[lug] Dual Soundcard Woes

[Neil Doane]

* Peter Hutnick (peter-lists at hutnick.com), on [08-26-03 22:08], wrote:
> Neil Doane said:
> > * Peter Hutnick (peter-lists at hutnick.com), on [08-25-03 16:50], wrote:
> >> PPS: Anyone know of any good "CD Player" app that supports CDDA?  I'd
> >> like to be able to use my CDROM->USB->Home Stereo.
> >
> > XMMS
> 
> I found some apparently unmaintained source code that purported to be an
> XMMS plugin for this purpose, but I couldn't do anything with it.
> 
> Can you elaborate a hair?
> 
> -Peter

Sure.  What you want is the CD Audio Player plugin for XMMS, which comes 
with the xmms package on my Debian system.  Here's the explanation from 
the XMMS README file (located in /usr/share/doc/xmms/README.gz on my system)
which explains the slightly funky way in which the CD Audio plugin works. 

Enjoy,


Neil




----Start XMMS README Section 3.6.1.1 ----

3.6.1.1 Cd Audio Player
-----------------------
Plays audio cd's on Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris. This plugin does not pass
the sound through XMMS, so no visualization can be made nor will the
equalizer settings have any effect.
 
Before I explain the usage we better have a look on the configuration
first.
 
In the device tab you should set Device to your cdrom unit. /dev/cdrom
is generally a good choice on Linux systems. Set 'Directory' to where a
directory which will be used by XMMS to present the available cd tracks in.
Using the normal mount point for the cdrom is recommended unless the
cdrom is automounted if it contains a data track.
 
  Example:
  --------
     Device: /dev/cdrom (which on my system is symlinked to /dev/hdc)
  Directory: /mnt/cdrom
 
The next setting is used to decide what volume is to be changed, it's either
the OSS Mixer for CD Audio or the actual volume on the CDROM.
 
In the CD Info tab you can choose if the plugin should try and get the
track names from a Internet database server.
 
You can either use the CDDB protocol or CD Index. CDDB defaults to a free
version of CDDB, but it will work with the infamous cddb servers as well.
 
Show network window will display some useful information if something goes
wrong, but you'll have to close and re-open it to update the content of it.
 
If a CDDB server is too slow for your taste, you can press 'Get server list'
to receive a list of alternate servers.
 
CD Index is another type of database, but works in a similar manner. If
you don't have libxml installed when you compiled the plugin, this will be
grayed out.
 
In the "Track names" box you can decide on how the plugin presents the
tracks to you. This is normally handled by the 'Title' (section 3.5.6)
setting
in the main preferences, but you can choose to override them here.
                                                                                
Available variables are:
                                                                                
   %p = Performer/Artist   %t = Track name
   %a = Album              %n = Track number
                                                                                
So "%n. %t / %p (%a)" would display something like:
                                                                                
  1. New Life / Depeche Mode (Speak & Spell)
                                                                                
Now to add your CDROM tracks to the playlist. Insert an audio cd into the
CDROM drive and press the Eject button. Go to the directory which you
defined
earlier ( /mnt/cdrom ) and you should see a list of tracks. They will be
named
Track XX.cda, select the tracks you want to play and press OK. If you had
choosed an Internet database and the CD exists in it, XMMS will now display
the tracks you have chosen with their names according to the 'Name format'
configuration.
                                                                                
Now, that wasn't hard now was it?
                                                                                
If you want XMMS to identify as something else when speaking with servers,
you
can set the environmental variable "XMMS_CDDB_CLIENT_NAME", and XMMS will
use
that instead.
                      
---- Section 3.6.1.1 from XMMS README ----