Originally posted by: drag
Originally posted by: Raincity
I had the same problem with my Audigy 2. Turned out to be the rear output was muted in the Alsa mixer. Then I could not fiqure out why I had no cd sound. Turned out that Linux does not do cd to wave conversion like Windows and had to dig up a audio cable to fix it.
It depends on what sort of app your using to play your CDROMs.
The traditional way is to use it like a cd player. Thru the analog cord. This is because older computers (like pre 200mhz) and old cdroms (pre-20x) we not able to play it fast enough thru the IDE cable.
The IDE cable reads the song like data off of the cdrom and plays it like that. Which is much nicer because you don't have the long analog cord going thru your computer internals and getting all distorted from the electromagnetic radiation... Plus thru the analog cord your going digital--->analog--->digital--->analog. With the data reading off of the cdrom your going digital--->digital--->analog, so their is less to go wrong.
I have 2 CD drives, a Cd burner and DVD drive. I play audio CDs thru both of them, and have the cord going from the cdrom to the soundcard on neither.
But for the life of me I can't remember what the stupid name of that. Their is a word for reading audio like data and playing it rather then thru the cd-player analog cord.... CDDA?
Use Alsaplayer. That does it thru the IDE/data cable.
Anyways, I ripped all my CD's into Ogg Vorbis and Flac files a while ago. Much more convientent and you don't have to worry about screwing up your CDs. Check out cdparanoia, and front ends like Xcdroast to get the best quality out of your rips. (also can compinsate for scratches as long as the data is there. Saved plenty of almost-ruined CDs.)