No sound from CD on Dell1525

[Larry1019]

I had a problem with my sound last week and I
was greatly helped by oldcpu. Now after fiddling
for another week I discover that everything
related to sound seems to work EXCEPT that
I can't play a CD. I've tried KsCD and banshee.
Both show an increasing timer as each track
appears to play but I hear nothing via the
speakers or headphones. I can play .wav files
with no problems as well as all the other
sound functions I can think of. Just no CDs.
I note that it is not a hardware problem. I
have a second disk for the computer with Vista
and I can play CDs just fine if Vista is running.
I'm running KDE4, Suse 11.0.

[Larry1019]

Well, 85 people read this message but nobody responded. However,
after MUCH rummaging around on the web, I found the problem and
the fix. I'm posting it here in case anyone else runs into this.

It seems that on desktop PCs and on some laptops, the CD audio is
being run through the IDE cable as a digital signal rather than
via the "usual" audio cable. In fact, on some PCs, they don't
even bother putting in the audio cable. Windows handles this
properly, but most Linux CD players do not. Turns out the only
player that I'm aware of that handles this is xmms. You need
to go to options, then preferences and click on Audio I/O
plugins. Then select the CD Audio Player and then
Configure. You then get an analog/digital option. Choose
digital.

My CD now works fine, but I must use xmms.

[lornix]

Larry1019 wrote:

>
> Well, 85 people read this message but nobody responded. However,
> after MUCH rummaging around on the web, I found the problem and
> the fix. I'm posting it here in case anyone else runs into this.
>
> It seems that on desktop PCs and on some laptops, the CD audio is
> being run through the IDE cable as a digital signal rather than
> via the "usual" audio cable. In fact, on some PCs, they don't
> even bother putting in the audio cable. Windows handles this
> properly, but most Linux CD players do not. Turns out the only
> player that I'm aware of that handles this is xmms. You need
> to go to options, then preferences and click on Audio I/O
> plugins. Then select the CD Audio Player and then
> Configure. You then get an analog/digital option. Choose
> digital.
>
> My CD now works fine, but I must use xmms.
>
>

Kscd supports digital audio from cd's too, but xmms is much better and nicer
in my opinion.

Interesting to note that there are about 20-30 packages involving ripping
cd's in the suse repos, and *maybe* 3 for playing cd's. Shows how we've
changed over the years huh?

Of course, I'm one of those too... since any audio cd I own has been ripped
and stashed in my archives as mp3 and I play them with amarok.

Congratulations on figuring it out.

Loni
--
L R Nix
lornix@lornix.com

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by Larry1019

Well, 85 people read this message but nobody responded. However,
after MUCH rummaging around on the web, I found the problem and
the fix. I'm posting it here in case anyone else runs into this.

Lornix beat me to the punch in replying.

The reason I did not reply earlier, is you noted you had tried KsCD. Like many of us (I suspect) I knew that KsCD had the digital option, and since you stated you had tried KsCD, that lead me to believe you had already tried the digital option, and hence lead me to believe your problem was in an area that I did not understand (and hence no reply from me).

Congratulations on sorting this, and thank you for sharing your solution.

[Larry1019]

I'm sorry. When I said I "tried" KsCD, I literally meant
that -- I popped in the CD, brought up KsCD and watched
the time counter increment without any sound. At the
time, I didn't realize that it even _has_ a digital option.