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Date:      Thu, 31 Jul 2014 06:35:19 -0600 (MDT)
From:      Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>
To:        Benjamin Kaduk <kaduk@MIT.EDU>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Dutch Ingraham <stoa@gmx.us>
Subject:   Re: Audio CDs Not Playing
Message-ID:  <alpine.BSF.2.11.1407310619440.95324@wonkity.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.GSO.1.10.1407302123080.21571@multics.mit.edu>
References:  <53D97A50.8090006@gmx.us> <alpine.GSO.1.10.1407302123080.21571@multics.mit.edu>

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On Wed, 30 Jul 2014, Benjamin Kaduk wrote:

> I am not sure how helpful this will be, but
>
> On Wed, 30 Jul 2014, Dutch Ingraham wrote:
>
>> Greetings:
>> 
>> I asked this question on freebsd-questions a couple of days ago and have 
>> received zero responses, so I'm posting here and asking the hackers for 
>> their help.  Here's the problem:
>> 
>> I'm having trouble with playing audio CDs; specifically, they won't
>> play at all.  Secondarily, it appears as though if they would play, I
>> would need to be root to do so.
>> 
>> I am issuing the <cdcontrol -f /dev/cd0 play 1> command and the CD
>
> I believe that for this command to actually produce audio playback requires a 
> hardwired connection between the optical drive and the sound card (or 
> motherboard, if it's an integrated sound card as is the norm these days); 
> this is a dedicated 4-pin cable (or so; it's been a while) that's distinct 
> from the power and (P|S)ATA data cable for the drive. That said, I would 
> mostly expect this cdcontrol command to still spin the drive up even if that 
> connection is not in place...

Yes, 'cdcontrol play' is effectively the same as pressing the play 
button on a standalone CD player.  It plays the CD, sending output to 
the hardware audio outputs, which must be connected to the motherboard 
or sound card audio inputs.

Most IDE CD players had those audio connectors, although there was at 
least one LG player where they were present but not connected..  Most 
SATA CD drives do not have audio outputs at all, and audio must be 
extracted from the digital data connection to the computer.  There used 
to be an example in the Handbook, although I can't find it now.



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