2 Cd drives connected to One Sound Card--is a Y adapter the way?

chrislong

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Jan 10, 2001
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Hi All
I have a CD-rom and a CDR/RW installed on my machine--but only one of those tiny audio cable going from one of the drives to the sound card (a SoundBlaster Live! Value card).

Can I have both connected to the sound card? By some sort of a "Y" adapter, perhaps?

Seems like a simple problem, but right now I can only get the one that is currently connected to play audio discs...

Thanks!!
 

Zim Hosein

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Nov 27, 1999
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chrislong, if I'm not mistaken, doesn't the SBLive! card have an AUX input where you can use another audio cable to connect the second IDE device to? I have the SBLive! non-value card and that's how I have my rig set up. Am I missing something in your post? :confused:
 

bozo1

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May 21, 2001
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Why use an audio cable at all? You can just choose digital audio from any recent drive, no audio cable need, and better sound quality to boot.

 

Peter

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Oct 15, 1999
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... and if it's an IDE drive, totally screwed up HDD throughput while listening to music. Go analog, either switch one to a digital cable if your hardware offers that, or use the AUX connector for the 2nd one. (But why would you want to listen to two CDs at the same time anyway?)

regards, Peter
 

Peter

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Oct 15, 1999
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... and if it's an IDE drive, totally screwed up HDD throughput while listening to music. Go analog, either switch one to a digital cable if your hardware offers that, or use the AUX connector for the 2nd one. (But why would you want to listen to two CDs at the same time anyway?)

regards, Peter
 

bsauerbr

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Sep 4, 2001
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Originally posted by: bozo1
Why use an audio cable at all? You can just choose digital audio from any recent drive, no audio cable need, and better sound quality to boot.

So do you have to hook up the digital output of the CDROM/CDRW/DVDROM to the soundcard? Or does it goes thru the IDE cable? I've seen the "Digital Audio" choice and I think I have it checked, but haven't looked into it.


Originally posted by: Peter
But why would you want to listen to two CDs at the same time anyway?)

Maybe not at the same time, but as a convenience of being able to use either drive for playback. I just a added a DVD-ROM and switched the audio cable to it. Now I can hook up my CDRW to AUX and play from either one.
 

Wynner3

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Jul 4, 2002
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But why would you want to listen to two CDs at the same time anyway?

The answer to that (for me anyway) is simple. If you play games but don't like the music, in one drive you can have the CD for the game and the other with a music CD of your choice.

 

Peter

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Oct 15, 1999
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Well yes, but then still only one of the drives would be active in audio play mode. The other one (where the game CD is) need not have an audio wire.

bsauerbr, there are three methods of replaying audio from a CD drive:

* Audio, analog. The drive converts the data on the CD into an audio stream, and makes an analog signal from it. This goes directly (via a separate stereo cable) into the in/out mixer unit of the computer's sound equipment. No data pass through the system.

* Audio, digital. Same, except that the drive sends a digital audio stream down to the system's sound unit, again through a separate cable. The sound card then either loops that through to a digital output, or converts to its analog outputs in its CODEC. Again, no data pass through the system.

* Data mode (what Windows XP calls "Digital"). The raw data from the CD is being read into main RAM (as you would when ripping a CD image to make a copy). The system CPU then converts this to sound card stereo data format, and makes the sound card play that. Data travel through the IDE or SCSI cable into main RAM, the CPU converts these data from RAM into another section in RAM, from where the sound card fetches the final replay data through the PCI or chipset internal bus. That sums up to a whole lot of traffic.

regards, Peter
 

bsauerbr

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Sep 4, 2001
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I just checked the Properties on Device Manager and "Enable digital CD Audio for this CD-ROM device" is checked for both my CDRW and DVD.

So, even though I have an analog cable from the DVD-ROM to the sound card, XP is bypassing the cable and using the "Digital" or "Data mode".

DING DING DING! (The light goes on) I've been burning audio CD's then reinserting them to check. The CDRW no longer has an analog cable but has been playing just fine due to this 3rd option I didn't really understand. Very nice.

Thx for the info.
 

Peter

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Oct 15, 1999
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You're welcome. As I said above, you should set the drive you use to listen to music CDs back to "analog" (and wire it to the sound card of course), in order to have the full IDE and system performance available while playing the CD.

regards, Peter
 

fr

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
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Ghetto way:

If your CD drive has a headphone jack at the front (almost all do, but my Toshiba DVD doesn't), get a stereo cable and connect it to your line-in on your sound card at the back of your computer.

:)