[cheezies]

I never usually hook up my CD-ROM's audio cable, is it important in terms of quality or just obsolete?

 

[breez]

It's sucks for the quality if you mean the analog cable.

 

[cheezies]

Yeah, I was talking about the analog cable.

 

[thomaspf]

The analog output of you CD-Rom is very likely not of high quality. Even the best cable won't save you there.

The method of choice is to use digital extraction and have either the sound card or an external processor turn the bits into music. No extra cable on the CD-Rom required for that.

Cheers

Thomas

 

[MiChael.]

Indeed, the signal goes digitally through the ide cable, there's no need for analog cable nowadays at all. Though there's also SPDIF cable (2-pin), but it's useless when ide cable does the same trick.

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Yes, the audio cable for CD-ROM drives is obsolete, for the most part. However, it is required if any of the following is true:

1. You're still running Windows 98 or 98 Second Edition or Windows NT 4.0 and you haven't yet upgraded to Windows Media Player 7 or later, OR
2. You're still running Windows 95 or an earlier version of DOS/Windows, OR
3. You have the increasingly rare CD-ROM drive which does a (relatively) poor job of extracting audio digitally.

Windows XP, 2000 and Me users already have Windows Media Player 7 or later, so they support digital audio extraction.

 

[adhoc]

iirc, isnt the audio cable simply an analog connector for the analog output from the cdrom's dac?

if i am correct than the quality of the audio cable would not matter, since you would already be using the cdrom drive's (ostensibly) inferior dac as opposed to using the (probably superior) dac on the soundcard.

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Quote:

Originally Posted by adhoc iirc, isnt the audio cable simply an analog connector for the analog output from the cdrom's dac? if i am correct than the quality of the audio cable would not matter, since you would already be using the cdrom drive's (ostensibly) inferior dac as opposed to using the (probably superior) dac on the soundcard.

Actually, any analog connection from CD-ROM drive to soundcard will require one or two D/A conversions and an A/D conversion. Thus, sound quality will suffer not only because of the "inferior" DAC in CD-ROM drives, but also due to the extra D/A and A/D steps required of such a connection.

 

[adhoc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eagle_Driver Actually, any analog connection from CD-ROM drive to soundcard will require two A/D conversions and at least one D/A conversion. Thus, sound quality will suffer not only because of the "inferior" DAC in CD-ROM drives, but also due to the extra D/A and A/D steps required of such a connection.

thanks for the clarification eagle_driver.

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Quote:

Originally Posted by adhoc thanks for the clarification eagle_driver.

Actually, I mislead you somewhat. I corrected my post there. Any analog connection from a CD-ROM drive to a soundcard requires an A/D conversion after the audio signal leaves the CD-ROM drive. This means that the quality gets lost in the extra conversion step. Then, if the final signal is destined for the analog outputs, it gets a second D/A conversion, degrading the sound quality even further.

 

[adhoc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eagle_Driver Actually, I mislead you somewhat. I corrected my post there. Any analog connection from a CD-ROM drive to a soundcard requires an A/D conversion after the audio signal leaves the CD-ROM drive. This means that the quality gets lost in the extra conversion step. Then, if the final signal is destined for the analog outputs, it gets a second D/A conversion, degrading the sound quality even further.

ah, i see.

so i guess i was at least partially correct, huh?