Hi all,

I've run into something very interesting over the past several months with audio CDs and KDE 4.3.1.

Background:
I've got two computers running Slackware 13 --stable with Vincent Batts's KDE 4.3.1 packages. One of them is a desktop running Slackware64 and the other is a laptop running 32-bit Slackware. The two computers are running almost the same software too.

I like to listen to audio books that I get from the library on my MP3 player (which also, thankfully plays OGG audio files). The vast majority of them are CD audio (as opposed to MP3 books), so the disks simply have a whole bunch of .cda tracks on them when I view them in Windows.

HOWEVER, when I view them in Dolphin or Konqueror, I get several folders offering the files in different formats. For instance, there's a folder for the individual tracks as .wav and another for .ogg files. The folder that I really like is one called something like "Full CD," which offers the whole disk in one file in four different formats.

That's the one I like. I can get the whole disk in one OGG file so that an entire book is just 12 files on my Sanza.

The only thing that seemed strange was that it took for freaking ever to "copy" from the CD to my hard drive.

I think I figure out what's going on!

I think that Dolphin is actually calling K3B when I click on the audio CD and when I "copy" from the CD to the hard drive, it is actually encoding the .CDA files.

The Problem(s)

1. Until recently, the burn (if that's what it is) was slow on the 64-bit machine, but it worked. However, in the last week or so, it seems that the last few bytes of data to burn are taking forever (like an hour or more) to do so. I hear a strange clicking from my drive, so maybe that's the whole problem. I'm going to get a new drive and see what happens.
   
2. The burn works well on my 32-bit laptop, but it doesn't recognize audio CDs when I insert them like the 64-bit desktop does. I need to open Dolphin and type 'audiocd:' in the toolbar for it to recognize the disk. Then everything works well.

So:
Am I understanding what's actually going on with audio CDs?

Why does my desktop computer recognize audio CDs when they're inserted, but the laptop doesn't?

Regards,

Those applications are ripping the cd using suitable backends.

If you just want to play the cd, then 'play disc' with an audio player.

For the 'burn' issue,

start k3b from a konsole/terminal and post the terminal output.

(put in a blank cd too)

You're basically right. Actually dolphin and konqueror access the disk through the kio multimedia slave plugin (the "audiocd:" uri). It's what's giving you the virtual files, and it does the actual rip-and-convert when you drag&drop them to another location. You can manipulate the default settings from your "system settings".

I'm not sure if k3b ever uses the slave directly. It's a bit more advanced in ripping ability and appears to use its own plugins.

I couldn't tell you anything about the problems you're having though.

Thanks for the replies.

For the record, where I wrote "burn" above, I meant to write, "rip." :0

In any event, it's a nice feature and I really appreciate the ability to rip an entire disk to a single file.

As for the problems I'm having, I really think my DVD drive is dying on the Desktop. I'm less sure about the laptop not seeing the audio CD, though. It's probably a HAL or DBUS issue.