[vox-tech] playing an audio CD

[Bill Kendrick]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2006 at 02:10:06PM -0800, Norm Matloff wrote:
> But I can't seem to get either her Linux machine or
> mine to play music from audio CDs,
<snip>

That IS a show-stopper! :^)


<snip>
> On my machine, the CD drive is (auto-)mounted at /media/cdrecorder.
> (There is also a DVD player, at /media/cdrom.) I believe hers has the
> same mount points, though I don't remember and don't have the machine in
> front of me now.  Sound works fine on both machines, as verified by use
> of other applications.  

You don't want the disc mounted if you're going to play audio though.
(I somehow doubt that's happening, though -- unless the audio CD also
contains data, which some do.  Check the output of "mount" to make
sure, of course!)


> On my machine, CD Player seems to be working, in that the slider bar
> moves as time passes, but there is no sound.  (And movies play fine on
> the DVD drive, using mplayer.)

IIRC, CD drives are often connected to the sound card via a little cable
within the PC itself, so that all the CPU has to do is tell the CD player
"Play", and the audio comes in as a Line to the sound card.

First off, make sure your systems' mixers are set up so that the CD audio
isn't muted, and is up loud enough.  (You'd see it in the mixer along with
a Mic input, as well as sound output and probably L/R balance and other
controls.)


> On my daughter's machine, the slider bar
> doesn't even move, and an error message comes up.  On both machines, the
> program provided to copy analog music to digital files on the hard drive
> (don't remember the name now) does in fact work, as I verified.

Can you tell which application you're using to play CDs?  (There's probably a
"Help->About" that would tell you and app's official name and version.)
(I personally use Kscd under KDE at home.)

Can you provide the exact error message?


> Does anyone have any ideas as to how to fix this?
> 
> Do I need to create a /dev node?

Not if you can rip (as you mentioned above), and if you can mount data
CDs (e.g., "mount /media/crom").  Check the contents of /etc/fstab to see
what device your system thinks the CD drive is (e.g., "/dev/hdc",
"/dev/cdrom0", etc.)

Then it might be good to make sure the CD player is looking at the same
device node...


> And by the way, how do I use mplayer to play audio?  The documentation,
> using the command-line format "mplayer cdda..." is unclear.

That's probably for playing audio data that's been literally ripped off
the disc.  I don't have player handy in front of me (and have been using
Kmplayer and Kaffeine under KDE lately, since they actually have GUI controls
and stuff), but I remember for playing a DVD video with Mplayer, you
do something like:

  mplayer dvd://

Perhaps to get it to play audio from a CD you can do:

  mplayer cd://


Of course, getting a good new-fashioned GUI working with it first is probably
a good idea.  Mplayer's got more command-line switches than all other
Linux command-line tools combined![*]


Good luck!

[*] For some humorous value of "more" ;^)

-- 
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