how to play an audio cd?

[Tim]

On Sat, 2008-12-27 at 01:13 -0500, slamp slamp wrote:
> it spins for a few seconds then it stops. nothing else happens in
> rhythmbox, no timer etc. i am using gnome, volume is good like i said
> cd plays in sound juicer. is it possible the rhythmbox/gstreamer can't
> play wav files? ive installed all plugins for gstreamer but i am not
> sure if rhythmbox uses gstreamer. i dont have the analog cable from my
> cd/dvd drive to my sound card.

It sounds like your old windows installation used digital audio playback
(using the raw data from the disc, fed down the data lead, and the
computer turning it into audio).  This is generally the way that you
"rip" audio discs, too.

Some player programs can work that way, or start and stop the drive
playing itself, feeding audio decoded by the drive, itself, to the sound
card.  For what it's worth, neither way is "playing wav files".

There can also be a problem in choosing how to play a disc, as there are
not files on the disc, it's one continuous stream of encrypted data.
There needs to be some way to show a list of tracks to play, there are
systems which fake a file system, or players which determine the table
of contents for themselves (perhaps when you add a plug-in).

If you're not connecting an audio cable between drive and sound card,
you need to find a player program that can do digital playback.  XMMS
can do this, but required you to set up a fake CD directory for you to
pick as being your track list selector (choosing to play a pseudo file
from it would play the appropriate track on the disc).

Though, your description of the drive starting to do something, then
aborting, sounds like you might have another problem.  e.g. Some people
have said that some drives are no good for playing audio CDs for them.
Or, you may be trying to play one of those discs which are copyguarded,
and don't play back on computers.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.9-73.fc9.i686

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