CD Audio Disk Read Problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter smackedass
  • Start date Start date
S

smackedass

Hello again,

Not only am I stumped as to the cause of this problem, but I'm also stumped
as to how to frame a question to do a Google search...

OS: Windows XP

My client cannot listen to, or rip, songs from audio CDs.

There are songs that are stored on the HD that can be listened to.

Have tried Real Player and Windows Media Player. When you slip a disk into
the drawer, the songs are initially "seen", but not fully recognized. With
Real Player, the message that appears is something to the effect of "Please
Insert an Audio Disk".

Windows Media Player, the message is something to the effect of, "No
supported file types are recognized."

Again, the songs that are already stored to the HD are able to be listened
to from either Real Player and/or Windows Media Player.

I have tried different audio disks.

I have tried a different CD drive.

I have tried a different data cable.

I have tried a different power cable (that connects to the CD drive).

I have tried using the CD drive as a Master and as Cable Select.

The CD is able to read a home-made data CD; it is also able to read, and
install an application from, an installable application CD.

What's different? I have recently done a full XP HE SP2 re-install on this
computer, just shortly before the client became aware of the problem. I've
also added another 1G of RAM.

This just doesn't make any bloody sense.

HAAAYLP!

smackedass
 
Try a VERY OLD audio CD. You might be trying CDs that are "copy
protected", and many of these schemes make them playable on CD players
but not on computers.
 
Sounds like a hardware problem to me, probably a setting. Did you check the
device properties to make sure the "Enable digital CD audio for this CD-ROM
device" box is checked? If it is already checked, try uninstalling the
device, cleaning out the registry with a regcleaner utility, and
reinstalling the device.

Good luck.

Zac
 
Zac said:
Sounds like a hardware problem to me, probably a setting. Did you check the
device properties to make sure the "Enable digital CD audio for this CD-ROM
device" box is checked? If it is already checked, try uninstalling the
device, cleaning out the registry with a regcleaner utility, and
reinstalling the device.

Good luck.

Zac
Click to expand...

Further to that, sound comes from a CD two ways.

If you connect an audio cable from the back of the CDROM drive,
to the CD audio header on the motherboard (or the sound card),
that is an analog connection. The CD player uses its own digital
to analog converter, to make the analog signal. The cable has
left and right audio (stereo), and the motherboard or audio card
has a four pin connector to pick up the signal from the CD drive.

The alternate method of playing audio from a CD, is digital. The
tracks are read as data, and stream across the IDE (or SATA) cable
that connects the drive to the computer. The Device Manager property
Zac mentions above, is what enables this "Digital Audio Extraction"
or DAE. To make the song come out of the speakers, the digital samples
only need to be sent to the digital to analog converter on the
sound card.

I'm not really sure, how the applications figure out what is going
on. Like how a cd player application handles the two cases, or whether
it has to do any extra work.

Paul
 
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