audio cd problems
 

I know these threads probably pop up once and a while but I tried a search for kscd on this board and attempted the suggested solutions but nothing seems to really work. Kscd says my cd is playing but there is no sound. System sounds work fine. I can even play mp3's off of a cd. No sound even as root. Played with the Kmix settings. Cable should be securely connected.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

I am also new to LINUX, but I would suggest the following from my own experience:

if you are using digital speakers, cd is a different input to the souncard to mp3 (see hardware below)
otherwise,
hardware - cable from cd to soundcard (I know you checked it is correctly and firmly coonnected, but maybe the cable or hardware is no good)
software - are you using different software to that used for playing mp3?

sorry this isn't definitive, but I think you need to return to basics....if possible, run another OS (yes, I dual boot with Windoze, which is a great way of telling whether I have a hardware problem or not) and check which parts of the problem are shared and which are unique.

best wishes

Jim

It may be significant which soundcard you're using.

I use a Soundblaster Live! (emu10k1 driver), and sometimes find that the initialisation script has failed to create appropriate links between the soundcard's cd-audio input and the output.

I have the other OS partition and everything works dandy over there.

I also have the Soundblaster Live Drive (the one that is accessible from the front). When I first installed Linux I wasn't getting any sound period and had to run config manually. How do I check if the initialization script is making the right connections?

Also, originally I was using Gnome when I put my data cd of mp3's in and I didn't have to touch anything. It automatically mounted and I used Xmms to play the mp3's on the cd.

I have tried to load /dev/cdrom into Xmms and just tried running kscd to no avail.

Assuming you already have a working emu10k1 driver (such as that included in your RH kernel), you'll need the emu-tools package. This allows you to control the functionality of your DSP chip. I'm not an expert - see the docs.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/emu10k1

I'm sorry but I can't make heads or tails of these docs.

I looked at the emu-config and emu-dspmgr --help and aren't really sure which parameters I am supposed to be messing with.

They're not all that friendly, are they?

I haven't got the cd-audio on my sblive working either, I just don't particularly mind because I rip any audio cds. Even if I just want to listen to them, ripping is faster than realtime so it's not an issue.

I googled a bit for cd audio with an emu10k1. The only suggestions I found were that it flat out won't work with the ALSA driver (probably not what you've got), and that someone had to set the cd as the recording device (you can do this with kmix or gmix) to get it to play. Setting it to the recording device made no difference for me, but it might be worth a try.

If you want to try and make use of emu-dspmgr, I can only direct you in the direction of the few switches that I've used:

-x disables the DSP
-y enables it
-i lists all the routes currently set up
-z clears all the routes
-a adds a route

I use my card in a very simplistic way - my only routes are from pcm L to front and rear L and pcm R to front and rear R. I don't use it for anything very interesting, so I just made it work simply with my 4.1 speakers (by default it doesn't handle the rear speakers properly).

Hmmm...

Hey guys and gals, I just noticed I don't have an audio group. How critical is that? lol

And should my permissions for cdrom, audio etc. be set to execute in addition to read/write in order for it to work?

I played with those settings, Faecal. Everything looks properly routed. CDSpdif etc connects to Front and Rear. Pcm connects to Front and Rear. And Analog connects to Digital L&R's and Rear L&R's. The only funny thing I noticed was that when I *disabled* DSP, my sound got louder and clearer.

This thread is never going to go away. :D

Louder, yes. The default settings don't put much gain on the DSP routes. You can make them louder if you like. As for clearer, that's the opposite of my experience.

As for all the rest of it, I have nothing more to contribute.