I agree. A scratchy sound indicates the disc is "barely" playing. Still
could be a cleaning / maintenance issue, but a grating lens issue, spindle
motor problem, even a bad decoder IC are also possibilities.

However, I still feel that the original poster must give us more information.

We need to know what laptop (including any available config info) and what
operating system.

By default, WindowsXP doesn't play the audio off the CD like a regular CD
player. It digitally extracts the audio from the CD at high speed, runs it
through the SCSI or IDE connection, and then it plays it as a sample. -
Reinhart