Minimalist CD player for Fossa "Micro"

[greengeek]

I am using Ozsouth's "Fossa64 Micro" as a testbed for my hobby coding and one of my projects is to build some sort of CD player gui for it.

It has no fancy features, it's just a way for me to have background music while I am working on the laptop and trying to see how much functionality I can get out of "Micro" without adding weighty software .

If anyone finds a more lightweight player please let me know...
(The aim being maximum functions in small iso size)

BarebonesCDplayer.jpg (10.99 KiB) Viewed 1894 times

Use at own risk. Under development.
Please be aware that this will use as much memory as the CD has audio data (eg: maybe 600-700MB)
WARNING:Not designed for use on bigger pups such as bookworm64 (or for anyone with a savefile) because my pet overwrites the /usr/local/bin/defaultcdplayer file. (Fossa Micro doesn't have any existing default cdplayer so it is safe there)
As always, back up savefile before testing pets.

F6495Micro_cdplayer_gg-0.1.pet

For Fossa64 Micro only

(1.44 KiB) Downloaded 28 times

.
EDIT: Even better versions further down the page

[greengeek]

Actually I just stumbled across another syntax I might be able to use also:

cdda2wav -D/dev/cdrom -q -e -B -N

(This would just play directly without a rip phase).
(Micro already has both cdparanoia and cdda2wav - so no extra burden to add).

[bigpup]

Fossa64 Micro has stopped being offered.
viewtopic.php?t=12443
Well it can still be downloaded as of now, but ozsouth has stopped doing anything on it.

He suggests moving to using Fossa64 Mini
viewtopic.php?t=12027

Do not only offer this as a player for just these versions of Puppy Linux.

I installed it in BookwormPup64 10.0.7 and it works in it.
Very simple to use and it does exactly that, plays a audio CD.

Noticed one thing.
If I quit program while it is playing.
It still keeps playing the audio CD.

Have to make sure to select stop.
Then select quit.

Not sure what selecting Silence is really doing.
It does silence the output.
But to get sound back you select play/restart.
The CD starts playing from the beginning.

I am really liking the idea of this program.
Simple way to play an audio CD.

[Marv]

Clever! Runs well in fossapup64-mini also -and is a heck of a lot simpler than Xine for my needs.

Thanks,

[bigpup]

I tried just your command: cdda2wav -D/dev/cdrom -q -e -B -N in a terminal and it played the CD.

Close the terminal and it stops.

There was a delay in hearing audio, but I think that was the time it took for the CD drive to startup and provide output.

[greengeek]

Noticed one thing.
If I quit program while it is playing.
It still keeps playing the audio CD.

Have to make sure to select stop.
Then select quit.

Yes - if you hit Quit it will just shut the gui. This can be useful if you want the gui out of the way and keep playing in the background. Then you can just re-run the gui from the multimedia menu when you want to stop it fully.

Not sure what selecting Silence is really doing.
It does silence the output.
But to get sound back you select play/restart.
The CD starts playing from the beginning.

The silence button will eventually be a "NEXT" button for skipping to a different CD, or to different tracks once I implement that. But for now it just silences the playback. Annoying that restart goes back to the beginning but that is a legacy of the fact that at the moment this utility is just a "play while you rip" utility.
The entire CD gets ripped as one .wav into /root/cdtemp while it is playing. Handy feature or waste of space depending on your needs...

One word of caution though - I didn't want to encourage people to use this on bigger pups such as bookworm64 because my pet overwrites the /usr/local/bin/defaultcdplayer file. Fossa Micro doesn't have any existing default cdplayer so it was safe there. I better add that note to the first post.

[greengeek]

I tried just your command: cdda2wav -D/dev/cdrom -q -e -B -N in a terminal and it played the CD.

Close the terminal and it stops.

Cool, thanks for testing. I will build it into a gui so the terminal doesn't show. On the list... !

[greengeek]

Ha, just stumbled across this:
https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=44673
pcdlite from 01micko.
@bigpup this one might be a good choice for bookworm:

pcdlite.png (5.67 KiB) Viewed 1833 times

.
Runs nicely in Fossa (just a couple of missing icons) so probably fine in bookworm.

[bigpup]

One word of caution though - I didn't want to encourage people to use this on bigger pups such as bookworm64 because my pet overwrites the /usr/local/bin/defaultcdplayer file.

Easily corrected this by using the program Default Apps Manager.
.

Screenshot.jpg (74.88 KiB) Viewed 1832 times

[mikewalsh]

@greengeek :-

Nice one, Ian. Works OOTB in Tahrpup64 (which is where I am ATM). All the necessary dependencies are here by default, too.....and it "does what it says on the tin". This was PhilB's first 64-bit Puppy, and I guess he wanted to make a good job of it, so all the necessary multimedia stuff is here......with the exception of that lousy avconv (which I've long since replaced with one of John van Sickle's static ffmpegs).

I don't see me using it, though. Why?

'Cos despite having a huge stack of CDs, they've been gathering dust for years. I long since ripped everything to storage, and if I play anything I use DeaDBeeF. Most of the time I tend to listen to streaming radio by choice anyway - I've had a RadioTunes a/c for ages - and DeaDBeeF takes care of this, too. Either that, or I use Fred's DogRadio.

But well done, anyway. Very simple, and it just works. Excellent!

=======================================

One suggestion.....and I'm not quite sure how you'd implement it. Keep the 'Silence' ('Mute'?) button, but make it so it will toggle sound on or off.

...later...

Ah. You can do this with 'amixer'. Assuming you're using the default sound card, you can use

Code: Select all

amixer sset Master mute

....to kill the sound, and

Code: Select all

mixer sset Master unmute

.....to restore it again.

However; this won't work in all cases - like, say, if you're using USB headphones. These usually have their own built-in audio card with very basic controls, and don't tend to use the 'Master' parameter. They DO, however, use 'PCM', and control the volume directly with this. Your default sound card also uses 'PCM'; in fact, we tend to recommend users set this to maximum, don't we......which then gives the greatest range of available sound thru the 'Master' control..!

So; since 'PCM' seems to be common to all cards, it might be better to use this instead (since it should work everywhere). Now; 'mute' & 'unmute' can't be used with 'PCM' - they're invalid commands for that option, apparently - so we use this instead:-

Code: Select all

amixer sset PCM 0%

......will 'mute', and

Code: Select all

amixer sset PCM 100%

.....will restore sound. I looked all this up via the 'amixer' man page, and just did some experimenting:-

https://linux.die.net/man/1/amixer

(I remembered 'amixer', because I use it myself to set Puppy's volume for her 'startup jingle' when she boots, and also to set microphone levels on my webcams.)

Might be just as simple to use 2 buttons, actually; one for mute, and a second for unmute..?

==============================

Just some ideas, of course. Totally up to you whether you include them, but again it's using a built-in component, so no 'bloat'.... I'm assuming Oz didn't strip 'amixer' out?

Mike.

[MochiMoppel]

Please be aware that this will use as much memory as the CD has audio data (eg: maybe 600-700MB)

Do I get this right? Your aim is to develop a super-lightweight CD player for a skeleton OS, presumably for a RAM challenged PC, and your solution is a mini player that only works after having grabbed 600MB of precious RAM to play a CD?

Seriously, that can't be the answer, even if you rip the CD to your HD instead of /root/cdtemp/bigrip.wav to avoid a lack of memory
And BW64 has neither cdparanoia nor cdda2wav installed, so won't play here anyway.

If anyone finds a more lightweight player please let me know...

If your OS has ffmpeg/ffplay/ffprobe installed (which it probably hasn't), then this would be the most basic command I can think of:
ffplay -f libcdio -i /dev/sr0
This plays the CD and opens a window, which accepts keyboard shortcuts to pause (space bar), mute (m key) or exit (q or esc key) the playback.

This worked even better for me:
ffmpeg -f libcdio -ss 250.693333 -to 810.560000 -i /dev/sr0 -f wav pipe:1 | ffplay -x 100 -y 100 -
This rips track 2 and track 3 of my test CD and pipes it to a (size reduced) ffplay window. No temporary wav files are created.
The values for the start time 250.693333 and end time 810.560000 I obtained from the command
ffprobe -f libcdio -i /dev/sr0 2>&1 | grep start, which lists start end end time of each track.

[Rantanplan]

Hi @greengeek,

I've tried your pet and pcdlite : the both run well !

I use Lunarpup32 (32 for 32bit, of course ) by peebee.

Many thanks to you.

Good luck.

Best regards

[mikewalsh]

I have to agree with Mochi here. For me, with 32 GB of the stuff, 600 MB is but a drop in the ocean (I don't even notice it!).....but for others running resource-starved hardware, 600 MB will be a sizeable chunk of their available RAM.

I'm guessing Oz DID strip ffmpeg out.....yes?

Mike.

[ozsouth]

@mikewalsh - Micro has ffmpeg removed (available as a .pet). Was one reason I decided not to continue with it. Mini & Mid do have ffmpeg. Greengeek is having fun with the challenge though. I've experimented with 5.4 kernels to help him reduce the iso size.

[bigpup]

BW64 has neither cdparanoia nor cdda2wav installed, so won't play here anyway.

Earlier I had it working in my install of BookwormPup64.

However, it is one that I have added a lot of multimedia software to.
So, it has what MochiMoppel is talking about.

Sorry, I tried in a clean install of BookwormPup64 and it does not work.

However, using Synaptic package manager I installed cdparanoia (audio extraction tool for sampling CDs).

Program now plays the audio CD.

[greengeek]

One suggestion...... Keep the 'Silence' ('Mute'?) button, but make it so it will toggle sound on or off.
You can do this with 'amixer'. Assuming you're using the default sound card, you can use
amixer sset Master mute
....to kill the sound, and
mixer sset Master unmute
.....to restore it again.

However; this won't work in all cases - like, say, if you're using USB headphones. These usually have their own built-in audio card with very basic controls, and don't tend to use the 'Master' parameter. They DO, however, use 'PCM', and control the volume directly with this. Your default sound card also uses 'PCM'; in fact, we tend to recommend users set this to maximum, don't we......which then gives the greatest range of available sound thru the 'Master' control..!

So; since 'PCM' seems to be common to all cards, it might be better to use this instead (since it should work everywhere). Now; 'mute' & 'unmute' can't be used with 'PCM' - they're invalid commands for that option, apparently - so we use this instead:-
amixer sset PCM 0%
......will 'mute', and
amixer sset PCM 100%
.....will restore sound. I looked all this up via the 'amixer' man page, and just did some experimenting:-
https://linux.die.net/man/1/amixer
(I remembered 'amixer', because I use it myself to set Puppy's volume for her 'startup jingle' when she boots, and also to set microphone levels on my webcams.)
Might be just as simple to use 2 buttons, actually; one for mute, and a second for unmute..?

Excellent suggestion
Will give the pcm idea a go.

I don't see me using it, though. Why?
'Cos despite having a huge stack of CDs, they've been gathering dust for years. I long since ripped everything to storage, and if I play anything I use DeaDBeeF. Most of the time I tend to listen to streaming radio by choice anyway - I've had a RadioTunes a/c for ages - and DeaDBeeF takes care of this, too. Either that, or I use Fred's DogRadio.

Ahh yes, but think of a future time where there has been a massive solar flare or EMP weapon burst and all of the modern hardware and internet goes belly up.
Wouldn't it be good to have one of the old robust "ship's anchor" laptops (like the old Dell style you had...) that can still boot from a tiny rescue CD and play Frank Sinatra or Edith Piaf CDs as a calming influence?

I'm assuming Oz didn't strip 'amixer' out?

Good question. I better check that.

[greengeek]

Do I get this right? Your aim is to develop a super-lightweight CD player for a skeleton OS, presumably for a RAM challenged PC, and your solution is a mini player that only works after having grabbed 600MB of precious RAM to play a CD?

Seriously, that can't be the answer, even if you rip the CD to your HD instead of /root/cdtemp/bigrip.wav to avoid a lack of memory
And BW64 has neither cdparanoia nor cdda2wav installed, so won't play here anyway.

Yep, you summed it up brilliantly
But think of my coding efforts as being like the Paralympics - its the best I can do with missing arms and only 3 neurons
(And this is not intended for Bookworm etc - I guess most people have no optical drive these days)

If your OS has ffmpeg/ffplay/ffprobe installed (which it probably hasn't), then this would be the most basic command I can think of:
ffplay -f libcdio -i /dev/sr0
This plays the CD and opens a window, which accepts keyboard shortcuts to pause (space bar), mute (m key) or exit (q or esc key) the playback.

This worked even better for me:
ffmpeg -f libcdio -ss 250.693333 -to 810.560000 -i /dev/sr0 -f wav pipe:1 | ffplay -x 100 -y 100 -
This rips track 2 and track 3 of my test CD and pipes it to a (size reduced) ffplay window. No temporary wav files are created.
The values for the start time 250.693333 and end time 810.560000 I obtained from the command
ffprobe -f libcdio -i /dev/sr0 2>&1 | grep start, which lists start end end time of each track.

Thanks for those suggestions. Definitely useful for me in my daily driver which DOES have ffmpeg (and I think I can get an ffplay pet although I have it in my mind it required mpv which I don't want). I find it hard to live without ffmpeg these days - but I still enjoy the challenge of seeing what's possible with a skeleton OS as you call it. It's the masochist in me...

[greengeek]

I'm guessing Oz DID strip ffmpeg out.....yes?

Yes, he tends to bin all the good stuff and just leave a dried out husk

If we let him keep doing this he will have us running nothing but a 64bit Puppy2.14 shortly

[greengeek]

One suggestion..... Keep the 'Silence' ('Mute'?) button, but make it so it will toggle sound on or off...
since 'PCM' seems to be common to all cards, it might be better to use this instead (since it should work everywhere)...
amixer sset PCM 0%....will 'mute', and amixer sset PCM 100%...will restore sound. I looked all this up via the 'amixer' man page...
Might be just as simple to use 2 buttons, actually; one for mute, and a second for unmute..?

Nice idea, and I have decided to rework and rename the gui to use this mute idea and also to properly reflect that this utility is actually ripping (one big .wav) at the same time as it is playing (as MochiMoppel pointed out this is not the lightest way to just "play" a CD)
(I will go back to the "CD player only" idea as a separate utility next..)
.
New utility is called "ripnplay"

ripnplay.png (14.03 KiB) Viewed 1634 times

F6495Micro_cdripnplay_gg-0.1.pet

(1.44 KiB) Downloaded 15 times

[greengeek]

And here is the new version of the original goal - ie; to have a lightweight CD player.
Again, no fancy functions and no extra dependencies (in Fossa Micro at least..)
(Uses cdda2wav. Does not rip. Plays CD as one whole track).

cddaplay.jpg (9.79 KiB) Viewed 1611 times

F6495Micro_cddaplay_gg-0.1.pet

(1.12 KiB) Downloaded 29 times

(Version2 with auto eject on STOP available here as requested by Rantanplan)

[Rantanplan]

Hello @greengeek ,

Hourrah !
Your last tiny cd player runs with Toutou Linux Slaxen 6.0 (a puppy's french derivative by esmourguit).

In listening at home, Amaury Vassili (opera singer).

Thanks, thanks and thanks

Best to you.

[Rantanplan]

@greengeek

do you think is it possible to add an eject -r command, or similar, under STOP or QUIT button ?
So, the CD is automatically ejected without human action.

Thank again.

[greengeek]

do you think is it possible to add an eject -r command, or similar, under STOP or QUIT button ?
So, the CD is automatically ejected without human action.

Yes, try this version.
Instead of "eject -r" I have added just "eject" because my optical drive is sr0 and the -r flag limits the eject function to cdrom only.

The help file for "eject" says that the default is to try cdrom first, then try other optical drives, so I hope that this will work as it is (but if you definitely need "-r" I can add it...)
There is no separate button for eject - it is now part of the STOP button.
Cheers!

F6495Micro_cddaplay_gg-0.2.pet

(1.13 KiB) Downloaded 22 times

[Marv]

Working fine here running under fossapup64-mini. Ejects CD correctly (but my CD is sr0 too) and lxtask shows less than 5 Mb memory use (approx, have to kind of average over a bit of play/non-play) when it is playing. Running it along pcdlite and both do what is needed to simply play a CD. Pretty much neck and neck for efficiency and ease of use. gg is somewhat smaller and seems to need slightly less in terms of icons etc. Both are way better than the 'big kids' for my purposes.

Thanks,

As an aside, I do have the missing icons for pcdlite if anyone wants them. Took a bit of rummaging in the way-back pile.

[bigpup]

@greengeek

I know you are not making this for Puppy Linux in general.

But it is something I want to be able to use in BookwormPup64 10.0.7

So with the information you provide on what it needs to work.

I installed the F6495Micro_cddaplay_gg-0.2.pet.

Use synaptic Package Manager to install:

icedax

It is a Debian spinoff of the cdda2wav program. So seems to be providing what cdda2wav does.

icedax lets you digitally copy ("rip") audio tracks from a CD, avoiding
the distortion that is introduced when recording via a sound card. Data
can be dumped into raw (cdr), wav or sun format sound files. Options control
the recording format (stereo/mono; 8/16 bits; sampling rate, etc).

The program is working for me in BookwormPup64.

Nice added functions you have it now offering!

Keep going with the code creep.

You will soon have it as big as all the other bloated computer software!

This is the way software for Puppy Linux was produced.
Keep it small, simple, and doing only what is needed!

Thanks!

[bigpup]

Just asking to see if what I am trying to use it on is still having issues.

I am using a Debian spinoff version for cdda2wav.

The latest version F6495Micro_cddaplay_gg-0.2

It starts and plays the audio CD.

But a few minutes into the playing it sounds as if it is trying to play two different versions of the song at the same time.

Your very first version .01 had no issue.

[greengeek]

But a few minutes into the playing it sounds as if it is trying to play two different versions of the song at the same time.

Any chance there could be two instances running at the same time? If you run Htop does it show more than one ccda2wav or icedax running simultaneously?

[bigpup]

Good idea , but not the problem.

The problem seems to be with this icedax software, that seems to be what all new Linux OS's are using, to replace cdda2wav

when it is installed, it does provide cdda2wav files, but they are only symbolic links to icedax file, that seems to be doing what cdda2wav does.
So this is the problem with this icedax file and it providing the audio.

Anyway, I took a real cdda2wav file from Fossapup64 9.5 and used it to replace the symbolic link cdda2wav files.
So now these are the actual cdda2wav file.

Your version .02 is working 100% now.
Audio playback is perfect!

It is now working in BookwormPup64 as it should!

Idea I need to look at
Maybe the option codes, you have for the cdda2wav command, are not exactly correct, for this replacement icedax file to use.
Or it could still have bugs in it.
It is a new replacement for cdda2wav.

[bigpup]

why is cdda2wav being replaced by icedax?

:

ChatGPT
The transition from cdda2wav to icedax in some systems is due to several factors related to the evolving needs and improvements in software. Here are some reasons why icedax is being adopted:

Modernization and Maintenance: icedax is a more modern and actively maintained tool compared to cdda2wav. It benefits from recent updates and bug fixes that ensure better compatibility with contemporary systems and hardware.

Enhanced Features: icedax often includes enhanced features and support for more recent CD drive technologies and audio formats. It may offer better support for features such as error correction and improved extraction quality.

Integration with Other Tools: icedax is part of the libcdio project, which provides a suite of libraries and tools for working with CDs and DVDs. This integration allows for more cohesive and versatile handling of disc data.

User Experience: The user experience might be improved in icedax due to better command-line options, more intuitive usage, or improved documentation.

Community and Support: As an actively maintained project, icedax benefits from community support and contributions, which can lead to better overall software quality and user support.
While cdda2wav has been a reliable tool for many years, the move to icedax reflects the ongoing evolution of software to better meet current needs and take advantage of newer technologies.

[greengeek]

Running it along pcdlite and both do what is needed to simply play a CD. Pretty much neck and neck for efficiency and ease of use...
As an aside, I do have the missing icons for pcdlite if anyone wants them. Took a bit of rummaging in the way-back pile.

I do like the looks of pcdlite. Amazing how much great coding went on in the earlier puppy years...
Still amazes me that code written for 32bit Pups can sometimes run perfectly well on 64bit.
Keen to get hold of the icons 01micko used with pcdlite...
If you could you post them here that would be great. Cheers!