Music CD -- Win vs. Linux

[John Summerfied]

Benjamin Sher wrote:
> Ben Steeves wrote:
> 
>> On 6/27/05, Benjamin Sher <delphi123 at zebra.net> wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> Dear friends:
>>>
>>> Why can Windows read a music CD but not Linux?
>>>   
>>
>>
>> Chances are you are using Windows Media Player to play your CDs in
>> Windows.  It reads the data digitally and uses processor cycles to
>> play the audio.  You don't specify which of the myriad players you are
>> using for Linux but chances are you are using a player which is
>> accessing the disc in analog -- over the two (or sometimes three) pin
>> wire that runs from the CD-ROM to your soundcard, and plays the audio
>> directly from the CD, bypassing your CPU altogether.
>>
>> This means that you may need to adjust your mixer settings to turn up
>> the volume or unmute the CD or AUX channel (depending on how the audio
>> cable is wired to your soundcard) or you might not even have an audio
>> cord attached at all (many system builders forgo this step assuming
>> everyone will use a digital method nowadays).
>>
>> You can read the audio digitally using XMMS (I believe you need an
>> XMMS plugin for this called "cdread-plugin").
>>
>>  
>>
> Dear friends:
> 
> Everything OK. This subject is closed. By the way, I play my music CD in 
> Linux on KSCD, which reads the CD "digitally" while playing it.
> 
> Thank you again everybody for teaching me about audio vs. data CD's and 
> CD's vs. DVD's.

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.

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.

-- 

Cheers
John

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