audio pain

[Bill Mullen]

On Wed, 14 Aug 2002, Ken Ambrose wrote:

> Your problem (and, frankly, the one regarding the user who couldn't get
> CDs to play without skipping) have almost nothing to do, IIRC, with the
> soundcard, per-se.  Unless I'm -VERY- mistaken, the soundcard does
> *NOTHING* with the CD Audio except take the CD-ROM's line-out and point
> it to a speaker.  It doesn't see bits, data, digital, nothing.  Just a
> straight analog audio stream from the CD drive to the speaker.

Under Linux, this appears to be an accurate description.

> (Which is why I think that the Windows box is probably functioning
> okay-ish, and that the user is mistaken in how stuff functions.  A busy
> system won't impact an audio stream that it doesn't really even deal
> with.)

But Windoze's CD-playing apps generally read the audio data on the CD
digitally and send it down the ribbon cable for further processing, which
is why it is so common to find folks who have been frustrated in their
attempts to get CD sound working on systems that were originally sold as
Wintendo boxes, only to discover that the all-important (to Linux) CD
audio cable was never installed in the first place, as Windoze didn't need
it. Note: this shouldn't apply to laptops/notebooks.

This likely explains the "skipping" encountered by the Windoze user in the 
other thread, as there _is_ processing of the data stream going on there.

-- 

Bill Mullen
7:47pm, 2002-08-14