LinuxQuestions.org - Considerable jitter/drift preventing DAE/ripping of audio CDs. (XMMS & cdparanoia)

I have a brand-new system running Debian Sarge. I have a 2.6.8 kernel that I have compiled myself. There are 2 CD drives on my system:
ATAPI compatible HL-DT-STDVD-ROM GDR8163B
ATAPI compatible SONY CD-RW CRX216E

I've done the tests below with about half a dozen different audio CDs. The CDs have no scratches or scuffs.

In XMMS (1.2.10) using DAE (CD Audio Player input plugin) I'm unable to play CDs due to what is apparently significant jitter and/or drift. I initially tried to play the CD in analog mode, but then realized that I didn't have a cable from my DVD drive to my sound card (I added one last night but it doesn't seem to work ... something else that I'll have to deal with later). Anyways, I initially believed that it was that the drive was spinning the CD too fast to properly read (it was spinning at a very fast speed!). This could be part of the problem, but I really don't know. The output audio is always filled with snaps and clicks, no matter which drive I'm using.

DAE on these drives (or at least the DVD drive, for sure) under w*ndows. When I got the system I tested the hardware under w*ndows before telling it goodbye.

Then I thought that I'd see if I could even rip the CD. Using cdparanoia (cdparanoia III release 9.8 (March 23, 2001)) I tried to rip from the DVD drive. The resulting audio file was all silence. I even tried to copying just track 2 (since I know that some drives and some versions of cdparanoia had problems with the pregap on track 1 - I know that this shouldn't be a problem with my version, but I was just being ... paranoid). During the entire ripping process the cdparanoia status bar was a '+' (except the initial one was a '!') and the smiley was :-P. The '-z' option didn't help me either.

The verbose output of a rip of tracks 1 & 2 follows:

Code:

maldoror:~# cdparanoia -v 1-2 test.wav

cdparanoia III release 9.8 (March 23, 2001)

(C) 2001 Monty <monty@xiph.org> and Xiphophorus



Report bugs to paranoia@xiph.org

http://www.xiph.org/paranoia/



Checking /dev/cdrom for cdrom...

        Testing /dev/cdrom for cooked ioctl() interface

                CDROM sensed: ATAPI compatible HL-DT-STDVD-ROM GDR8163B





Verifying drive can read CDDA...

        Expected command set reads OK.



Table of contents (audio tracks only):

track        length              begin        copy pre ch

===========================================================

  1.    7241 [01:36.41]        0 [00:00.00]    no  no  2

  2.    21604 [04:48.04]    7241 [01:36.41]    no  no  2

  3.    21845 [04:51.20]    28845 [06:24.45]    no  no  2

  4.    8129 [01:48.29]    50690 [11:15.65]    no  no  2

  5.    13085 [02:54.35]    58819 [13:04.19]    no  no  2

  6.    15471 [03:26.21]    71904 [15:58.54]    no  no  2

TOTAL  87375 [19:25.00]    (audio only)



Ripping from sector      0 (track  1 [0:00.00])

          to sector  28844 (track  2 [4:48.03])



outputting to test.wav



 (== PROGRESS == [!+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++| 028844 01 ] == :^D * ==)



Done.

I then switched to my CD-RW drive (which, as I mentioned above, also can't play CDs correctly though XMMS) and, amazingly, it did work! The resulting audio file played fine. The status bar and smileys weren't too nice, though. :-P and 8-| almost all the way though, and the status bar line (for the same CD as above) was:

Code:

(== PROGRESS == [!+!!!!!+!!+!!!!!!!+!!!!!!!!!!!| 028844 00 ] == :^D * ==)

If anyone has any insight into these problems, or any suggestions, it would be much appreciated!

A few notes that may or may not be relevant:
* The DVD drive plays DVD just fine though mplayer. gxine, however, has problems with it being slow/choppy play. It complains that I don't have DMA for the DVD drive. I tried to get DMA to work, but with no success (maybe I couldn't find the proper drivers, or maybe I just couldn't set it right). Anyways, I put in a lot of effort but gave up because mplayer is better IMO. I don't know if the lack of DMA could be causing these problems, though.
* DVD ripping on the DVD drive works flawlessly using vobcopy.
* I haven't tried burning CDs on the CD-RW drive under Linux yet, so I don't know if there's any possible other problems there.
* I haven't tried playing CDs through mplayer. Apparently this can be done, but I haven't succeeded yet in getting it to understand the cdda options/etc.

Thank you!

--
Kyle