Getting CD information from .cda files only

I want to find the information to a cd, where I only have the .cda files, not the actual cd and no audio data.

Can I open those files from a directory without having the actual disc? Picard should be able to derive the necessary information to query the database server even without the actual audio data, but I didn’t find a way to open .cda files. It was not possible to point Picard to the directory with the .cda files instead of an actual cd drive.

Alternatively I also calculated the CDDB1 id manually from the .cda files, but I haven’t found a way query the database directly, using the CDDB1 id.

In the end, I don’t care if I do the query based on the calculated CDDB1 id or based on the .cda files. Currently I cannot figure out any of those methods using Picard. If anyone can provide some pointers, this would be appreciated!

Please check the size of your .cda files.
If they contain audio data for minutes of sound then they will be of at least some megabytes in size.

In the past I tried copying a CD by dragging and dropping it into a directory.
The resulting .cda files are only some low kb in size and contain no audio data & cannot be played. Such .cda files may be unable to make valid MB discIDs or valid CDDB1 ids.

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