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CDDA support in Linux music player apps (and JACK silliness...)

Sat Feb 24, 2018 12:33 am

It has probably been a few years since I tried to play an audio CD directly in Linux (as opposed to ripping it to FLAC). This evening I burned a couple of albums I bought as digital downloads so my wife could listen to them in the car and in her studio (she still prefers physical CDs, having resisted the smartphone revolution and abandoned her MP3 player for reasons I don't entirely understand). I wanted to play the CD to test it and make sure the burn was clean.

Turns out many of the common Linux media player apps don't seem to support direct CDDA playback decently any more! :roll: Audacious - no go. Amarok - no go. Kscd - hangs on startup, UI never appears. Mplayer - buffers and skips incessantly. Dragon Player - just doesn't sound right, seems like resampling artifacts? Kaffeine seems to work, at least, and there's a very minimalistic app called goobox that also seems to work... but after the first half dozen apps I tried were a no-go, I was starting to wonder if anything would let me just play the damn CD.

I mean, hey... I realize many people consider physical CDs to be obsolete these days, but this is kind of ridiculous.
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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps

Sat Feb 24, 2018 12:48 am

Just checked, VLC still seems to work fine under 16.04 LTS.
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SecretSquirrel
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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps

Sat Feb 24, 2018 12:52 pm

just brew it! wrote:
It has probably been a few years since I tried to play an audio CD directly in Linux (as opposed to ripping it to FLAC). This evening I burned a couple of albums I bought as digital downloads so my wife could listen to them in the car and in her studio (she still prefers physical CDs, having resisted the smartphone revolution and abandoned her MP3 player for reasons I don't entirely understand). I wanted to play the CD to test it and make sure the burn was clean.

Turns out many of the common Linux media player apps don't seem to support direct CDDA playback decently any more! :roll: Audacious - no go. Amarok - no go. Kscd - hangs on startup, UI never appears. Mplayer - buffers and skips incessantly. Dragon Player - just doesn't sound right, seems like resampling artifacts? Kaffeine seems to work, at least, and there's a very minimalistic app called goobox that also seems to work... but after the first half dozen apps I tried were a no-go, I was starting to wonder if anything would let me just play the damn CD.

I mean, hey... I realize many people consider physical CDs to be obsolete these days, but this is kind of ridiculous.


Audacious works for me. Services->Play CD. It does pop up a "no files found" message, but then goes back and the Now Playing window has the track list and starts playing at track 1. If that menu option isn't there for you, go into File->Settings->Plugins and make sure "Audio CD Menu Items" is enabled. I've had very mixed results with Dragon Player with all sorts on media, video and audio. However, it seemed to play the disc I popped in ok.

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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps

Sat Feb 24, 2018 1:02 pm

SecretSquirrel wrote:
Audacious works for me. Services->Play CD. It does pop up a "no files found" message, but then goes back and the Now Playing window has the track list and starts playing at track 1. If that menu option isn't there for you, go into File->Settings->Plugins and make sure "Audio CD Menu Items" is enabled. I've had very mixed results with Dragon Player with all sorts on media, video and audio. However, it seemed to play the disc I popped in ok.

That was the first thing I tried, since Audacious is the player I normally use to listen to music at my desktop. Nothing under Services, and no plugin for Audio CD Menu Items available. :roll:

The Audacious issue may be partially self-inflicted, as I'm running a newer upstream version built from source instead of the one in the Ubuntu repo. It is possible that CD support isn't built by default, and there was a build option I needed to set to enable it. That doesn't explain the issues with the other players though.

Regardless, I'd say this is a pretty clear sign that audio CDs are becoming second-class citizens as far as desktop music playback is concerned...
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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps

Sun Feb 25, 2018 2:37 pm

just brew it! wrote:
SecretSquirrel wrote:
Audacious works for me. Services->Play CD. It does pop up a "no files found" message, but then goes back and the Now Playing window has the track list and starts playing at track 1. If that menu option isn't there for you, go into File->Settings->Plugins and make sure "Audio CD Menu Items" is enabled. I've had very mixed results with Dragon Player with all sorts on media, video and audio. However, it seemed to play the disc I popped in ok.

That was the first thing I tried, since Audacious is the player I normally use to listen to music at my desktop. Nothing under Services, and no plugin for Audio CD Menu Items available. :roll:

The Audacious issue may be partially self-inflicted, as I'm running a newer upstream version built from source instead of the one in the Ubuntu repo. It is possible that CD support isn't built by default, and there was a build option I needed to set to enable it. That doesn't explain the issues with the other players though.

Regardless, I'd say this is a pretty clear sign that audio CDs are becoming second-class citizens as far as desktop music playback is concerned...


Yeah, the CDDA functionality comes from the audacious-plugins package when you are using the Ubuntu repos.

https://github.com/audacious-media-play ... us-plugins
 
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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps

Sun Feb 25, 2018 2:57 pm

Pretty sure I built the plugins too, but it was a while ago.
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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps

Sun Feb 25, 2018 3:06 pm

just brew it! wrote:
Pretty sure I built the plugins too, but it was a while ago.


May be one of those times where the smart build system excluded one or more plugins because of missing dependencies. See if you have libcdio and libcdio-cdda available. I imagine there are probably others too, but looking through the package dependencies, those two are obvious if you want CDDA support.

I know I'm pointing out the obvious, but considering that I miss the obvious some times, I figure it can't hurt. :D

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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps

Sun Feb 25, 2018 3:24 pm

SecretSquirrel wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
Pretty sure I built the plugins too, but it was a while ago.


May be one of those times where the smart build system excluded one or more plugins because of missing dependencies. See if you have libcdio and libcdio-cdda available. I imagine there are probably others too, but looking through the package dependencies, those two are obvious if you want CDDA support.

I know I'm pointing out the obvious, but considering that I miss the obvious some times, I figure it can't hurt. :D

--SS

Heh. Well, look at that... the libraries themselves are installed, but the corresponding -dev packages are not. That's probably the reason for the Audacious problem. No idea why some of the other players didn't work though (everything else I tried was straight from the repos).
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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps

Mon Feb 26, 2018 7:28 am

just brew it! wrote:
SecretSquirrel wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
Pretty sure I built the plugins too, but it was a while ago.


May be one of those times where the smart build system excluded one or more plugins because of missing dependencies. See if you have libcdio and libcdio-cdda available. I imagine there are probably others too, but looking through the package dependencies, those two are obvious if you want CDDA support.

I know I'm pointing out the obvious, but considering that I miss the obvious some times, I figure it can't hurt. :D

--SS

Heh. Well, look at that... the libraries themselves are installed, but the corresponding -dev packages are not. That's probably the reason for the Audacious problem. No idea why some of the other players didn't work though (everything else I tried was straight from the repos).


Are you a JACK audio user?

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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps

Mon Feb 26, 2018 7:37 am

SecretSquirrel wrote:
Are you a JACK audio user?

Yes. I have things configured such that PulseAudio is also available; it is set up as a JACK source, so PulseAudio applications still work, but all PulseAudio content gets routed through JACK before going to the soundcard.
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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps

Mon Feb 26, 2018 8:03 am

just brew it! wrote:
SecretSquirrel wrote:
Are you a JACK audio user?

Yes. I have things configured such that PulseAudio is also available; it is set up as a JACK source, so PulseAudio applications still work, but all PulseAudio content gets routed through JACK before going to the soundcard.


I wonder if something in the Player->PulseAudio->JACK was the cause of the oddities in Dragon Player and MPlayer. Though as I noted, I've never had good success with Dragon Player in general. No ideas on the KsCD issue as it starts right up for me.

I figure this is all because solved problems are boring and supporting solved problems isn't fun or sexy. Everyone wants to do new stuff, so new stuff happens. Everyone doing doing new stuff creates something of an echo chamber that makes it seem like no one cares about or want the functionality of the solved problem. That combined with the aforementioned boringness of supporting solved problems means basic, solved functionality goes away.

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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps

Mon Feb 26, 2018 9:03 am

SecretSquirrel wrote:
I figure this is all because solved problems are boring and supporting solved problems isn't fun or sexy. Everyone wants to do new stuff, so new stuff happens. Everyone doing doing new stuff creates something of an echo chamber that makes it seem like no one cares about or want the functionality of the solved problem. That combined with the aforementioned boringness of supporting solved problems means basic, solved functionality goes away.

Probably some truth to that. Don't get me started on the weird glitches I hit when I tried to archive a bunch of stuff to Blu-ray media. Optical media is becoming a legacy tech...
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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps

Mon Feb 26, 2018 10:01 am

just brew it! wrote:
Probably some truth to that. Don't get me started on the weird glitches I hit when I tried to archive a bunch of stuff to Blu-ray media. Optical media is becoming a legacy tech...


Probably better to say niche.

https://arstechnica.com/information-tec ... d-storage/
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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps

Mon Feb 26, 2018 10:07 am

Ryu Connor wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
Probably some truth to that. Don't get me started on the weird glitches I hit when I tried to archive a bunch of stuff to Blu-ray media. Optical media is becoming a legacy tech...

Probably better to say niche.

https://arstechnica.com/information-tec ... d-storage/

Yeah, I suppose that's more accurate. That's a pretty narrow niche though -- squeezed into the gap between tape and spinning rust (which is itself moving to more of an archival role these days)..
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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps

Wed Jun 13, 2018 6:55 pm

Thread necro time!

I decided to run Audacious directly into the JACK audio stack instead of routing it through PulseAudio. When I attempted to do so, I ran into two issues:

1. The Audacious JACK ports appear when playback starts, and disappear when it stops. This means that the connections in JACK's virtual patch panel have to be re-done every time you hit the play button. Audacious has an option to do this automatically, but you can't specify which JACK destination ports to use; it insists on using the first two system output ports, which are connected to my headphones. Since it goes straight to the hardware output ports, the auto-connect feature also bypasses the custom EQ stack I've set up (different EQ curves for the headphones and speakers).

2. I discovered that I could only play 48 kHz encoded files, because JACK is a synchronous audio stack (all ports must run at the same sample rate), and Audacious' sample rate conversion plugin was missing. :roll:

#1 was easily solved with a simple DIY shell script that watches for the Audacious output ports to appear, and patches them through to the rest of my custom audio stack.

#2 convinced me to finally sort out all the build dependencies which were causing my built-from-source copy of Audacious to be missing many of its plugins.

Sorting out the plugin situation means my copy of Audacious can now also play audio CDs... :lol:
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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps (and JACK silliness...)

Wed Jun 13, 2018 10:58 pm

2018 - year of the linux desktop!
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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps (and JACK silliness...)

Thu Jun 14, 2018 7:38 am

DancinJack wrote:
2018 - year of the linux desktop!

:lol:

TBF this latest round was mostly self-inflicted; typical users don't bother with the JACK audio stack. PulseAudio mostly "just works" these days if you don't try to get too clever.
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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps (and JACK silliness...)

Thu Jun 14, 2018 8:21 pm

Oh yeah I know, it's just so reminiscent of past days of Linux sound BS I chuckled and typed it out anyway.

(to be clear, I'm talking like early aughts here. I remember spending hours upon hours trying to get sound working in 2001 or thereabouts)
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Re: CDDA support in Linux music player apps (and JACK silliness...)

Thu Jun 14, 2018 8:33 pm

DancinJack wrote:
Oh yeah I know, it's just so reminiscent of past days of Linux sound BS I chuckled and typed it out anyway.

(to be clear, I'm talking like early aughts here. I remember spending hours upon hours trying to get sound working in 2001 or thereabouts)

Heck, Linux audio was still a clusterf**k in the late aughts! :lol:

TBH even today it's a better server OS than a desktop OS. But all desktop OSes kinda seem to suck these days...
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