[vox-tech] playing an audio CD

[Micah J. Cowan]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2006 at 02:10:06PM -0800, Norm Matloff wrote:
> Being as busy as I am, unfortunately almost all of my work with
> computers is "serious," e.g. no game playing. :-(
> 
> Now my 14-year-old daughter has suddenly decided she wants to become a
> Linux user.  Yay!  But I can't seem to get either her Linux machine or
> mine to play music from audio CDs, something of absolutely prime
> importance to her. :-)  This is gonna be a dealbreaker for her, so we
> risk losing a potential Linux enthusiast.  Thus any help you people can
> give me would be much appreciated.

See if your CD player has a "Direct digital playback" option or similar.
This may fix the "silent success" problem.

I can tell you how you might get it to work using xmms...

The fact that the slider is going but nothing is playing, /might/
indicate that the CD drive's audo output cable isn't plugged into the
sound-card's input jack. XMMS lets you deal with this situation
gracefully. If you click on the upper-left icon, you will get a menu.
Goto Options and select Preferences. On the "Audio I/O Plugins" tab,
select "CD Audio Player" and hit the "Configure" button.

Make sure that the Device field has the correct device file on it, and
use any intuitive path for the Directory field. When you tell XMMS to
"Play Directory" on that directory, it will automagically load your
Audio CD (if it has been configured correctly).

If you're having trouble getting the sound to play (same situation as
you're currently seeing in CD Audio Player), select "Digital audio
extraction" instead of "Analog".

HTH,
Micah