Playing normal audio CDs in Mandriva

[steppenwolf1984]

Going around in circles a bit here. Loved the fact that MDK was up and running DVDs and MP3's pretty much right out of the nonexistent box. Impressive on a downloadable distro. Then it was getting the USB recognized for a VIA chipset; and that worked when I changed a few things in boot options and made sure the cd player and flash were correctly named.

 

Was so happy that everything worked I forgot to try a normal music cd. Store bought or home burned, all the players read the track numbers and sometimes the titles, but no sound. Theres sound on everything else....wondering what gives.

Ive tried xmms, grip, totem, kaffeine, Kscd, aumix, rosegarden - you name it. I noticed the "play direct digital audio" does not allow me to tick it on the configure KsCD panel...and Ive tried introducing the concept of cda as a file type....nothing.

 

I wouldn't mind, but with everything else running like clockwork one tends to obssess. Besides, its Exile on Main Street.........!

 

Am I missing the obvious? Help.....

[scarecrow]

Under "kscd" enable digital output... that should do the trick (extras/configure).

BTW Exile On MainStreet is Stone's best album, ever.

[aRTee]

You could also just put an analog cable between your cdrom and the cd input on the audio card.

 

Some drives spin up fast and noise when going the digital path, and it uses more cpu power and bandwidth on the (s)ata bus; plenty of advantages are to be had with a simple analog cable.

[scarecrow]

The sole advantage of the analog cable to the soundcard is eliminating jitter, which shouldn't be an issue with any modern CD/DVD drive. Of course adding that cable won't harm in any way...

[aRTee]

No, I mentioned the advantages, and eliminating jitter is not one of them - if you have the drive read the data, pass them to the system over the (s)ata bus, having the system deal with CIRSC (cross interleaved Read Solomon code) decoding and error correction and then some.

So, if you want to listen to music from a cd in your cd/dvdrom drive while burning a cd on the burner, especially when it's on the same channel, go for the analog cable.

If you stress your system (cpu or bus intensive: kernel compile, rip dvd on other drive, heavy use of filters in photo editing, whatever) you may get hiccups when going the digital path, whereas the analog cable will just have the cd/dvdrom drive play back _without needing any resources from the system_ (apart from electrical power), it will just keep on playing.

 

 

Any DAC (digital/analog converter) will have to have a quartz based precision in time that makes jitter irrelevant for all practical purposes - no matter if it's the DAC on the drive or on the audio card you speak of.

And if the DAC on your audio card has better specs, it might theoretically yield better results, however, for 16 bit cd audio, 100dB signal to noise ratio, dynamic range and channel separation better than 85dB is fine, and any cd/dvdrom drive should be able to do that.

 

As to disadvantages: if your system has such good audio quality or your cdrom has such bad ones that you can tell, don't use the analog cable.

 

BTW come to think of it, I have a digital cable between the dvdrom and the soundcard. So in my case it really makes zero sense to use anything but that cable...

[DragonMage]

Hmm.. I have never been able to play audio CD digitally. Just now I tried and it says something about permission problem. Went back to analog (with the CD-ROM cable) and it plays CDs perfectly.

[aRTee]

If you can rip audio cds, playing them digitally should be no problem.

[steppenwolf1984]

Under "kscd" enable digital output... that should do the trick (extras/configure).

BTW Exile On MainStreet is Stone's best album, ever.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The strange thing is, under configure Kscd, theres a checkbox for direct digital, but it aint clickable. I m wondering if its the version of Kscd...my box is still running the KDE 3.2.

 

Looks like I may have to think 'analog cable'....i havent ripped audio cds off the system, come to think of it. Just data cds. Even tried adding cda format to a number of the media player's recognized files, since thats what M$ calls anything audio, just about. Nada, zilch sound. But since its reading the track names and plays MP3s without a hitch....

 

Will let yall know if I get sound. Thanks for the tips and info...

 

PS Now even SuSe is going community based in a big way. Maybe someday MDK will realize all that 'buy now, join the club' stuff becomes grating. Especially since its such a good distro. Am I alone in feeling that I'd buy much more if BUY IT wasnt every other word out of the companies mouth? Maybe this is another post entirely....?!

[scarecrow]

That box is clickable even in KDE 3.2, provided that your CD-ROM drive does support digital output.

The only case I had to use an iternal cable the last 3 years, was when I had an Ultraplex 40 TSi SCSI CD-ROM, which is still today the best audio ripper ever (under any aspect- even Plextor's most advanced modern rippers like Plexwriter Premium never came close to its performance...), but it did not have a digital output at all...

ATM I have both Plexwriter Premium and Ultraplex 40 sitting and picking dust, but whenever I want to rip any odd audioprotection I hook the Ultraplex in (via an external SCSI enclosure).