Music CD -- Win vs. Linux

[Ian Malone]

John Summerfied wrote:

<snip: on playing audio CDs via analog or digital>

 > That's all well and good, but I've not seen the explanation I saw some
 > years ago and which makes sense to me.

 > Windows sees the individual tracks and presents them as files though
 > they aren't really. Consequently, you can view a music CD in Windows
 > as  if it's a data cd.

But as I understand it you can't read the tracks as data: so
in Windows, as in Linux, an audio CD cannot be read/ripped by cat.

 > AFAIK nothing on Linux does that, though there's no reason not to:
 > cdparanoia does a fine job of ripping CDs, and as I recall one can
 > choose an individual track.

Grip (which tends to use cdparanoia) can function as a player as
well as a ripper.

Of course there's a third method which I've never seen used;
CD drives often have a digital sound out (the two pin cable).
A sound card could use that, still bypassing the rest of the
system.  But I've only ever seen the three/four pin ones used
(left, right, 2xgnd).

-- 
imalone