SB Audigy now (mostly) works

[David White]

Fritz Whittington wrote:

> On or about 2004-08-06 05:08, Rahul Sadotra whipped out a trusty #2 
> pencil and scribbled:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Thank you Markus and Aaron for your responses.
>>
>> --- Markus Huber <humarfedoralists at yahoo.de> wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> Aaron Gaudio schrieb:
>>>
>>>   
>>>
>>>> On Thu, 2004-08-05 at 21:03 +0100, Rahul Sadotra
>>>>     
>>>
>> wrote:
>>  
>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     
>>>>
>>>>> The only thing that doesn't work is CD playing.  I
>>>>> still can't get CD output from the speakers (even
>>>>> though I have put both CD and Audigy CD dials to       
>>>>
>> full
>>  
>>
>>>>> volume), although I can get CD output through
>>>>> headphones and change volume through headphone       
>>>>
>> volume
>>  
>>
>>>>> control on my CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives (Which I
>>>>> believe was suggested).
>>>>>  
>>>>>       
>>>>
>>>> Have you tried using xmms's digital audio
>>>>     
>>>
>> extraction?  
>>
>>>> Have you checked
>>>> the analog multimedia cable(s) between the drive(s)
>>>>     
>>>
>>
>>  
>>
>>>> and your soundcard?
>>>>     
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Or fitting the cable between CD-Player and motherboard? It sounds 
>>> stupid, but I was that stupid who forgot that ;-)
>>>   
>>
>> I know that all cable connections are correct in my
>> machine because I can get CD music output in Win XP
>> (my PC is dual boot) through speakers whether I use my
>> CD-RW or DVD-ROM drive.  Plus, I got CD music through
>> my speakers when I used Red Hat Linux 9 (again, it
>> worked on either drive).
>>  
>>
> Just a minor nit-pick here (which also I think is the source of your 
> problems under Linux).  It is *NOT* sufficient to say that all your 
> cable connections are correct just because you get CD music output in 
> Windows XP!  Windows XP (and 2000 as well) default to the mode where 
> the audio tracks are read *digitally* off of the CD and the resulting 
> data is sent to the sound card just as if you were playing a WAV file.
> Linux, on the other hand, defaults to just telling the CD to start 
> playing a certain track, and expects that the *analog* audio that 
> results (like from out of the earphone jack, which you say is playing 
> audio) will be routed from the back of the CD drive into an analog 
> input on the sound card.  This is the cable that you probably don't 
> have.  It's easy enough to open up your box and see if there is a 
> smallish round audio-type cable coming out of the back of the CD drive 
> and routed to your sound card, or to a connector on the motherboard if 
> your sound hardware is built-in to the motherboard.  (One workaround 
> to installing the internal cable is to run a male-to-male stereo cable 
> from the earphone output on the front of the CD around to the back of 
> the box and plug it into the line-in input, *not* the microphone-in 
> input, on your soundboard. )
>
> You could also do a negative check, and in WinXP  go into the Device 
> Manager, select the CD drive Properties, and UN-check the box that 
> says "Use digital audio for this device".   After that, you should 
> have the same symptoms as you do with Linux, that is, nothing coming 
> out of the speakers, but music available at the earphone jack.
>
>> As I already mentioned I upgraded RH 9 to Fedora Core
>> 2.  This solved the problem I had of using CD-RWs on
>> my machine on my particular CD-RW drive (it used to
>> take a really long time to mount any CD-RW) that I had
>> - I have no such problems in Fedora Core 2, for CD-RWs
>> can now be mounted very quickly.  I think the change
>> in kernel from 2.4.x to 2.6.x helped a lot there.
>>
>> Unfortunately, CD music in Fedora Core 2 can only be
>> listened to through headphones at the moment.  But
>> I'll be okay with that.
>>
>> Yes, when I use XMMS's CD extraction tool and cdda2wav
>> to create WAV files there is no problem playing music.
>>
>> Incidentally, my CD-RW drive is a TEAC CD-W524E, and
>> my DVD-ROM drive is a LG DRD-8160B.
>>
>> I should have mentioned my PC is dual boot in my first
>> post.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Rahul
>>  
>>
No need for the cable, just use xmms and play the audio CD's digitally.

Start xmms choose Preferences (Ctrl+P) select CD Audio Player -> (Input
Plugins) -> press the 'Configure' button, ->Play mode: Digital audio 
extraction

Good Luck,

Dave White