John Summerfied wrote: <snip: on playing audio CDs via analog or digital> > That's all well and good, but I've not seen the explanation I saw some > years ago and which makes sense to me. > Windows sees the individual tracks and presents them as files though > they aren't really. Consequently, you can view a music CD in Windows > as if it's a data cd. But as I understand it you can't read the tracks as data: so in Windows, as in Linux, an audio CD cannot be read/ripped by cat. > AFAIK nothing on Linux does that, though there's no reason not to: > cdparanoia does a fine job of ripping CDs, and as I recall one can > choose an individual track. Grip (which tends to use cdparanoia) can function as a player as well as a ripper. Of course there's a third method which I've never seen used; CD drives often have a digital sound out (the two pin cable). A sound card could use that, still bypassing the rest of the system. But I've only ever seen the three/four pin ones used (left, right, 2xgnd). -- imalone
