CD-Rom not mounting

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Chris F.A. Johnson <chris-E7bvbYbpR6jSUeElwK9/Pw at public.gmane.org>

| On Sat, 20 Oct 2012, James Knott wrote:
| 
| > Stephen wrote:
| > > No. But I believe that one is not necessary. It is a sata connection, and
| > > if the program could see the disc it would read it as data.
| >
| > Yes it is.  I've never had a CD or DVD drive that could play audio without
| > an audio connection of some sort.  Audio tracks are not "data" in the sense
| > of computer files.  They are just a continuous stream of bits representing
| > the music.  CD burner programs can read those tracks and copy them to a file
| > that can be played.
| 
|    No, it's not necessary.
| 
|    It's only required if you want to play the CD directly; it's not necessary
|    for ripping it.

Let me amplify the point Chris is making.

The computer has access to the bits on an audio CD.  These come in as
WAV files, essentially (16-bit PCM, 44.1KHz, uncompressed).  There is
a structure like a filesystem, but OSes have opted not to treat them
as filesystems.

Most CD and DVD drives also have analogue out.  This is hardly ever
useful these days:

- you cannot use these as stand-alone CD players since there are no
  buttons for play, fast forward, rewind, next track, etc.  So you
  need a computer to do this.

- in the initial days of CD-ROM drives, audio was an oddity.  Programs
  to read audio tracks digitally were rare and took considerable CPU.
  Of a 286.  Software and hardware has advanced.  Mixing used to be
  analogue.  Now it is digital.  So using analogue out from a CD drive
  these days is worse than pointless: it requires more hardware and
  loses fidelity.

- I'd bet that the ditital-analogue converters (DACs) on CDROM drives
  are junk since every penny matters in that business and good DACs
  appear to be expensive.  Of course it just might be that audiophiles
  are unreasonably critical of cheap DACs.

I don't ever play CDs on a computer.  I do rip them
sometimes.  I think that there are bunches of programs to rip CDs.  I
think that most use cd-paranoia to do the actual ripping.
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