CD-ROM Audio, Digital, Anolog cables. What I have found.

[MrWhiteUK]

Just thought people would like to know what I have found with a bit of messing around.

My machine

Santa Cruz
Win2k
Pioneer DVD-106s


My SC is connected to my receiver digitally through coax, I wanted to avoid all the anolog stages and have only a digital stream being passed from the computer and decoded by the DAC in my receiver.

This was not a problem with .WAV's etc but CD-Audio needed a little experimentation.

At first I plugged the 2pin digital cable into the back of the pionner and then into the SC, no CD-Audio. Tried the 3pin Anolog cable and CD worked but this is not what I wanted but then I found out there is an option in the device manager to enable cd digital audio through the pci bus I enabled this and was happy. Someone then mentioned that CD-Audio should now be controlled by the WAV mixer tab and not the CD one, I mute my CD and the music stops, eh? Opened the case pulled out the Anolog cable and my CD-Audio was now controlled by the WAV tab on the mixer and not the CD tab.

So basically:

Digital out on the Pionner 106 slot DVD does fcuk all.
An anolg CD-ROM audio cable will overide the 'use digital audio' setting.


Hope that helps somebody


Peace

 

[TunaBoo]

So just using the IDE cable will send the music digitally? Or what, I nevr found a reason to install the digital or analog cable on my CD-Rom or DVD drive.

 

[MrWhiteUK]

Yeah, it's all about which component does the Digital->Anolog conversion which is the primary factor in sound quality.

The most likely order from worst to best would be:

CD/DVD drive
Sound Card
External Decoder

Obviously it depends on each component.

Using the CD-ROM drives DAC
Say for example you had your drive connected up to your SC with a 3pin anolog cable,
The digital data would be read off the CD, converted to anolog by the drive and sent to SC where it will stay anolg all the way to the speakers, unless your card has a digital out it will be converted BACK to digital (but quality has already been lost as it has already been anolog)

Using the Sound Card's DAC
Now if you replace the 3pin anolog cable with a 2pin digital cable (if your drive/card has the correct input/outputs) or if you don't use any cable and use the 'use digital cd audio' option the drive wont convert the data it will just output it still in digital form to the card which will do the conversion and pass the anolog to your speakers.

Using an External Decoder
Now if you use the same setup as the one above but connect the 'digital out' on the sound card to an external receiver/decoder, that will take care of the decoding which is likely to give the best sound, assuming the DAC is of a higher quality thatn the sound card's.

Basically you want to keep the signal digitally until it gets to the component that will do the best job of converting it.

There is also the matter of downsampling along the way but I won't get into that.

Hope that helps some.

 

[TunaBoo]

<< Yeah, it's all about which component does the Digital->Anolog conversion which is the primary factor in sound quality.

The most likely order from worst to best would be:

CD/DVD drive
Sound Card
External Decoder

Obviously it depends on each component.

Using the CD-ROM drives DAC
Say for example you had your drive connected up to your SC with a 3pin anolog cable,
The digital data would be read off the CD, converted to anolog by the drive and sent to SC where it will stay anolg all the way to the speakers, unless your card has a digital out it will be converted BACK to digital (but quality has already been lost as it has already been anolog)

Using the Sound Card's DAC
Now if you replace the 3pin anolog cable with a 2pin digital cable (if your drive/card has the correct input/outputs) or if you don't use any cable and use the 'use digital cd audio' option the drive wont convert the data it will just output it still in digital form to the card which will do the conversion and pass the anolog to your speakers.

Using an External Decoder
Now if you use the same setup as the one above but connect the 'digital out' on the sound card to an external receiver/decoder, that will take care of the decoding which is likely to give the best sound, assuming the DAC is of a higher quality thatn the sound card's.

Basically you want to keep the signal digitally until it gets to the component that will do the best job of converting it.

There is also the matter of downsampling along the way but I won't get into that.

Hope that helps some. >>



What is the advantage to me using a 3 pin cable to my sound card vs &quot;Use digital audio&quot;. Will the 3 pin cable save bandwith off my PCI bus or what?

 

[MrWhiteUK]

<< What is the advantage to me using a 3 pin cable to my sound card vs &quot;Use digital audio&quot;. Will the 3 pin cable save bandwith off my PCI bus or what? >>



Do you mean 3pin anolog or 2pin digital, If you mean what is the difference between using the internal 2pin digital cable as opposed to the pci bus, then yeah the pci option does use very little bandwidth but would give the same effect as the 2pin. Alot of CD-ROM drives have a digital out connector on the back but don't function properly, my Pionner slot is like that.


Peace

 

[inqztive]

interesting!!!