CD drive spins at maximum speed when playing CD

[Roman Kennke]

Binary package hint: rhythmbox

When I play an audio CD in Rhythmbox, the CD drives spins up to maximum speed, causing serious noise. This is very disturbing, especially since the lowest speed is enough for CD playback. I can force it to 1x speed using 'sudo hdparm -E 1 /dev/scd0' but this only lasts until I put in another CD. IMO, Rhythmbox should manage this better. I've checked a couple of other apps (soundjuicer, gnome-cd) and they seem to suffer from the same bug. Probably it's not a problem in rhythmbox, but somewhere lower in the chain, maybe gstreamer or even linux. Please redirect if appropriate.

[Roman Kennke (roman-kennke)]

I just checked cdplay (a command line tool) and amarok, both seem to play fine without going to maximum speed. I wonder if gnome-cd, sound-juicer and RB all use gstreamer?

[Mario (mario-redhat-bugs)]

Description of problem:

Playing an audio CD on my laptop (HP DV8291ea) using a GStreamer based
application (like gst-launch, totem, rhythmbox) causes the CD drive to run at
full speed. This is disturbing both for the noise and for the vibrations. Using
other apps like Amarok does not push the drive to the limit.

I have tracked down the problem to be either the gstcdparanoiasrc plugin or the
cdparanoia library, but had not time to read the code.

You can test it easily by doing:

gst-launch cdparanoiasrc ! alsasink

and then Amarok and comparing the two.

There is a similar bug report in the Ubuntu launchpad, so this is not Fedora
specific:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rhythmbox/+bug/187832

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

[neugens@nirvana ~]$ rpm -q gstreamer-plugins-base ; rpm -q cdparanoia
gstreamer-plugins-base-0.10.15-1.fc8
cdparanoia-alpha9.8-27.2

How reproducible:

Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Insert you favorite CD
2. run a GStreamer based application, or use gst-launch like:
   gst-launch cdparanoiasrc ! alsasink
3. Listen to the drive spinning at fool (not a typo) speed

Actual results:

The CD drive spins at full speed

Expected results:

To play an audio CD, a read speed of 1x is the only one needed.

Additional info:

It seems to happen only with GStreamer; cdparanoiasrc has a "read-speed"
property, but it seems not to be honored. That is, this command:

gst-launch cdparanoiasrc read-speed=24 ! alsasink

and this command:

gst-launch cdparanoiasrc read-speed=1 ! alsasink

have the same effect.

[Mario (mario-redhat-bugs)]

Thinking about it, the fact that read-speed is not honored, may hide a bug in
cdparanoia and not in gstreamer itself... I'll try to give a look at the code
tonight. I don't think it's an high priority bug, but it is quite disturbing if
you plan to use your Linux box as media center (or.. well, if you use your
laptop as a huge cdplayer like I do :).

[Mario (mario-redhat-bugs)]

After further analysis I think that this is in fact a bug against cdparanoia.

I've not gone through accurate testing yet, but I think that the problem is in
the function "scsi_init_drive" (see
cdparanoia-III-alpha9.8/interface/scsi_interface.c:1612). Apparently, setting
drive speed is not supported by cdparanoia on SCSI devices...

[Mario (mario-redhat-bugs)]

I've attached two patches that fix the problem for me. The first adds speed
setting capability via ioctl to cdparanoia (apply to cdparanoia-alpha9.8-27.2),
the other sets the default speed to 4 in gstreamer-plugin-base (apply to
gstreamer-plugins-base-0.10.15-1). These need more testings as they may kill
your cddrive, so use with care!! I have the patched spec files for rpm also if
you need these.

[Mario (mario-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 293804
Add set_speed to scsi_interface.c for cdparanoia-III-alpha9.8

Apply this patch to cdparanoia-alpha9.8-27.2.src.rpm

[Mario (mario-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 293805
Sets cd drive speed to default to 4 (as xine also does) instead of the default

Apply this patch to gstreamer-plugins-base-0.10.15-1.fc8.src.rpm

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for your report, Which version of Ubuntu are you running?

[Adam (adam-redhat-bugs)]

These look plausible to me, and didn't get a clear nak from the cdparanoia
maintainer. Building for rawhide now. Can you test them from rawhide, or
should I push F8 update candidates too?

[Mario (mario-redhat-bugs)]

If you can push on update-testing, that would be great for me :)

Thanks,
Mario

[Yaakov (yaakov-redhat-bugs)]

What is the status of this bug? Is it in the process of being fixed? Or can we
close it?

I'm moving it to cdparanoia since that's where the bug seems to apply to.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!.

[Roman Kennke (roman-kennke)]

Sorry for beeing quiet. This bug has been observed in Ubuntu Gutsy. FYI, there is a related bug report in Fedora's bug tracker:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=431178

However, I think the proposed fix is wrong. The problem should really be fixed in the application, not in GStreamer (some apps might want to read at maximum speed (e.g. rippers), others at minimum speed (e.g. players).

[Roman Kennke (roman-kennke)]

Re-opened. Sorry again.

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