Don't need cd audio cable in computer anymore?

[geepondy]

Don\'t need cd audio cable in computer anymore?

I used to work in a computer shop, last time was about three years ago now. Used to be you had to hook a three wire cd audio cable from the cdrom drive to the sound card in order to play back audio cds in the computer. Just assembled a computer system with two cd rom drives. Audio cds play fine both, in cd rom drive with audio cable and also with one that doesn't have cable installed. What changed?

 

[raggie33]

Re: Don\'t need cd audio cable in computer anymore?

maybe it uses the ide cable?or are ya playing mp3.s? or wma.s good question though

 

[LEDependent]

Re: Don\'t need cd audio cable in computer anymore?

On the newer operating systems, the cd drives are set by default to play music digitally, straight through the IDE/SCSI cable. It uses the same technique as 'rippers' when copying music off of a CD. In analog mode, the CD would play directly into the sound card. In digital mode, the processor becomes involved in streaming music data over the bus.

 

[Saaby]

Re: Don\'t need cd audio cable in computer anymore?

The connection still exists on most CD-Roms, however, if you'd like to use the old fashoned route.

 

[iddibhai]

Re: Don\'t need cd audio cable in computer anymore?

yea, cdrom drives used to have SPDIF outputs too, and only ONE would be able to play music. now with windows xp, ANY drive on the IDE can play music digitally.

 

[Skyline]

Re: Don\'t need cd audio cable in computer anymore?

It's a good thing to use digital audio rather than the analog cd-rom cable:

a) The analog cd-rom cable is very susceptiple to EM noise. The inside of a computer case is a busy place.
b) The large majority of CD-ROM drives have really awful DACs.

 

[James S]

Re: Don\'t need cd audio cable in computer anymore?

The upside of this is that the sound quality might be better. The layout of the audio section of the motherboard is simpler as it needs fewer inputs and mixers and such.

however, it does use up a little bit of processor power to pump the data around. This is generally negligable on a modern machine. On even my oldest 400mhz Mac machine here I measure only about 1% in idle time when playing a CD digitally.

The only downside is that those damnable copy protected CD's are even less likley to play, since accessing the digital data is exactly what they are trying to stop you from doing.