Questions about Playing Audio CDs without an Audio Cable
Hello, I've been using SuSE (9.1, and 9.0 before that) on a desktop computer, and have routinely played music CDs using KsCD. A few weeks ago, my CD RW went bad, and I took the computer to a shop to have a new CD RW installed. The shop didn't connect the CD RW to the sound card, so KsCD no longer works. (It detects the CD and "plays" it, but there is no sound.) Totem plays music CDs fine, even without the audio cord connecting the CD RW to the sound card. (Because it uses the IDE interface?) I'm trying to decide if I should install an audio cable or if I should do without it. Are there any major disadvantages to using software like Totem to play music CDs rather than using KsCD with an audio cable? For example, are players like Totem more CPU-intensive? Also, is it fairly common for newer desktop computers to ship without an audio cable and to rely on players like Totem to play CDs? Thanks for your thoughts. Dom
Dom Incollingo writes:
Are there any major disadvantages to using software like Totem to play music CDs rather than using KsCD with an audio cable? For example, are players like Totem more CPU-intensive?
Yes, basically, without the cable, the software must perform real-time CDDA (digital audio extraction) and play it via the sound card's PCM channel. This involves the CPU to do work, both reading the CD and writing the data to the sound card. With the cable, all the software needs to do is to tell the drive to start playing out of its analog output, and then do nothing (except polling periodically to check the playback position and status).
Also, is it fairly common for newer desktop computers to ship without an audio cable and to rely on players like Totem to play CDs?
Yes indeed. Many new computers now do not have an internal analog line connection to the CD drive. Since the CPUs are so fast nowadays the increased CPU usage with CDDA playback seems innocuous enough. -Ti -- Ti Kan http://www.amb.org/ti Vorsprung durch Technik
Ti Kan wrote:
Dom Incollingo writes:
Are there any major disadvantages to using software like Totem to play music CDs rather than using KsCD with an audio cable? For example, are players like Totem more CPU-intensive?
Yes, basically, without the cable, the software must perform real-time CDDA (digital audio extraction) and play it via the sound card's PCM channel. This involves the CPU to do work, both reading the CD and writing the data to the sound card.
Also, is it fairly common for newer desktop computers to ship without an audio cable and to rely on players like Totem to play CDs?
Yes indeed. Many new computers now do not have an internal analog line connection to the CD drive. Since the CPUs are so fast nowadays the increased CPU usage with CDDA playback seems innocuous enough.
-Ti
Thanks very much to everyone for the comments. Since my CPU is fairly fast (2 Ghz) and I haven't (yet) noticed any performance issues, I'll continue to use digital players for now. As one reader pointed out, the 'Use direct digital playback' checkbox is disabled on my KsCD configuration screen. But Totem works quite well and I am satisified with it for now. Thanks again. Dom
On Wednesday, 20 October 2004 03.55, Dom Incollingo wrote:
Hello,
I've been using SuSE (9.1, and 9.0 before that) on a desktop computer, and have routinely played music CDs using KsCD. A few weeks ago, my CD RW went bad, and I took the computer to a shop to have a new CD RW installed. The shop didn't connect the CD RW to the sound card, so KsCD no longer works. (It detects the CD and "plays" it, but there is no sound.) Totem plays music CDs fine, even without the audio cord connecting the CD RW to the sound card. (Because it uses the IDE interface?) I'm trying to decide if I should install an audio cable or if I should do without it.
Are there any major disadvantages to using software like Totem to play music CDs rather than using KsCD with an audio cable? For example, are players like Totem more CPU-intensive? Also, is it fairly common for newer desktop computers to ship without an audio cable and to rely on players like Totem to play CDs?
You can get kscd to do it too. Extras->Configure kscd and check the "Use direct digital playback". I guess totem is set to use that by default. What that does is it will rip the audio data from the CD using the same technique as you use when you rip to ogg or mp3 before it plays it. The benefit is that you can use a CD player that is not directly connected to the sound card, the drawback is that it will consume CPU and IO bandwidth when you play. With a cable between the CD and sound card, the data never enters the CPU.
[...]
Are there any major disadvantages to using software like Totem to play music CDs rather than using KsCD with an audio cable? For example, are players like Totem more CPU-intensive? Also, is it fairly common for newer desktop computers to ship without an audio cable and to rely on players like Totem to play CDs?
You can get kscd to do it too. Extras->Configure kscd and check the "Use direct digital playback".
I did not find such a voice on my KsCD. Neither on SuSE 8.1 nor on Slack 10.0 Bye emilio
On Wednesday 20 October 2004 09:42 am, contiemilio@virgilio.it wrote:
[...]
Are there any major disadvantages to using software like Totem to play music CDs rather than using KsCD with an audio cable? For example, are players like Totem more CPU-intensive? Also, is it fairly common for newer desktop computers to ship without an audio cable and to rely on players like Totem to play CDs?
You can get kscd to do it too. Extras->Configure kscd and check the "Use direct digital playback".
I did not find such a voice on my KsCD. Neither on SuSE 8.1 nor on Slack 10.0
Bye emilio
I have the option in 9.1 Pro but it is grayed out and am unable to select it. Do certain conditions have to exist before this is usable? Thanks, DC
On Wednesday, 20 October 2004 17.03, Darrell Cormier wrote:
On Wednesday 20 October 2004 09:42 am, contiemilio@virgilio.it wrote:
[...]
Are there any major disadvantages to using software like Totem to play music CDs rather than using KsCD with an audio cable? For example, are players like Totem more CPU-intensive? Also, is it fairly common for newer desktop computers to ship without an audio cable and to rely on players like Totem to play CDs?
You can get kscd to do it too. Extras->Configure kscd and check the "Use direct digital playback".
I did not find such a voice on my KsCD. Neither on SuSE 8.1 nor on Slack 10.0
Bye emilio
I have the option in 9.1 Pro but it is grayed out and am unable to select it. Do certain conditions have to exist before this is usable?
Very odd. I can't find a way to get it to gray out here. What version of kdemultimedia3-CD do you have?
Anders, Darrell, On Wednesday 20 October 2004 20:51, Anders Johansson wrote:
On Wednesday, 20 October 2004 17.03, Darrell Cormier wrote:
...
I have the option in 9.1 Pro but it is grayed out and am unable to select it. Do certain conditions have to exist before this is usable?
Very odd. I can't find a way to get it to gray out here. What version of kdemultimedia3-CD do you have?
I'm not sure, but I think not all CD-ROM drives support the necessary function. Again, I'm not sure, but I think digital playback requires the same or related functionality for DAE (digital audio extraction, a.k.a. "ripping"). Perhaps, Darrell, this is just a matter of hardware capability? Randall Schulz
On Wednesday 20 October 2004 11:08 pm, Randall R Schulz wrote:
Anders, Darrell,
On Wednesday 20 October 2004 20:51, Anders Johansson wrote:
On Wednesday, 20 October 2004 17.03, Darrell Cormier wrote:
...
I have the option in 9.1 Pro but it is grayed out and am unable to select it. Do certain conditions have to exist before this is usable?
Very odd. I can't find a way to get it to gray out here. What version of kdemultimedia3-CD do you have?
I'm not sure, but I think not all CD-ROM drives support the necessary function. Again, I'm not sure, but I think digital playback requires the same or related functionality for DAE (digital audio extraction, a.k.a. "ripping").
Perhaps, Darrell, this is just a matter of hardware capability?
Randall Schulz
On both machines, where "Use Direct Digital Playback" is grayed out, I have ripped many CDs. To answer Anders question: ~> rpm -qa |grep kdemultimedia3-CD kdemultimedia3-CD-3.2.1-43 Both machines are DVD drives, maybe that makes a difference. However, I don't believe so, on one machine I have a CD-RW installed as well. If I change the KSCD config to use that drive (i.e. /dev/cdrecorder) the digital playback option is still not active. DC
On Thursday, 21 October 2004 18.54, Darrell Cormier wrote:
On both machines, where "Use Direct Digital Playback" is grayed out, I have ripped many CDs.
To answer Anders question: ~> rpm -qa |grep kdemultimedia3-CD kdemultimedia3-CD-3.2.1-43
Both machines are DVD drives, maybe that makes a difference. However, I don't believe so, on one machine I have a CD-RW installed as well. If I change the KSCD config to use that drive (i.e. /dev/cdrecorder) the digital playback option is still not active.
I'm *really* not sure about this, as I'm not so read up on KDE's ui stuff as I should be, but I've had a look at the source of 3.2.1 and compared it to 3.3.1, and it looks to me like it's simply hardcoded out. It's set to "enabled=false" and I don't see anything anywhere to set it to true, so the best I can make out is that it's just not implemented in 3.2.1. Maybe you should try upgrading to 3.3.1
Darrell, On Thursday 21 October 2004 09:54, Darrell Cormier wrote:
On Wednesday 20 October 2004 11:08 pm, Randall R Schulz wrote:
...
I'm not sure, but I think not all CD-ROM drives support the necessary function. Again, I'm not sure, but I think digital playback requires the same or related functionality for DAE (digital audio extraction, a.k.a. "ripping").
Perhaps, Darrell, this is just a matter of hardware capability?
Randall Schulz
On both machines, where "Use Direct Digital Playback" is grayed out, I have ripped many CDs.
To answer Anders question: ~> rpm -qa |grep kdemultimedia3-CD kdemultimedia3-CD-3.2.1-43
Both machines are DVD drives, maybe that makes a difference. However, I don't believe so, on one machine I have a CD-RW installed as well. If I change the KSCD config to use that drive (i.e. /dev/cdrecorder) the digital playback option is still not active.
Both of the drives on my system are DVDs, one is a recorder and the other a player / -ROM drive. In doing a little experimentation, I found that while there is a disc in the drive the entire "Drive Selection" section of the KsCD configuration dialog is grayed out. I also noticed that when I enabled "Use direct digital playback" that a pop-up for selecting the "audio backend" appeared and I was given the choice of "arts" (which was the default) and "alsa." I left it on arts and had no trouble playing an audio CD. Perhaps something about the other audio configuration on your system is unacceptable to KsCD's direct digital playback mode, and hence it does not offer you that choice?
DC
Randall Schulz
participants (6)
-
Anders Johansson -
contiemilio＠virgilio.it -
Darrell Cormier -
Dom Incollingo -
Randall R Schulz -
ti＠amb.org