There are two ways of playing CDs. The first one is to use the CD drive as a CD player. This way, the drive will read and play the audio data thus converting the music/whatever to an analog or digital signal (depending on your drive). When using this, you have to have your cd drive connected to your soundcard/motherboard/whatever, or use a headphone jack in the front of the drive. Also, you have to have your soundcard mixer settings correct, so that it will mix the CD input correctly. The other, and much better way, is to use the CD drive to read the audio data off the CD and use a soundcard to create the signal. You get better quality because as you might guess, your 1010LT has better DACs than your CD drive. This also works without connecting your CD drive and soundcard. In XMMS this is selected by looking into: Preferences->Audio I/O Plugins->AudioCD Reader->Output->Output mode Here you can select either "Read Digital CD Audio", or "Play Audio CD Directly". Sampo Quoting Joseph Dell'Orfano <fullgo(a)dellorfano.net>et>: