondary Master to Primary Slave and run the same tests as before.. The results were not the same as Stephen describes.. I got same (even worst) results as before. Why? Do not know. Maybe the combination of my M/B and CPU. I also got another mail saying that Teac did 16x DAE into an TX based board, K6-225 (Win95 OSR 2.1). But when he changed into Win98 (and bought the same system I got) didn't made safe DAE above 4x.. (His Teac had 1.0A firmware also maybe this is some point ..)
Are any Bugs into CDFS Driver?
Many people report that the CDFS.VXD is not working with the 1st track ...Read
what Hans Kerkhofs from Gear
Software has sent me ...
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" We have installed the 'cdfs.vxd' but we have found a problem on track 1. We have tested this on several CD-ROM drives, and several CD-R drives both IDE and SCSI, but no luck on track 1. The problem is: we could not read track 1 at all. (Access is denied).. Also we tried to play/edit track 1 but no luck. It seems that the header is corrupt.." |
From the testers' side, there was no problem encountered with the 1st track. Both the Teac 532E-A and the UltraPlex 40x handled them just fine.
Will they be corrected?
I received the following emails :
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"..I also encounter the same trouble about CDFS in the beginning. My OS is Win95B and my CD-ROM is Teac 516E. After I changed the CDFS driver, it really did work. But I also found a problem on track 1. It can't be opened as a wave file. Other tracks are OK. When I use it in other's computer (Win98 & Teac 532E), everything is OK. So I copy two files from Win98 (Cdtsd.vxd & Cdvsd.vxd also in IOSUBSYS dir) to overwrite my old ones in Win95B (remember to make a copy) and reboot it. And.. It works. I don't know if it has the same result with others... " |
Other..
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"..About the problem with 1st track... I guess it's not the problem with the CD ROM drive cause I've encountered same problem before (3 days ago), and for some reason... I had to install Win98 again (I was testing System Commander 4.03). I've installed windows again, and tested same audio CD with same CD-ROM drive... guess what ?.. There was no problem with the 1st track !! I'm using Teac 532E, Plextor 12x, and Panasonic CW-7502b. The problem was same with all my drives before... and now there is none. So my guess is.... it's the problem with some software (maybe *.dll or *.vxd things).." |
I have some bugs to report. Where send them?
Hmm, tough question! Till now haven't found the author of CDFS.VXD..
Currently there are 3 rumors floating around :
1) Hacked version of Plextor AudioFS.. (?)
2) Stolen Microsoft Project.. (?)
3) Excellent Programmer's job.. (?)
I think that the first one doesn't make any sense. AudioFS is a product which doesn't use the cdfs.vxd (it uses it's own Audiofs.vxd instead), it's interface is completely different (doesn't use folders, no cda tracks and wav files at the same time, just cda files being replaced by wavs). So I think the most probable situation is the second one. Have a look at what ZDnet posted some time ago.
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"..Another DAE problem involves SCSI drives running under Windows 98. In an effort to ship Windows 98 on time, Microsoft had to cut some features from the operating system. Microsoft failed to include SCSI support for DAE. Plextor, a leading SCSI CD-ROM drive vendor, has a workaround: The company's SCSI CD-ROM subsystems come with an application that can read RedBook audio as WAV files off the surface of music CDs, and the files can be played back through the USB sound subsystem.." |
