How to Play Audio CDs

Since the computer has a Compact Disc drive it is only natural to assume that in addition to handling data discs it aught to be able to play back audio CDs also. This is quite correct, unfortunately the process for doing so is not always automatic.

If, however nothing happens or the playback does not work here is a tested and officially supported way to do it, It has only three steps.

1.  Step One

Insert the disc into the drive. Open "VLC" which you will find in the applications menu under "Applications" → "Multimedia". (VLC may also be titled "VLC Media Player" or similar).

2.  Step Two

Go to "Media" → "Open Disc" in the menus:

VLC Menu

You will see the following dialog box:

Open dialog box

Make sure that "Audio CD" is selected at the top and click "Play". Playback begins

Here is a picture of VLC playing the disc:

Vlc Playing the Disc

The buttons on the player are identical in function to the buttons on a physical CD player, from left to right:

1. Play/Pause
2. Previous Track
3. Stop
4. Next Track
5. "Full Screen Mode" (Irrelevant to CDs, can be used with videos)
6. Playlist (shows list of all tracks and allows arbitrary reordering)
7. Equalizer (electronically altered waveform, like "EQ" settings on a sound board leave alone if you don't know what it does.)
8. Volume control slider.²

3.  Step Three

If you are done you must close VLC before you can eject the disc. The UNIX operating-system will not allow you to eject the disc if it is being accessed by any program or user, including VLC.

You can eject the disc in the usual way by pressing the physical eject button on the disc drive, or by right-clicking the device in the file-manager and selecting "Eject". If the former does not work the file-manager may also be accessing the device and the latter method will force the file-manager to let go.

4.  Notes:

1. This peculiar string of text is a "path". It is the path of the CD "block device". On UNIX all (well... many) functions are addressable through the file-system including physical devices. Such "devnodes" as they are called are automatically generated and are located in the directory dev in the root file system, hence /dev/scd0. "scd0" translates to "first SCSI Compact Disc drive", UNIX begins counting things at zero instead of one.
2. If the volume is still to low after setting this, check your software mixer settings (click the speaker icon, the slider is for the master channel, if it's still too low, click "mixer" and check the "PCM" channel). DO NOT touch the speaker's volume knob, here's why.

5.  See Also

• Audio
• AudioMixing

Categories AV, Workstation, Hardware