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#1 2008-02-25 02:48:19

dumas
Member
From: Sydney
Registered: 2007-09-01
Posts: 103

[SOLVED] Audio CD not working

This is a long lasting problem, both on my laptop and my new desktop, so I want to start from the very beginning. I don't know if this is just me, I searched through the wiki and forum, but could find no solution.

When I first started with Ubuntu I played audio CDs with soundjuicer, perfect, everything worked.

Then I tried Arch with gnome, and soundjuicer worked as before.

After some time, don't remember what I did or it just broke, soundjuicer didn't work, saying there's no cd inserted or something like that.

Now I don't have gnome installed, so no more soundjuicer for me. In both my laptop and new desktop, I tried mcdp and cdcd. They both detected the tracks and information and things, but there would be no sound when I play it. I checked alsamixer and groups, they were fine. I could use abcde to extract tracks perfectly. Playing normal videos, VCD or DVD have perfect sound.

I assembled my new desktop myself. When I read the manual I found the picture had 3 cables connecting to the cdrom drive, while I only got 2. I asked a friend who worked for computer retails, he said the one I lacked was used so that sound would go directly from CD drive to motherboard, and it isn't needed anymore for modern computers. Would it be the problem? But how would that explain soundjuicer breaking?

Later I used cdfs which worked perfectly, until around 2 weeks ago it broke probably upon updating the kernel. I guess I could compile cdfs and stuff myself, but like, come on, playing audio CDs shouldn't incur so much maintenance cost. I'd prefer using cdcd.

Hopefully I didn't sound like I nagged too much. Many thanks in advance.

Last edited by dumas (2011-06-16 02:46:16)

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#2 2008-02-27 10:28:45

dumas
Member
From: Sydney
Registered: 2007-09-01
Posts: 103

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

Any ideas?
I don't think I'm missing library dependencies.

pacman -Q | grep audio

audiofile 0.2.6-3
jack-audio-connection-kit 0.109.2-1
libcdaudio 0.99.12-3

pacman -Q | grep cd

abcde 2.3.3-3
cd-discid 0.9-1
cdcd 0.6.6-2
cddb_get 2.27-2
cdfs 2.6.23-2
cdparanoia 9.8-4
dhcpcd 3.2.0-1
libcdaudio 0.99.12-3
libmpcdec 1.2.6-1
opencdk 0.6.6-1

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#3 2008-02-29 07:18:59

dumas
Member
From: Sydney
Registered: 2007-09-01
Posts: 103

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

Any ideas any one? Maybe I've done something so stupid that it's overlooked. But I guess it's a fairly machine independent problem, since it happened to both my laptop and desktop.

alsamixer channels:

PCM
Front
Front Mic
Surround
Center
LFE
Side
Line
Mic
Mic Boost
IEC958

All are unmuted.

groups:
games video audio optical users

All sound works, including vcd and dvd. abcde can extract audio. Pidgin's sound broke in some recent update, but I think that's irrelevant.

Just did a system update, no improvements.

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#4 2008-02-29 07:24:51

Ashren
Member
From: Denmark
Registered: 2007-06-13
Posts: 1,229
Website

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

What about the CD channel in alsamixer is that unmuted? Press tab when in alsamixer to see more details.

Try installing a GUI mixer. Amixer , etc, that might help you as well.

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#5 2008-02-29 07:45:07

dumas
Member
From: Sydney
Registered: 2007-09-01
Posts: 103

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

Now that you mention, there's no CD channel in alsamixer. Is that because of this:

I assembled my new desktop myself. When I read the manual I found the picture had 3 cables connecting to the cdrom drive, while I only got 2. I asked a friend who worked for computer retails, he said the one I lacked was used so that sound would go directly from CD drive to motherboard, and it isn't needed anymore for modern computers. Would it be the problem? But how would that explain soundjuicer breaking?

I tried rexima and aumix-gtk, don't really find them helpful, nor do they show CD channel.

I'm guessing it's the lack of cable's problem. That would explain the lack of CD channel in alsamixer while cdfs worked. But soundjuicer used to work in my laptop, but it broke and remained so for both my laptop and desktop, saying no CD inserted or something.

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#6 2008-02-29 13:18:50

dr.cranium
Member
Registered: 2008-01-25
Posts: 65

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

Are you in the right groups?  I've had similar problems.  I wasnt in Sound so I couldn't hear anything.
try:
gpasswd -a 'user' optical

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#7 2008-02-29 15:19:57

RobbeR49
Member
From: Columbus, OH
Registered: 2006-01-17
Posts: 178

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

I actually had the same problem, but I hardly ever listen to CD's on my computer so I forgot about it and it remains (I think) unfixed

the things I remember checking and being ok were:
a) I do have an audio cable running to my soundcard from the drive
b) all channels are unmuted and set at 100%
c) I have a headphone jack on the front of my cd drive, and sound worked through that
d) I booted up Windows and it worked

I'm not at home now so I can't check and see if it still doesn't work, but i'll try it later.

Last edited by RobbeR49 (2008-02-29 15:20:12)

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#8 2008-03-01 02:22:04

dumas
Member
From: Sydney
Registered: 2007-09-01
Posts: 103

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

dr.cranium wrote:

Are you in the right groups?  I've had similar problems.  I wasnt in Sound so I couldn't hear anything.
try:
gpasswd -a 'user' optical

I already checked the groups:

game video audio optical users

RobbeR49, looks like we have pretty much the identical problem. That means an extra cable is not going to help me. Maybe it's an problem with alsa?

Looking forward to your results!

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#9 2008-04-13 20:32:25

eyolf
Member
From: Copenhagen
Registered: 2005-11-29
Posts: 339
Website

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

Having the same problem. I can play cds through other apps, though, such as audacious with the cdplayer plugin, but with cdcd -- nothing. I can rip tracks with grip, but I can't play them. Very annoying. If you come up with a solution, let me know.
HP pavilion dv6275ea.

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#10 2008-07-07 03:01:33

dumas
Member
From: Sydney
Registered: 2007-09-01
Posts: 103

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

Hi eyolf I just tried audacious and it worked for me too. cdcd and mcdp remained muted. Audacious gives the following output:

Checking /dev/cdrom for cdrom...
        CDROM sensed: ASUS     DRW-1814BL       1.13 SCSI CD-ROM

Checking /dev/cdrom for cdrom...
        CDROM sensed: ASUS     DRW-1814BL       1.13 SCSI CD-ROM

I also tried apolos, a pretty terrible cd player. It didn't work, but it gave an output that might tell us something:

Checking /dev/cdrom for cdrom...
    Testing /dev/cdrom for cooked ioctl() interface
        /dev/sr0 is not a cooked ioctl CDROM.
    Testing /dev/cdrom for SCSI interface
        generic device: /dev/sg1
        ioctl device: /dev/sr0

Found an accessible SCSI CDROM drive.
Looking at revision of the SG interface in use...
    SG interface version 3.5.34; OK.

CDROM model sensed sensed: ASUS DRW-1814BL 1.13 
400: Device not open
400: Device not open
400: Device not open
400: Device not open
400: Device not open
400: Device not open

Checking for SCSI emulation...
    Drive is ATAPI (using SCSI host adaptor emulation)
    Couldn't disable kernel command translation layer

Checking for MMC style command set...
    Drive is MMC style
    DMA scatter/gather table entries: 127
    table entry size: 32768 bytes
    maximum theoretical transfer: 1769 sectors
    Setting default read size to 13 sectors (30576 bytes).

Verifying CDDA command set...
    Expected command set reads OK.

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#11 2008-07-07 08:17:49

KimTjik
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2007-08-22
Posts: 715

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

Correct me if I'm wrong, but to my knowledge neither cdcd or mcdp work without the cabe between optical drive and sound-card. Many applications made for Gnomer and KDE, or VLC do work without it.

The person here being able to rip with Grip: can you listen through Grip? If yes, then the above apply.

Note: I don't know the reason but on one sound-card the channel regulating the CD isn't CD but Aux. Why? I don't have a clue. Is it an Alsa driver error or what, but since it works I don't care.

Last edited by KimTjik (2008-07-07 08:25:25)

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#12 2011-05-23 12:44:30

dumas
Member
From: Sydney
Registered: 2007-09-01
Posts: 103

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

OK, this is getting outrageous.

I started this thread in 2008, now it's half way in 2011. Yet the same problem persists!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not angry, but for Linux, or Arch, or whatever, this is simply embarassing. It's not that I can't live with this problem, but I do think by urging Archers to solve this problem altogether we're saving ourselves some embarassment.

This time I'm trying to listen to audio CD from my office's desktop, which I installed Arch, of course.

This is a modern machine, maybe 6 months old?

Sound, alsa, works perfectly fine. I can listen to music alright. As before, I can rip tracks off with abcde, and then listen to the tracks from the hard drive.

But mcdp, cdcd, or sound-juicer, cdfs, just doesn't work.

The "symptom" is a little bit different from before, though. For sound-juicer (btw I don't use gnome anymore, I installed sound-juicer and all dependencies just to check whether it works) it says it "does not have permission to access the cdrom" or something. I've triple checked I'm in the optical group.

cdfs is able to mount, but might cause a kernel panic or similar crash.

If my memory serves me right, mcdp and cdcd would "play" without giving sound before. Now the timer thingy does not move, so for example with mcdp the timer would stay at 00:00, while cdcd always returns a status of pause of something.

May I repeat myself, let's all solve this problem, even if that means writing new software, because I think this is really embarassing for Linux. Or hopefully, someone may point out I just did something stupid and there's no real problem. I'd rather that's the case!

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#13 2011-05-23 23:51:05

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

You should have opened another thread and link to this one.

I'll check if any app works for me.

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#14 2011-05-24 09:21:56

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

I've installed cdcd for the first time in my life and picked a CD, run 'rndplay' and  'tracks' (to see which one it's playing) and it worked.
Check your alsamixer settings - maybe you don't have 'CD' channel unmuted.

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#15 2011-05-24 10:14:54

Elline
Member
Registered: 2011-03-12
Posts: 18

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

Hello.
I am a newbie too, but I'll try to assume something.
You has said that when you used GMOME it worked just fine, but problems come is when you starting to build your own environment. Then you said something about permissions.
So, maybe it's the problem of permissions? As far as I know, to access removable media you need to have certain permissions and in independent environments it doesn't works out of the box. I'm just started to build my own environment on my another laptop and hasn't faced this problem yet so I can't point you to direct actions.
But here is my assumptions, maybe w:PolicyKit will solve your issue?
And which DM and file manager do you use? There are related entries: w:Slim#PolicyKit, w:Thunar#udev Automounting.

Yet it's not direct actions, but hope it can give you any clues!

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#16 2011-05-25 02:51:52

dumas
Member
From: Sydney
Registered: 2007-09-01
Posts: 103

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

Thanks for the responses so far. Since there are all these replies in this thread, I suppose we should continue here at this point.

karol wrote:

I've installed cdcd for the first time in my life and picked a CD, run 'rndplay' and  'tracks' (to see which one it's playing) and it worked.
Check your alsamixer settings - maybe you don't have 'CD' channel unmuted.

Interesting, for me alsamixer does not have a 'CD' channel. Available channels are [ (o) means I unmuted it ]

master (o)
headphone (o)
speaker (o)
pcm (o)
front mic
front mic boost
line (o)
s/pdif (o)
s/pdif default pcm (o)
s/pdif 1 (o)
beep
capture
capture 1
digital (o)
input source
input source 1
rear mic
rear mic boost
Elline wrote:

Hello.
I am a newbie too, but I'll try to assume something.
You has said that when you used GMOME it worked just fine, but problems come is when you starting to build your own environment. Then you said something about permissions.
So, maybe it's the problem of permissions? As far as I know, to access removable media you need to have certain permissions and in independent environments it doesn't works out of the box. I'm just started to build my own environment on my another laptop and hasn't faced this problem yet so I can't point you to direct actions.
But here is my assumptions, maybe w:PolicyKit will solve your issue?
And which DM and file manager do you use? There are related entries: w:Slim#PolicyKit, w:Thunar#udev Automounting.

Yet it's not direct actions, but hope it can give you any clues!

That's an interesting idea. I'm using compiz standalone. One thing is that I don't have an audio CD with me right now, so I can't do any testing. Will let you guys know any results.

NEW RESULTS:

I just tried using vlc, and I can listen to audio CDs perfectly. This means it's not a permission problem, nor a mixer channel problem, but probably rather an implementation/interoperability problem.

Now the question is, I don't use vlc, and free/open source software should have simple software like mcdp/cdcd that plays audio CDs, that work for everyone. Are there any other software? Or should mcdp/cdcd be patched?

Last edited by dumas (2011-05-26 08:45:11)

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#17 2011-05-30 10:07:05

dumas
Member
From: Sydney
Registered: 2007-09-01
Posts: 103

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

Look archers, I'm not bitching, at least not for the sake of it. I don't even listen to audio CDs that often. But wouldn't you be embarassed to know up to this day free/open source software only have limited ability in playing audio CDs? If you do a bit of googling, this is not an isolated problem, but a long standing one. Let's do something about it.

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#18 2011-06-05 21:08:12

KimTjik
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2007-08-22
Posts: 715

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

I've tried to scan through this thread, but I'm not able to distinguish whether you actually did connect the internal audio cable from the optical drive to corresponding socket for the audio device. Did you? I once more checked cdcd and it's quite clear it refers to a direct connection through audio cable instead of IDE/SATA interface.

Secondly I wonder whether you now fight with another issue, or change, that isn't related to the initial post. When you write about permissions to cdrom, it could well be you either haven't got any /dev/cdrom symlink created on your system, or you don't have any udev rule giving you permission to access it.

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#19 2011-06-06 10:28:55

mandog
Member
From: Peru
Registered: 2008-09-17
Posts: 218

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

You don't need to connect optical cables to play a CD that's only for old low powered comps that can't handle digital signals. Arch will play a cd through sound juicer by default you may have to specify the CD drive that's all. I don't know what you guys are doing wrong but CD works out the box on all but KDE4 apps and that's down to KDE not Arch. Exaile is a excellent app that plays CD out the box on Arch auto detects the drive just make sure you read the pacman feed back when installed and add the optional dependencies. Perhaps that what you are doing wrong and not reading the pacman output


I'm dyslexic Please do not complain about puntuation or spelling and remember most dyslexic people have above average iq.

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#20 2011-06-06 14:33:39

KimTjik
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2007-08-22
Posts: 715

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

mandog wrote:

You don't need to connect optical cables to play a CD that's only for old low powered comps that can't handle digital signals.

How do you interpret man output of cdcd?:

setvol [left front] [right front] [left rear] [right rear]
              Sets  the  CD-ROM  volume  to the given settings.  Most CD players
              only support the front two channels

I read it as an app that still depends on the audio cable. I don't have any problems playing CDs on my computers, be it plain mplayer in console or typical DE apps. cdcd however won't play any CD I give it. Based on the quote I suspect it works the old fashion way.

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#21 2011-06-09 07:47:54

dumas
Member
From: Sydney
Registered: 2007-09-01
Posts: 103

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

Wow I thought this thread died again. Thanks for the replies. Again, I don't have an audio CD with me to test, which I suppose shows I really don't listen to audio CDs in computers, and I'm really not bitching. KimTjik, I didn't know mplayer can play audio CDs? Because mplayer is my favourite multimedia player. I now know the cdda:// option. If it works, I'd be happy using that. Still, it wouldn't hurt to correct the long standing problem with soundjuicer, cdcd, mcdp.

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#22 2011-06-09 10:17:15

KimTjik
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2007-08-22
Posts: 715

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

dumas wrote:

Still, it wouldn't hurt to correct the long standing problem with soundjuicer, cdcd, mcdp.

Who should do it? You're asking about projects that haven't been updated for years. Latest version of cdcd is from 2004 and mcdp from 2005!

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#23 2011-06-16 02:45:35

dumas
Member
From: Sydney
Registered: 2007-09-01
Posts: 103

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

I tested

mplayer cdda:// -cache 5000

In the office computer it works perfect, and Glenn Gould is incredible! At home it's imperfect, but that's probably because the CD drive is dodgy, I won't worry about that right now.

So as a summary:

Programs that play audio CD:

audacious (with plugin)
VLC
mplayer

Programs that fail:

soundjuicer (but I don't have gnome installed, and with gnome3 I don't see how interoperability will improve)
cdcd (last updated 2004)
mcdp (last updated 2005)
cdfs (broken a few years back, probably still broken)

So I suppose we do have the choice, VLC provides a modern media player for more GUI oriented people and mplayer for more CLI people, and there's audacious and xmms?

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#24 2011-06-16 19:20:31

mandog
Member
From: Peru
Registered: 2008-09-17
Posts: 218

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

dumas wrote:

I tested

mplayer cdda:// -cache 5000

In the office computer it works perfect, and Glenn Gould is incredible! At home it's imperfect, but that's probably because the CD drive is dodgy, I won't worry about that right now.

So as a summary:

Programs that play audio CD:

audacious (with plugin)
VLC
mplayer

Programs that fail:

soundjuicer (but I don't have gnome installed, and with gnome3 I don't see how interoperability will improve)
cdcd (last updated 2004)
mcdp (last updated 2005)
cdfs (broken a few years back, probably still broken)

So I suppose we do have the choice, VLC provides a modern media player for more GUI oriented people and mplayer for more CLI people, and there's audacious and xmms?

and what is wrong with exaile or banshee gnomemplayer alsa cd player xbmc smplayer and many more that play cd out of the box


I'm dyslexic Please do not complain about puntuation or spelling and remember most dyslexic people have above average iq.

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#25 2011-06-16 20:47:03

KimTjik
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2007-08-22
Posts: 715

Re: [SOLVED] Audio CD not working

mandog wrote:

and what is wrong with exaile or banshee gnomemplayer alsa cd player xbmc smplayer and many more that play cd out of the box

I didn't think about alsaplayer, but it can easily play CDs from in terminal as well: alsaplayer -i text CD.cdda. From there it's just to send commands about track, volume and so on.

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