I have several CD/DVD drives for computer piling up. Without knowing much of the digital domain, my question is. Can it somehow be used in some kind of setup to play cds, standalone?
There would need to be some sort of controller and decoding software to turn the bits into audio - in short, no...
Well, it would have to be part of a computer, maybe a minimal setup with sound card and onboard IDE/SATA controller. There are some setups that might allow the drive to be hooked up to the computer via USB.
This requires a USB interface but USB to IDE/SATA are cheap. You could use the adapter power supply for the RPi with a Y cable.
https://nanomesher.com/building-a-raspberry-pi-cd-player-for-free/
https://www.walmart.com/ip/SATA-PATA-IDE-Drive-to-USB-2-0-Adapter-Converter-Cable-for-2-5-3-5-Inch-Hard-Drive-5-inch-Optical-Drive-with-External-AC-Power-Adapter/147080503?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=4473&adid=22222222222000000000&wmlspartner=wmtlabs&wl0=e&wl1=o&wl2=c&wl3=10352200394&wl4=pla-1103028060075:aud-807615483&wl5=&wl6=&wl7=&wl10=Walmart&wl11=Online&wl12=147080503_10000004663&wl14=usb ide sata adapter&veh=sem&gclid=aa13100fef44187e28e572bc2bf4d20e&gclsrc=3p.ds&msclkid=aa13100fef44187e28e572bc2bf4d20e
But CD/DVD players are very cheap so I wouldn't bother.
https://nanomesher.com/building-a-raspberry-pi-cd-player-for-free/
https://www.walmart.com/ip/SATA-PATA-IDE-Drive-to-USB-2-0-Adapter-Converter-Cable-for-2-5-3-5-Inch-Hard-Drive-5-inch-Optical-Drive-with-External-AC-Power-Adapter/147080503?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=4473&adid=22222222222000000000&wmlspartner=wmtlabs&wl0=e&wl1=o&wl2=c&wl3=10352200394&wl4=pla-1103028060075:aud-807615483&wl5=&wl6=&wl7=&wl10=Walmart&wl11=Online&wl12=147080503_10000004663&wl14=usb ide sata adapter&veh=sem&gclid=aa13100fef44187e28e572bc2bf4d20e&gclsrc=3p.ds&msclkid=aa13100fef44187e28e572bc2bf4d20e
But CD/DVD players are very cheap so I wouldn't bother.
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Most old style CD players could straight play Audio CDs on their own, needed hardware and logic built-in.
Look carefully at the PCB, you should find a 3 or 4 pin connector labelled R-GndLL or double Ground, where you plug a shielded audio cable and send that audio to the PC sound card.
For independent (no PC) use, you wire it to an audio connector.
It is NOT capable of playing "coded" Audio formats, such as MP3, WAV, etc. which it considers "data" (hint: NOT Audio) which requires a CPU for processing.
http://ps-2.kev009.com/eprmhtml/eprm/h252.htm
Some popular pinouts:
| CD-ROM Type | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toshiba | Gnd | R | L | |
| Sony | R | Gnd | Gnd | L |
| Mitsumi | R | Gnd | L | Gnd |
| Panasonic | Gnd | L | Gnd | R |
| MPC | R | Gnd | Gnd | L |
In the past I used something like this: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/4000549047832.html
My experience was that CDrom drives use high speeds to read and make too much noise (wrrrrr...) for audio to my taste.
My experience was that CDrom drives use high speeds to read and make too much noise (wrrrrr...) for audio to my taste.
Something like this will be much better: https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/kit-...t-cd-da-cd-r-cd-rw-hdcd-cd-player-p-8363.html but more expensive
I think with programming you can force the CD drive to use lower speeds. But in my build it only would do like 8x and made quite a whirring sound. But it did work 🙂
Given that an entire library of CDs fits on a modest sized SSD or memory card, thumb drive, it doesn't make much sense to play CD more than once when you rip it to the SSD. Shelves of books, CD, etc are history. You may want to use uncompressed audio files but most of us are happy with higher data rate MP3, or perhaps lossless flac files.