[PLUG] CD player sound and aux. cable?

Derek Loree drl at drloree.com
Fri Nov 21 16:01:01 UTC 2003


On Thu, 2003-11-20 at 11:22, Alex Daniloff wrote:
> Hello Linux folkz,
> I just noticed one interesting thing on my SuSE 9.0.
> I can't listen to misic CD using KDE cdplayer, 
> but I can watch DVD movies with sound using xine, and
> KDE sound schema is working too. 
> If I connect DVD ROM directly to the sound card with 
> the auxiliary cable, then I can listen to misic CD's 
> as well. 
> The question is if Linux uses different sound 
> services/fasilities for providing sound for DVD movies 
> and musical CD's?

This is a matter of how the music is extracted from the CD.  The
original function of a CD-player was to extract the music for analog
output, that is the usual way that a CD-player pipes sound to a sound
card when reading audio CD's.  This is a four pin all-in-a-line
connector on the back of the player and a similar set of connectors on
the sound card (or motherboard for integrated sound), there are usually
only three wires that make up the cable.  Software is only used to start
the player (the player itself may have a play button as well), once it
is playing you can close the program and it is possible that it will
keep playing, I know that WorkMan behaves this way.

Modern CD and DVD players are also capable of digital output of the
extracted audio.  Sometimes it has to go out the IDE cable, where
software of some sort has to deal with it. (Winblows has a feature in
the CD-drivers properties to switch between analog and digital
extraction for CD playback.)  And sometimes it has an additional digital
out port and that can also be connected directly to the sound card, or
other converter/amplifier, but it will require a different cable.

HTH

Derek Loree






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