Hi, When I insert audio cd into my old dual core processor Macbook pro running linux lite 3.8 it recoginizes MP3 files but on one audio cd it reads it as a blank cd inserted (I can play it in my boom box cd player though) do I need to load more audio plugs for more cd audio formats? and which ones?

CD's and old could be the issue. Old makes drives act poorly, cd that are burned may not work in all drives.

I assume you don't mean real factory album cd's from some music company.

What reads it as blank. If it's an audio CD then there are no files on it, there are tracks. Play it with a media player.
Or vlc, mpv, etc.

The other CD with .mp3 files on it must be a data CD. Data optical disks can be mounted, you can see files on it.

responce to Teckk and Jefro this is a factory manufactured cd from a company called charged audio.com the cd will play on my sisters macbook pro running apple sw the files are aiff acording to the macbook pro running mac software. It can read and play all the files on the cd. I have loaded every audio player in the linux lite Library VLC, Amarok, cd player all the media players Banshee Basero Clemintine and every plugin associated with aiff file format in short it's not Linux lite any more it's Linux heavy... None of them will read it only as blank cd inserted...

If it has mp3 files on it it is not an audio CD.
It may be that Apple, in their infinite wisdom, bestowed another type of CD format, or just filesystem in order to store mp3 files. You should look into that.

Many file browsers will use a virtual audio filesystem and list CD audio tracks as WAV, MP3 or maybe AIFF. Depending on the age of the boombox it may read MP3 data disks if they are in a specific directory structure/format.

Have you looked at the output of the dmesg command. There could be an error message when the player tries to read the disk other then the blank message displayed

I agree with jefro that the drive might be old or could be bad. Have you tried playing other audio disks, do you have any real purchased music CDs? These would be stamped not burned and should be readable by any CD/DVD drive.

Have you tried reading a data disk?

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My cars CD player used to play mp3 discs. It was quirky though, only played 650MB discs, the 700MB ones wouldn't work. If you have a newer USB CD drive, that might work for you. On my older laptops I needed to clean the lens on the player fairly regularly. Dusty I guess, but pets, a smoker in the house, and laptops push a lot of air through themselves trying to stay cool(er). Not that I play many CDs these days, since most of mine are ripped to files and stored on storage devices. At least the ones that I care about. Most are sitting in boxes still, some still have the plastic on them.

Lots of CD changes over the years trying to head off pirates. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh. Britney Spears CDs were quite quirky about which player could play them. Sometimes the OLDER drives worked better since they didn't have the protect modes of modern ones. Sometimes the NEWER drives worked since they weren't "OLD".

Weren't there audio CD copy protection schemes that could be responsible for this?

The format of music tracks on an audio CD was developed for music CDs and is the cda format. It was developed in the 1980s when using a CD, let alone playing music, on a home computer was not even yet an idea.

If you want to burn an audio CD, you need to specify "audio CD" in your burner's settings. Where that resides and how it might be worded varies with the burning software.