[Squalish]

I got a Game Theater XP a while back to put into my next system, and recently I found out that it has no CD digital in. I read on one site that not having it causes the CDROM drive to use its own crappy DAC and put out inferior audio, rather than using the soundcard's DAC. Does this make a large difference? Is there any way to fix this? Could one solder the thin SPDIF cable out from the CDROM into the coax digital in on the breakout box of the GTXP? Any background info on this is appreciated.

 

[planar]

From other's info, you can use winamp with plug-in to force your CD-ROM to send digital signal into your soundard and let soundcard does the decoding work.

About the difference between CDROM on board DAC and soundcard's: well that depends on how good your sound card is in the first place. sure the DAC from CDROM won't be great, but so does the soundcard too (possibly).

The fact is: (opinion). There will be a signigivant reduction in noise leve between CDROM and soundcard. Soinc quality wise will be similar. because both are not optimised for CD PLAYING.

 

[Squalish]

I found the winamp thing, but I was looking for alternatives(winamp crashes whenever it encounters CD audio on my current rig, not sure how it will do on my next one). Anyone else wanna weigh in on this?

 

[Cheeba-Fi]

Squalish,

You might find this page of interest:

http://members.tripod.com/~Psych/md-cdrom.html

It is not exactly what you are looking for, but it might give you some ideas.

Namastay,
Cheeba-Fi

 

[mercid]

If your running winxp, by default all auto data will be ripped off the cd and fed down the IDE/SCSI chain, this offers the best possible sound quality. Your sound card will take over from there. There is more info in microsofts technet.

 

[Duncan]

Quote:

Originally posted by mercid If your running winxp, by default all auto data will be ripped off the cd and fed down the IDE/SCSI chain, this offers the best possible sound quality. Your sound card will take over from there. There is more info in microsofts technet.

Word!

I haven't had a digital connector in my PC for the past year, and it still sounds good running through the IDE cable...

There was a thread, about 2 months ago that ran through all the various options... not quite sure what the search parameters would be to find it... try 'IDE Cable'?

Thanks