Audio CDs do not use the WAV file format, using instead Red Book audio. The commonality is that both audio CDs and WAV files encode the audio as PCM. WAV is a file format for a computer to use that cannot be understood by most CD players directly. To record WAV files to an Audio CD the file headers must be stripped and the remaining PCM data written directly to the disc as individual tracks with zero-padding added to match the CD's sector size.