No sound or jerky sound when playing Audio CDs in rhythmbox

[David McKelvie]

Playing commercial audio CDs worked fine for me in rhythmbox in the initial release of Ubuntu 12.04 (May 2012).

However sometime between then and 5th Jul 2012, they have stopped working.

Currently I get either a few seconds of sound and then nothing, or the first few seconds of each track are very jerky
and then rest of track plays ok.

Movies / Audio from YouTube work fine in Firefox and Chromium.
Commercial move DVDs play fine audio/visual in MoviePlayer
Audio from .ogg files on my hard disk play fine in Rhythmbox.

So some problem with reading audio from CDs.

I have tried the suggestions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Audio/PositionReporting none of which helped.

This is related to various reported bugs, but I dont know enough to say for sure that they are duplicates.

 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2012727 sounds relevant

Description: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
Release: 12.04

rhythmbox:
  Installed: 2.96-0ubuntu4
  Candidate: 2.96-0ubuntu4
  Version table:
 *** 2.96-0ubuntu4 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: rhythmbox 2.96-0ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-26.41-generic-pae 3.2.19
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-26-generic-pae i686
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu8
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Jul 6 13:27:54 2012
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/rhythmbox
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Beta i386 (20120328)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: rhythmbox
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Ghislain Vaillant (ghisvail)]

Do you get the same problem when playing the same audio CD using VLC ?

[David McKelvie (dmck-interactive)]

Thanks. I dont think I realised just how complicated this is.

I installed VLC then

VLC can handle but not Rhythmbox

   Forth Valley Chorus: OK in VLC not ok in Rhythmbox
   Best of Frank Zappa: OK in VLC not ok in Rhythmbox
   Classic Van Morrison: OK in VLC not ok in Rhythmbox
   Best of Van Morrison: OK in VLC ok in Rhythmbox tho cant select a later track

Neither can handle

   Patty Smith Easter: 1 second of reasonable sound - then silence and VLC stops responding ie I cant play another track
                           ditto bad in Rhythmbox
   Frank Zappa Hot Rats: 1 second of reasonable sound - then silence and VLC stops responding ie I cant play another track
                           ditto bad in Rhythmbox
   Patty Smith Horses: a few seconds of very fuzzy sound - background buzz then silence
                           ditto bad in Rhythmbox

Looks like I should use VLC and maybe buy some new CDs and make a backup this
time.

When I tested in May I didnt do a rigorous set of tests, just played Hot Rats and it was
fine.

David

[David McKelvie (dmck-interactive)]

Running 'vlc -v' on the problematic CD 'Hot Rats' disc I got

Run 1 - very jerky sound, sound only in widely separated spurts.

[0x8ac3908] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
[0xb07ee848] cdda access warning: found 6 matches in CDDB. Using first one.
[0xb07bf0a0] main stream error: cannot pre fill buffer
[0xb5400618] main input warning: cannot create a stream_t from access
[0xb2604c20] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (-9727), dropping buffer
[0xb2604c20] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (-32902), dropping buffer
[0xb2604c20] pulse audio output warning: underflow
[0xb5403af0] main input error: ES_OUT_SET_(GROUP_)PCR is called too late (pts_delay increased to 300 ms)
[0xb5403af0] main input error: ES_OUT_RESET_PCR called
[0xb2604c20] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (40075), dropping buffer
[0xb2604c20] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (16962), dropping buffer
[0xb2604c20] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (-6193), dropping buffer
[0xb2604c20] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (-9690), dropping buffer
[0xb2604c20] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (-32848), dropping buffer
[0xb2604c20] pulse audio output warning: underflow
[0xb5403af0] main input error: ES_OUT_SET_(GROUP_)PCR is called too late (pts_delay increased to 1043 ms)
[0xb5403af0] main input error: ES_OUT_RESET_PCR called
[0xb2604c20] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (40037), dropping buffer
[0xb2604c20] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (16921), dropping buffer
[0xb2604c20] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (-6223), dropping buffer
[0xb2604c20] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (-9723), dropping buffer
[0xb2604c20] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (-32883), dropping buffer
[0xb2604c20] pulse audio output warning: underflow
[0xb5403af0] main input error: ES_OUT_SET_(GROUP_)PCR is called too late (pts_delay increased to 4355 ms)
[0xb5403af0] main input error: ES_OUT_RESET_PCR called
[0xb2604c20] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (40038), dropping buffer
[0xb2604c20] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (16919), dropping buffer
[0xb2604c20] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (-6273), dropping buffer
[0xb2604c20] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (-9810), dropping buffer
[0xb2604c20] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (-33006), dropping buffer
david:~$ [0xb2604c20] pulse audio output warning: underflow
... and so on ...

So then I took the CD out and re-seated it in the drive. This time it played just fine and vlc said

[0xb260bbf0] cdda access warning: found 6 matches in CDDB. Using first one.
[0xb260c100] main stream error: cannot pre fill buffer
[0xb5400618] main input warning: cannot create a stream_t from access
[0xb0635198] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (-9888), dropping buffer
[0xb0635198] main audio output warning: PTS is out of range (-33059), dropping buffer
[0xb260c898] wav demux warning: cannot read data
[0xb0635198] pulse audio output warning: underflow
[0xb0635198] main audio ou...

[Walter Garcia-Fontes (walter-garcia)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test it on a currently supported Ubuntu version. When you test it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running apport-collect <bug #> and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for rhythmbox (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]