CD audio problem

[slunk]

I am sitting at my brother's computer, and he has a little problem I cannot figure out with CD audio. He is running Win98 SE with an AOpen AW744 Pro soundcard and a Lite-On 16x DVD drive. All audio works properly on this system except for CD audio. When an audio CD is inserted, Windows explorer identifies it as an audio cd and gives a track listing, but it will not play anything. The CD Player program provided with 98 SE does not recognize the CD in the drive, and Winamp will play the files but without sound. DVDs play just perfect with audio on the same drive. I am using a regular analog cable to connect the sound card and the DVD drive. If any more info is needed, just ask and I'll post.

 

[slunk]

ehhh?

 

[slunk]

anyone?

 

[Ryukumu]

Could you explain in a little more detail what happens when you try to play an audio CD? Any error messages?

 

[slunk]

There are no error messages. It plays through the player and the drive, but no sound comes through at all when played through Winamp. Windows CD Player doesn't even recognize that an audio CD is in the drive, but Windows Explorer does and lists all the track files. MP3s, DVDs, and all other audio formats play perfectly fine.

 

[yugpatel]

My humble suggestion is start with checking the connection from drive's audio out to audio in on the sound card. Meaning check the connection and the cable to start with.

 

[slunk]

I checked the cable, but I don't think that could be the problem because DVD audio plays perfectly fine.

 

[Ryukumu]

You've probably already tried this, but I'll ask anyway. Is CD Audio muted under volume settings?

 

[Amber]

I would look in control panel,multimrdia on the audio page,check the box use only preferred devices ,go on CD music tab ,the default CD-ROM drive for playing CD music needs to be the letter of your drive,uncheck enable digital CDaudio for this CD ROM device
see if any of this will help 😉

 

[slunk]

Cd audio volume settings are not muted and are turned up.

Amber: The only thing that wasn't the same was the 'only prefered devices' was not checked. Windows CD player now recognizes the discs and plays them, but absolutely no audio comes through the speakers while the disc is being played.

This is such a weird problem. I don't know.

 

[Hoo]

The problem here is DVD audio plays fine. What do you mean by that?

Ok, I am no expert and do not intend to state the obvious. The following is my understanding of how cd/dvd drives function:

In watching dvd movie, the audio stream go through the ide cable, in mpeg2.
Burned mp3 files in cd/dvd play through winamp also go through the ide cable.

For audio cd, sound track could go through the audio cable or the digital audio cable directly to the sound card.
Some cd/dvd drives don't have digital audio sockets. Some do but they don't work.
The analog audio cable has 4 pins and connect to the cd-in of the sound card.
Most sound cards like sblive have cd-in and digital-cd-in (2 pins).
Some software directly rips the sound from audio cd through the ide cable, but most cd players don't.

 

[slunk]

Are you sure that DVD audio goes through the IDE cable? If so, that may be the problem, but in that case, I don't entirely understand the purpose of a digital audio cable to the soundcard. Sure it would increase audio clarification and all, but I thought they were there so the CPU doesn't have to process the audio when has to go to the sound card anyway. I thought the DVD drive sends the audio to the sound card to process. I guess I could be wrong, though.

 

[slunk]

Hoo: I missed the mpeg2 stuff. This is starting to make more sense. I also tried playing audio through his re-writeable drive without luck. It is using a different cable. Could this mean a bad sound card?

 

[XWolfsraider]

try settings-control panel-sound -options-properties then select everything in list while playing cd
then apply and un mute all boxes. if sound works cool

if not then ?

hope this helps


mike