Now I have a CD rom question

[gtghm]

Ok, so I'm messin with my system loading all of the progys on it from a fresh os install and I came across an interesting thing that I never noticed before...

I have a Liteon 52x24x52 CDRW and a Liteon DVD drive

My sound card is an SB Live.

I connected the spidf out from the CDRW to the spdif in on the SBL then I connected the regular sound cable from the DVD drive to the SBL...

I decided to move the spdif to the DVD for the possibility of digital output but when I removed the cable instaed of losing sound like I thought I should it didn't...

So what do the cables do that come from the back of the CDRW/DVD anyway...?

Have I missed something?

Alls I know is that the cable (not the IDE cable) is dangleing in the air (not connected) and I'm getting full sound... I didn't think that it worked that way?

Thanks for setting me straight...?
"g"

[Black Hawk]

AFAIK the sound is being transfered via the IDE cable.

[fatcat]

dont need the cables anymore

[Straight_Man]

Yes, in XP it is. In other operating systems, not necessarily so. Have seen some Windows versions that need the cable, XP does not need cables at all, though for SPDIF quality better use cable.Nice thing about a cable, though, is that you can free up some data bandwidth by using the cable to drive-- not huge amount, more significant for DVDs and games than otherwise.

John.

[gtghm]

Cool then I can just remove them... hey?

They just look crapy anyway...?

"g"

[fatcat]

i think it was introduced in win2k....

yea u can keep the cables or get rid of them...i still use the spdif cable from my dvd to sound card

[madmat]

Actually that feature was introduced in Win ME. It's carried through ever since then in new OS's from MS including 2K and XP though I'm not sure about the later versions of NT.
I must say that the implementation in ME wasn't that great but in 2K it sounded vastly better.

[fatcat]

Windows 2000, released February 17th 2000.

Windows Millennium Edition (ME), released September 14th 2000.

[Straight_Man]

FatCat-- that is true for finals, yes, but ME dev started first.

gtghm-- keep the SPDIF cable, it will eat too much bandwidth to try to get SPDIF true quality out of IDE bus route. Other cable can probably go unless you are cutting vinyl to CD and want to hear it right, or judging how to filter a CD audio input. THEN cable is still wanted. For more general use, eliminate the CD cable or get a longer and well sheilded one and route out of case Window view as much as possible.

John.