TUX: Listen to the Music with KsCD

If you are looking for an easy to use program to listen to your favorite CDs then you should try KsCD. KsCD comes with KDE and it will most likely be installed by default. You can find it in the Kicker menu under 'Multimedia'. Life does not get much easier than this! Read the full article (with screenshots) at TUX Magazine for more details.

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Comments

by MdIig (not verified)

The link to the article is broken.

by charles dickens (not verified)

"Miguel de Icaza is gay"

Really? So tell him I can take care of fulfilling his pretty wife's desires if you don't mind.

by David (not verified)

Must have missed that one.

by some guy (not verified)

>"Miguel de Icaza is gay"
>
>Really? So tell him I can take care of fulfilling his pretty wife's desires if >you don't mind.

^ i love the internet !

by Anonymous Coward (not verified)

> Miguel de Icaza is gay

Reminds me of drunk Finns singing 'Mats Sundin är homosexuell' in
Sweden/Finland ice hockey game after he had scored twice against us
:)

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

http://www.tuxmagazine.com/node/1000037

I have always liked kscd. It does its one job well.

by anonymous (not verified)

This is a case in point. Kscd is good because it does something
well delimited: playing CDs. With the new multimedia programs
like Kafeine and stuff I never know well what they are capable until
I cannot open the file/media I need. I think KDE should make
clear what application is used for which multimedia type (of course
this decision can change depending on the advances on mm players,
but it should be clearly made in each version of KDE). Clearly, this will
not prohibit people from use other programs, they just need to install
their prefered application, but as a matter of policy and user interface
this distinction should be made.

by Pat (not verified)

Kaffeine uses libxine so it can play any format libxine can. i'm curious could you please tell us what file you can't open with kaffeine? you probably don't have the w32 codecs installed cause xine and mplayer can play every file formart I'm aware of.

by blacksheep (not verified)

I guess it is some sort of configuration problem, then. It happens also to myself; to be able to open a video in xine and not kaffeine (for instance, wmv).

by Capit Igloo (not verified)

I read «If you are using KDE 3.3 (like me) you see an option 'Use direct digital playback'», that's a really good news :)

by Alex Kern (not verified)

Digital Extraction is good, but I would prefer to hear somethings from peoples using this. I am the author. Please write about your expirience with scratched disk. I saw very often an error, "switch to single frame DMA" after this, and no sound to hear after it. Is switch between tracks interactiv enough? Have anybody any problems with audio skips? Uses anybody this function on SUN?

Regards
Alex

by Marco Bubke (not verified)

The biggest problem is that the sound device is blocked if I don't play the cd. Thats annoying. Also sometimes I get scrambles after the first cd but I'm not sure it's a problem with the player. Maybe its the cdrom. After a reboot its gone. I have more than one cdrom s it would be nice to have a easy choice. Ok, enough criticism, I must say I like your program very much. It does simply what I want.

I've given an additional try to KSCD after having seen this article, and I must say that I like what I see, especially the addition of "direct digital playback", absence of which has made me stop using KSCD before.
Nevertheless, I think there is always a place for improvement. I'd like to see the following things added to KSCD:
- Both graphical ( some drop-down box) and command line possibility to choose the desired CD-ROM drive, in case there are several ( I'd like to associate KSCD with audio CDs via hotplug script)

I agree completely on the multiple CD-ROM thing. For one, it takes some work to find what your linux vendor named your cdrom and its even more work to find which CD-ROM goes to a particular device name. Second, I'm sure there is some way to "search" for cdroms, especially since k3b not only finds your cdroms, but it tells you about all of the writing capabilities, speeds, and everything! Finally, hiding the cd-rom setup in a settings windows makes it impractical to quickly switch between different CD-ROMS. For example, if you just copied one audio CD, you cannot quickly listen to the recording that is in your burner.

I have been tempted to write this into KSCD for over a year & I think I already put it in as a wishlist like 2 years ago. I keep thinking, "Surely, the next release will have a drop-down of available cd-roms." But every time a new release comes, you're still forced to type "/dev/cdrom" and "/dev/dvd" whenever you want to switch. It seems someone who already has the code on their machines could hammer this out pretty quickly. Things to look out for, however, is that "searching for cd-roms" has to work on all the platforms that KDE runs and probably has to have the ability to manually enter a device anyways.

Mandrake has KsCD in their hotplug scripts, insert a CD in any drive and KsCD gets started with that drive passed as the $DEV. Works a treat...

by René Gaß (not verified)

I've got a lot of trouble with audio skips when using KsCD, so I normally don't use it. I've got the "digital" checkbox set, otherwise there's no sound at all. alsaplayer has no trouble playing the same CDs (which are not scratched, btw.) in the same device (a Toshiba 1802 DVD-ROM, connected as slave on the second IDE channel). I /think/ I've tried the CDs in my DVD burner (which is master on that channel) and it skipped as well, but I'm not 100% sure and can't test it right now.

Regards, René

by Víktor (not verified)

Has someone else problems with CDDB support?

I mean, I get CDDB information, but I cannot submit it.

One year ago my submissions started gettig rejected when they used accented characters (à è é...). Ie:

Invalid DB submission: garbage character on line 34

Then, three months ago, ALL submissions where rejected:

Invalid DB submission: unexpected end on line 1

Any idea? Right now I use Mandrake 10.1 Official, KDE 3.2.3, KsCD 1.4.1

by Jonas (not verified)

I have had the same problem on Gentoo.

by Trane Francks (not verified)

I'm seeing this problem with KsCD 1.4.1 on Slackware 10.0.

by Bartek (not verified)

Actually I've got another problem: my KsCD doesn't want to read any CDDB entry (everything is set correctly: server and protocol). Does someone know what do you? It's really annoying......

And one more thing (well, it's not really connected with the topic, but maybe someone will answer this) - when I'm listening to music, KsCD sometimes stops. Just stops playing and everything I can do is to start playing Cd one more time.

Looking forawrd to hearing some hints from you...
Bartek

by Anonymous (not verified)

Coming up, moving mouse cursor under X! (for fun and profit!)

Seriously, I think that this article is way too for beginners. If you already
- have managed to get your linux/whatever system to boot (power switch!)
- have done the cabling (power cords etc.)
- have putten the cd to the right drive
- know how to start konqueror and browse www.tuxmagazine.com or dot.kde.org you probably can already figure out how to play cd's thank you.

by Sebastian (not verified)

Well. i have two cd-rom drives installed. I simply can't play Audio cd's with kscd. Iit seems that the tiny app is confused by the presence of t w o drives. And: Even MSWin98's cdplayer was able to select the cdrom device I want to play from. Moreover, the kioslave audiocd:// has different bugs in playing mixedmode cd's than kscd. Do both know each other?

by obs-psr (not verified)

Ouvrir KsCD /cliquer sur Extras / Configurer KsCD /cocher la case: "utiliser la lecture numérique directe"(chez moi ça marche avec alsa, sinon, choisir arts) /appliquer /OK
(pour pouvoir modifier cela, le CD doit etre stoppé)

[english (well.. sort of) below]
KsCD persiste à me proposer /dev/hdd comme périphérique (au lieu de /dev/cdrom1). De plus je ne sais pas du tout quoi mettre comme 'périphérique audio à sélectionner'

KsCD keeps /dev/hdd as /dev/cdrom1 (i guess). Moreover I havn't got a clue how to fill the field 'select an audio device'...

Thanks for your help