[vox-tech] update on the audio CD problem

[Bill Kendrick]

On Fri, Jan 27, 2006 at 05:06:09AM -0500, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> 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.

Woah, I would think this is way LESS efficient.  One of the big problems
with amaroK (at least a while back) was that it did not have any facility
for directly playing audio CDs.  ("Analog extraction", as you called it.)

Whereas one can simply hit "Play" in something like KsCD or XMMS and the
CD player starts doing all the work (and the sound card simply passes the
CD's sound out to your sound card), when you tried to play an audio CD
with amaroK, it would have to read the actual digital data, turn it into
sound, and then have your sound card play it.

One is more like a CD Walkman (where the CD drive itself has a DAC,
and then it's just sound cabling inside that gets the sound to your speakers),
the other is more like ripping a CD _AND_ playing back the audio data
(where the CD drive's DAC isn't being used, but your main CPU and your sound
card's logic chips are being utilized).


> At least that's my understanding.

Well...  I guess I should say 'ditto' for _my_ understanding, too. :^)
(I just know from amaroK that it was not recommended, and that they were
working on adding the capability to just have amaroK control the CD in
the "walkman" fashion, like KsCD, the command-line "cdplay", etc. do it).


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