Help Compiling Linux Kernel

[drag]

I beleive the difference between using the cable and not, is that when you are using the cable it is playing the cd like any normal cd player. And just using the analog output to goto the harddrive were it gets mixed back into the sound by the sound card hardware.

Were as otherwise instead of using the analog out you can sample off of the cdrom digitally using software just like it was a data cd. This way the software can take multiple samples and neat stuff like that to get better sound quality by using the improvements built into modern 20x(+) speed drives.

I beleive that the alsaplayer program does that. Now I forget if it comes with the utils or tools package or you have to install it seperately, but it is pretty nice. The reason I think this is because when I use a normal cd player it plays thru just 2 speakers normally and the alsaplayer plays the cd thru all 4 speakers.. front and rear..

(actually both in front.. I use a cheap table top stereo with BASS_BOOST sounding speakers that are all boomy and muffled sounding with a 17 dollar set of computer speakers that sound all tinny and distort horribly with any bass stuff.. I mix them together, spend 5 minutes balancing the outputs and turn down bass completely for the computer speakers and then I have a decent set full-range sounds!)


Did you use Winamp, in windows?

 

[rjain]

Originally posted by: drag
I beleive the difference between using the cable and not, is that when you are using the cable it is playing the cd like any normal cd player. And just using the analog output to goto the harddrive were it gets mixed back into the sound by the sound card hardware.

Were as otherwise instead of using the analog out you can sample off of the cdrom digitally using software just like it was a data cd. This way the software can take multiple samples and neat stuff like that to get better sound quality by using the improvements built into modern 20x(+) speed drives.

I beleive that the alsaplayer program does that. Now I forget if it comes with the utils or tools package or you have to install it seperately, but it is pretty nice. The reason I think this is because when I use a normal cd player it plays thru just 2 speakers normally and the alsaplayer plays the cd thru all 4 speakers.. front and rear..

From the alsaplayer source:

static int cd_read_audio(int cdrom_fd, int lba, int num, unsigned char *buf)
{
struct cdrom_read_audio ra;

ra.addr.lba = lba;
ra.addr_format = CDROM_LBA;
ra.nframes = num;
ra.buf = buf;
if (ioctl(cdrom_fd, CDROMREADAUDIO, &ra)) {
alsaplayer_error("CDDA: read raw ioctl failed at lba %d length %d",
lba, num);
perror("CDDA");
return 1;
}
return 0;
}

It doesn't do anything at all special reading the data off the CD. You described the method that cdparanoia uses, which doesn't increase audio quality or fidelity, it decreases the chance that you'll get a corrupt audio frame in the middle of the rip by trying again and again until it gets the frame right. This has a rather significant impact on the speed at which the audio can be read off the disk, but it's a good idea when you're not trying to play back in real time.

The differences in what you're hearing probably have to do with mixer settings. Your PCM or Wave output settings are probably different from the CD output settings. My sblive has quite a few controls for surround audio on different channels. You might consider playing with those.