CD-IN Cable..

[silencer534]

What is it used for? Is it needed?

 

[Sid59]

it used to carry the audio signal from the drive to the mobo to the sound card.

it's useless these day and is carried through the IDE cable.

guess you can just go from the cd drive directly to the mobo or pci soundcard.

 

[Sonix7]

Only If you're playing CD-Audio in an analog mode, the cable will be used to tranfer the music towards the sound card. otherwise it'll use the IDE interface

 

[Auric]

The best method is the direct digital cable because it avoids using the ROM drive's invariably low quality DAC and further potential for picking up interference (as with the analog cable method) in favor of maintaining a perfect signal to the final output DAC (soundcard or external device). The PCI bus method via ribbon cable (also the standard for DVD) has the same advantage but with the drawback of loading the PCI bus. It is also cheaper because it does not require headers (particularly in the case of on-board software audio) or additional cables. Generally the additional load would only be significant if playing a CD while also running a game or other intensive program. Many software players these days default to the PCI bus method regardless of the OS setting. Winamp is one that does not.