Playing audio cd's

[NickNick]

Hi everyone.

Have a question.

Is it possible to pop in an audio CD and have it played through the Macintosh? I have not been able to get this to work on any machine that did not physically come with a CD rom drive built in. Am I missing something here or???

I mostly want this for the pizza box macs like the LC, LCii, LCiii and the LC475's series computers.

Thank you very much.

 

[unity]

No. They dont have the audio hardware provisions for it. Many external CD drives have audio ports for that reason. And if you look inside a machine like a 7200, you will see a separate grey cable is used to connect drive audio output to the motherboard, but again those machines were designed with CD audio in mind.

 

[BadGoldEagle]

I think the CD version of Doom has mp3 tracks on it which are played along the game.

So, maybe there's a software out there that can do that? Quicktime?

 

[Macdrone]

cd player is a program that came in like perfromas and they do not have the sound cable.  I have put cd player on macs with external drives and it works.  Been a number of years but I know I did not have a bunch of hardware so it could not have been too involved.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

As others have said, you can command the CD drive to play the audio CD, but the classic Mac OS doesn't do "digital transfer" of the audio over the SCSI connection. Macs with an internal CD drive have (as unity said) an extra cable to send the analog audio to the logic board.  External CD drives need to be connected to speakers directly, or via a cable to the line-in jack on the Mac.  Then you need to tell your Mac to play the line-in source out at the same time as it's coming in.  (Not all Macs support that.)

 

[Macdrone]

Ya my color classic just now with cd player can control the external CD play, volume settings  and such but the internal speaker does not output.  I dont remember having external speakers before but I am not sure.

 

[NickNick]

Thanks for the replies. Yeah I have noticed on the back of the external CD rom there is an output for right and left analog audio out. I thought about plugging it directly in to the line in but was not sure if there was a more proper way of doing so. Now that you mention the grey cable I think I do remember seeing one, in fact in believe it is in a 7200 which I saw it in . I'd have to dig it out to see if. But I swear in elementary school we used to use the external audio player and play CDs with it. But it makes scene why they have the headphone jack and a volume control on the front if it. For CD's.

 

[Scott Baret]

Headphones are often the best solution if space is tight.

There is no software available to re-route audio from an external SCSI CD-ROM. I seem to recall at least one instruction manual for a game with CD soundtrack audio stating that speakers or headphones needed to be connected to an external CD-ROM drive.

I believe this is not the case with USB CD drives under OS 9, but it's been a number of years and my Iomega ZipCD 650 needs a new drive unit under its hood. I seem to remember playing audio fine through the computer from it, but I could be mistaken...it's been about 15 years since I've done that!!

 

[just.in.time]

You could try importing the audio files into something else. MP3 may be a bit too processor intensive, but something similar.

 

[NickNick]

I actually have used QuickTime to record whole audio tracks form cd's, convert them to mac format able to be played back on any Macintosh with QuickTime installed on it. It works quite well however the files are rather large. I put the files on the Powermac 5500 which is hooked up into my network and stream the songs to the computer I choose to use VIA Ethernet (and ether mac card). It works but you literally have to have it connected to the internet. Just thought it would be cool to play CDs directly from the external cd drive through the Macintoshes audio system.

The computers play the files fine but I have noticed that the Macintosh LC and LCii stutter if the bitrate is over 2200. Anything under that it plays fine with no skip or stutter of any kind.

 

[just.in.time]

Do you import them as aiff files?

 

[NickNick]

I believe they are. I'd have to check the powermac and see what they were as its been a while since I put a song on there. If I recall you have the option to select how you want it to import it.