CD-Audio Cables

[nater]

Sometimes I connect them. Sometimes I don't. I get CD audio either way. What purpose do they serve?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Old DOS/W95 games with WAV audio tracks. Get a copy of Mechwarrior 2 and you'll need that cable 🙂

 

[PurdueRy]

Pretty much none anymore

 

[Slick5150]

CDAudio used to be transferred over that cable (back in the Win95 era). Nowadays that audio is also transferred over IDE, so the cable isn't needed. Why they still include them with CD/DVD drives is a bit of a mystery to me.

 

[corkyg]

They are also there so that CD audio can be played through an external stereo system without going through the computer. That is another legacy item - we did that many years ago back in the DOS days.

 

[Vad3r]

CDAudio used to be transferred over that cable (back in the Win95 era). Nowadays that audio is also transferred over IDE, so the cable isn't needed. Why they still include them with CD/DVD drives is a bit of a mystery to me.

not to sure about Win2k, but I believe the cable wasn't required after WinXP's release. But "if" you ever decide to try out linux one day, it still uses that cable for CD audio.
1st time trying linux, I couldn't get cd audio to work, everything else did. Then I found I didn't have that cable connected.

Doesn't hurt to keep it.

 

[Auric]

The direct digital cable option is preferable to transferring via the PCI bus. However it is increasingly being eliminated to reduce costs as most users will not benefit significantly anyway.

The direct analog cable option should generally be avoided unless absolutely necessary due to usually poor quality DAC in ROM drives. Perhaps with a mid 1990's system sans the digital cable option and having poor audio system DACs anyway, the analog cable may be preferred to the PCI bus.

The PCI bus method is the standard for DVD though so cannot generally be avoided for playing movies.

 

[orangat]

No its not needed in win2k/xp. The option to enable digital audio should be checked in device manager.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Slick5150
CDAudio used to be transferred over that cable (back in the Win95 era). Nowadays that audio is also transferred over IDE, so the cable isn't needed. Why they still include them with CD/DVD drives is a bit of a mystery to me.

Maybe because there are warehouses in Taiwan and China that have thousands upon thousands of CD audio cables that they just can't seem to get rid of. 🙂
Sort of like why there are rounded cables for floppy drives selling for 19 cents or less. USB Thumbdrives invaded in force, and floppy drives died off quicker than the sellers had planned, so now they're practically giving them away just to free up warehouse space.

 

[Zepper]

That cable allows you to play Audio CDs without necessarily loading any media player program to do so. Some older CD drives had a "play" button on them for that purpose - I think you can still find very small utility programs out there that act as software "play buttons".. The headphone jack that used to exist on optical drives allowed the same thing - it would cut out that analog audio out when you had headphones plugged in.

.bh.