This is worth bookmarking in case CD players become rare.

[gene_stl]

https://hackaday.com/2021/01/03/an-arduino-and-a-cd-rom-drive-makes-a-cd-player/

 

[winopener]

The idea is fun, the writer is an (please add whatever insult you may fancy).

"It would be interesting to see whether the I2S stream could be lifted from inside the drive directly, or even if the audio data could be received via the IDE bus. "
It is more than 25 years that audio data flows thru the IDE bus with cd rippers...