On 2026.01.03 11:44, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
On Fri, Jan 02, 2026 at 15:44:06 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 02, 2026 at 10:43:05 +0000, Michael wrote:
> > On Thursday, 1 January 2026 21:46:27 Greenwich Mean Time Alan
Mackenzie wrote:
> > > Hello, Gentoo.
> > > Happy New Year!
> > > On my (no longer quite so) new PC, I've still not managed to
get audio
> > > CDs to play properly. Originally I was using the program
aqualung, but
> > > that gave a constant crackle on top of the music, making it
unusable.
> > > (But it was fine on my old PC.)
> > > I've since moved to deadbeef (officially called DeaDBeeF),
which though
> > > much better is still not right. What I get now on playing a CD
is:
> > > (i) the first track of the CD gets ~6 seconds of crackle at the
start;
> > > (ii) at each subsequent track (regardless of whether there are
any actual
> > > gaps between the tracks) there is about 2 seconds of crackle
at the
> > > beginning;
> > > (iii) if I pause the playback and restart it, there is no extra
crackle;
> > > (iv) on moving the playback to a random part of the track, I
get the ~6
> > > seconds of crackle;
> > > (v) there are random moments of crackle in the middle of
tracks, too,
> > > often ~6 seconds after an audible drive head movement.
[ .... ]
> I think I am just going to buy a new drive. At ~25 Euros, it's
just not
> worthwhile trying all these things on the current one.
Well, I've bought and installed a new drive (made by ASUS) and it
hasn't
helped in the slightest. :-(
Maybe modern DVD drives just aren't capable of reading audio CDs
properly.
It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure I've successfully read audio CDs
with a DVD reader. Can you find any documentation on the specific
drive model you just bought?
As a temporary workaround, you might consider copying the entire
content of the CD to a folder, then play from local storage instead of
directly from the disk. I've done this in the past with VLC, but just
using a file browser should show each track as some sort of audio file.
After moving the read head to some position on the CD, it's
necessary to start reading the sectors accurately straight away.
Maybe
these newer drives positioning of the heads leaves them wobbling, or
something, and rely on software error correction to reread erroneous
sectors. On playing an audio CD, I don't think sectors get reread at
all, just erroneous values get transmitted to the DAC.
Or something like that.
[ .... ]
> Maybe I'll get this sorted out in the next week, or so. Thanks
again.
Or, maybe not. :-(
--
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
Jack
