CD Connector

[KurtD]

I'm embarrassed to ask this question but my curiousity is greater than my pride..... I notice there are two similar connectors on the back of the CD drives I own. One has 4 pins that is connected to my sound card - I know what that is for... What is the adjacent 2-pin connector for? I think it says "digital I/O" or something like that. Don't recall any explanation in the documentation that came with my drive (although it been a while since I installed it). Just curious. Thanks.

 

[Shmorq]

I believe the 2 pin connector gets connected to the sound card for CD playback as well. The difference being that it sends the data digitally as opposed to the other which is an analog signal.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Cenalian]

I thought that the 4-pin connecter sent digitally as well. I believe that its only converted to analog when it goes from the sound card to the speakers.

Then again, I'm probably wrong on this. Not like thats never happened

 

[DeeK]

The four-pin is analog - there's the left channel, right channel and two ground wires. All CD-ROMs have a digital-to-analog convertor inside that is used for the analog output and the headphone jack.

The two-pin is digital, which tends to sound better because (being digital) it's highly resistant to noise - and the inside of a PC is very electrically noisy. However, many drives don't have it enabled - all you'd get is silence if you try to use it in that case. Also, many sound cards don't have a digital CD-in, but many of the higher-profile ones do, ie Santa Cruz, SBLives (except the newer Values), etc. I don't think the AE has it, though.