Method and system using pathnames to specify and access audio data at

Abstract

A method and system for dynamically converting audio data into a standard format. The method and system also provides for using a directory hierarchy to specify a fidelity level and dynamically generating the audio data at the specified fidelity level. When a drive is loaded with, for example, a CD ROM containing raw audio data, the system generates a directory hierarchy for the drive. The directory hierarchy contains sub-directories corresponding to various fidelity characteristics. For example, the system may generate a sub-directory corresponding to audio data stored in stereo format and another sub-directory corresponding to audio data stored in mono format. The system also generates a file entry in sub-directories for each track of the CD ROM. For example, the stereo sub-directory may contain a file entry for track 1 of the CD ROM and the mono sub-directory also may contain a file entry for track 1. The file in the stereo sub-directory represents the audio data in storage and the file in the mono sub-directory represents the audio data in mono. When accessing a file at a specified fidelity level (as indicated by the directory pathname), the system reads raw audio data from the CD ROM and converts the raw audio data to the fidelity level specified by the pathname.