On Sunday, 4 January 2026 16:35:29 Greenwich Mean Time Alan Mackenzie wrote: > Hello, Michael. > > On Sun, Jan 04, 2026 at 12:38:26 +0000, Michael wrote: > > On Sunday, 4 January 2026 12:29:00 Greenwich Mean Time Alan Mackenzie wrote: > > > Hello, Jack. > > > > > > Thanks for the reply! > > > > > > On Sat, Jan 03, 2026 at 15:33:43 -0500, Jack wrote: > > > > On 2026.01.03 11:44, Alan Mackenzie wrote: > > > > > On Fri, Jan 02, 2026 at 15:44:06 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote: > > > [ .... ] > > > > > > > > > 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? > > > > > > Well, things have taken a turn for the better! I've discovered the > > > program xine, which plays audio CDs faultlessly. :-) Maybe I'm kidding > > > myself, but the sound quality seems better even than the sections > > > without > > > crackle on deadbeef. So it's not my hardware which is at fault. > > > > But, 'other things being equal' the same CDs play fine on the old hardware > > when using the same software ... ? > > Where "the old hardware" means my old PC, not my old DVD drive, yes. > There seems to be something on my "new" PC which is preventing DVD drives > from reading well. Having tried two drives, one brand new, I don't think > it's the fault of the drives.
Did you also use a new/different cable when you swapped the DVD drive on the new PC? The only other thing to try, to isolate the problem between PCs and DVD drives, is to move the old PC's DVD drive onto the new PC. > > > Looking at the C source code for xine, it seems it uses direct ioctl > > > calls to the kernel to read data from the CD. deadbeef instead uses > > > dev-libs/libcdio for this. Maybe there's some incompatibility between > > > libcdio and my hw/sw setup. I will be trying to pin this down in the > > > coming days/weeks. > > > > What is the cache size on xine Vs deadbeef/aqualung/vlc or whatever else? > > I haven't found this in either source yet, but I'm looking. I know with a data CD in the drive: hdparm -tT /dev/sr0 will present you with a value. Replacing the CD with a DVD will give a higher value; e.g. on the same bluray drive: With a data CD: ~ # hdparm -tT /dev/sr0 /dev/sr0: Timing cached reads: 2 MB in 3.69 seconds = 555.32 kB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 8 MB in 3.01 seconds = 2.66 MB/sec With a DVD: ~ # hdparm -tT /dev/sr0 /dev/sr0: Timing cached reads: 3858 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1929.41 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 10 MB in 3.56 seconds = 2.81 MB/sec > > > > 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. > > > > > > I haven't tried this yet, but I intend to do so this afternoon (European > > > time). Thanks for the suggestion. > > > > The burner software (e.g. k3b) will produce a log. Check what > > errors/warnings it reports - it may shed some light on the causes of this > > problem. > I just used a file copy from the mounted CD. The result was files full > of crackle, and unusable for listening. I'll see if I can get xfce's > burner program to generate a file output. What format did you use? File managers will transcode in the background and store on your HDD the format you have chosen to 'copy'. Since you are writing to disk the HDD cache and speed is not a limitation, but the optical disc cache while reading data will suffer from the same problem. I don't know what determines how much cache will be used when reading an audio CD and how this might be adjusted.
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