Offline music

Crazy as it may seem, I don't use any streaming subscriptions for my music! I purchase CDs and rip them, and buy DRM-free digital albums, all managed in my personal cloud using the Music app built into my NextCloud.

Thanks to the Power Ampache 2 app connected to my library, I can enjoy my entire music collection on the go, directly from my smartphone and at no cost.

Play CDs

I still have an old external USB CD/DVD drive made by Apple that works great! And thanks to the magic of Linux and its community, I managed to get it working on my SteamDeck.

Here's how I did it:

First of all, I create a text file somewhere, which I named 60-apple-superdrive.rules, into which I copy and paste the following lines:

# Apple's USB SuperDrive
ACTION=="add", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1500", ATTRS{idVendor}=="05ac",
DRIVERS=="usb", RUN+="/usr/bin/sg_raw /dev/$kernel EA 00 00 00 00 00 01

Then I go through a few command lines to :

• disable readonly on steamOS
• copy the file to the right place so that it is taken into account by the system next time
• install the sg3_utils package
• trigger the tool
• hot-activate the device
• before re-enabling read-only on steamOS

sudo steamos-readonly disable
sudo cp 60-apple-superdrive.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo pacman -Sy sg3_utils
sudo udevadm trigger
sudo sg_raw /dev/sr0 EA 00 00 00 00 00 01
sudo steamos-readonly enable

And now, thanks to the magic of Linux, Apple’s disk eater is going to wake up and swallow some CDs!

Extract audio tracks

To do this, I need an application capable of extracting tracks from a CD, automatically finding information on the Internet to name the files, and compressing everything into the desired format! I chose to entrust this mission to Asunder and compress my tracks in FLAC format. Obviously, the storage folder is that of my personal Nextcloud.

Enjoy music

And finally, all I have to do is enjoy the sound! Any application compatible with Ampache standard will do the job.