static playing audioCDs YDL2.3 Tibook2002

[Stefan Bruda]

Hi.

I am using the same machine as yours (rev 3 Tibook) though with a
modified YDL 2.2 instead of 2.3.  Things should however be similar in
your case.

At 06:56 -0700 on 2002-10-2 A R wrote:
 >
 > I'd like to know the current status and perhaps pointers to
 > workarounds for playing audio CDs within YDL2.3.

I am using without problems xmms, but make sure that you disable the
"CD Audio Player" input plugin (libcdaudio.so) and use instead "Audio
CD Reader" (libcdread.so).  The reason is the new Apple hardware,
which since my old iMac (and possibly earlier) no longer provide an
analog connection to the CD drive--basically, you can no longer play
audio CDs dirtectly, everything is treated as a data CD.  For
precisely this reason kscd, gcd, etc. have no chance of working at
all.

For some reasons, the "OSS driver" (libOSS.so) as output plugin
produces (almost) white noise (although OSS in general works fine with
any other application I tried), so you may need to switch to "eSound
Output Plugin" (libesdout.so) or "aRts Driver" (libartsout.so)
instead, depending whether you use Gnome (case in which make sure you
configure ESD to saunch ;-) ) or KDE.

This is of course annoying (I prefer to use the OSS driver when
playing, say, MP3 tracks) but then I am not playing audio CDs on my
machine that often.

In this configuration, XMMS' controls (volume, ballance) work fine.

The only reservation is that I am not using KDE hence I have never
tried the aRts driver.  I heard stories about aRts being broken, so
don't hold me accountable is this does not work within KDE (I also
assume that even in KDE you can shut down aRts and start ESD if this
suits you).

All of these is stock YDL stuff (though see below), namely

  xmms 1.2.5
  libcdaudio.so 1.2.5
  libcdread.so 0.14a
  libOSS.so 1.2.5
  libesdout.so 1.2.5
  libartsout.so 0.4

and

  esd 0.2.22


 > 3. I then did two things, one of which messed me up:
 >    a) I followed the instructions in the URL
 > http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/support/solutions/ydl_general/sound.shtml

This is the problem likely, select (back) eSound as output plugin
instead of OSS.  Why you need to do this beats me. :-)

 > Is there another culprit that I should root out?

I did have some problems with (mostly) the mixer when using the YDL
2.2 kernel (2.4.18-something).  All the controls were erratic, and
were influencing each other in a way I couldn't figure out (e.g.,
volume will change when changing the bass, etc. etc.).

These got fixed when I switched to the YDL 2.3 kernel (2.4.19-4a).  I
think so anyway, I have been using this kernel for too short a time to
be sure.  I switched to benh kernels (currently 2.4.20-pre7-ben0), and
things do work in this setting as advertised above.

Be aware though that gmix (the Gnome mixer) continues to behave
completely erratically.  Even opening it and closing it without doing
a thing may screw up your audio levels!  So I am using instead a
small, ncurses-based app called umix for mixer duty (it is somwhere on
the install CDs unless it is already installed, I currently run
version 0.6.0).  Aumix (and it's X frontend) also work.  Pbbuttonsd
volume controls work as expected as well, all is nice and dandy.

One more thing, I have the following lines in my /etc/modules.conf

    alias sound-slot-0 dmasound_pmac
    alias sound-slot-1 dmasound_pmac
    alias sound-service-0-0 dmasound_pmac
    alias sound-service-0-3 dmasound_pmac
    alias sound-service-1-0 dmasound_pmac
    alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
    alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
    alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

If they are not there, insert them and then run

   depmod -a

and perhaps restart or issue

   rmmod dmasound_core dmasound_pmac soundcore
   modprobe dmasound_pmac

Hope this helps,
Stefan

-- 
If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as
it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.
    --Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass