[vox-tech] update on the audio CD problem

[Peter Jay Salzman]

On Thu 26 Jan 06, 11:51 PM, Norm Matloff <matloff at cs.ucdavis.edu> said:

...


> 1.  I downloaded and installed a plugin for XMMS, 
> 
>        xmms-cdread-0.14a-4mdk.i586.rpm
> 
>     (It did not seem to matter that that was a Mandrake RPM while my
>     machine runs Fedora Core 4.)
 
That's pretty common.  At least it used to be way back when.

...

> Mind you, I do not fully understand the details of why these steps were
> necessary, but they all did seem to indeed be necessary.  (I tried
> experimenting by omitting one step or another, and it didn't work.)

It's my understanding that there are two ways of playing a CD in a computer:

1. analog extraction
2. digital extraction

Analog extraction is where the the cd is read, the signal goes through a
cable between the cd player and sound card, which gets pumped through your
speakers.  Point being, a physical connection between the cd drive and sound
card is required.

Digital extraction is where the cd is read, and the signal gets pumped
through the ATA port to your speakers.  This is more efficient from the
CPU's standpoint.

At least that's my understanding.
...

> harder, since the symptoms there had been worse.  But it turned out to
> be a very simple problem in that case:  The file permissions on /dev/hdc
> were not set correctly.

My permissions are:

   brw-rw----  1 root cdrom 22, 0 2006-01-18 04:28 /dev/hdc

Rather than play with permissions, you may want to play with groups:

1. chmod 660 /dev/hdc
2. chgrp cdrom /dev/hdc
3. add the usernames you want to give cd access to /etc/groups

Not crucial.  Just an alternative.

Pete