CD-RW/CD-ROM audio question

[Broncho]

Here's the deal. I replaced the heatsink/fan on my northbridge and then brought my system back up to make sure everything was still working (i.e. I got everything connected back up correctly). I stuck a game disc in my CD-ROM (Panasonic) and it's splash screen came up, complete with sound. I then put it in my CD-RW (Plextor) and the splash screen came up complete with sound. This confused me since I only had the audio cable connected to my CD-ROM. I have always thought that the only way to get sound out of a CD-ROM/RW was to connect it to the sound card via an audio cable. Can anyone explain why I got sound from my CD-RW when it only connected to my system by an IDE cable? Thanks for any help because I am really curious.

 

[Peter]

The audio cable is used for replay of Audio disks, looping through the sound card's codec only.

Games generate music in the computer (from files loaded off the disk into the system's RAM), using the actual sound engine. Loading files off CD, may they contain programs, graphics, sound or whatever, obviously works through the data cable.

regards, Peter

 

[Broncho]

Thanks Peter, I knew I was missing something obvious. At least that is one confusion solved. I bet if I had thought about it longer I would have figured it out. Thanks again for your help.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Don't feel too bad, earlier games like Quake2, Blood, HOMM2 did include plain audio tracks on the CD for in-game music and did require the analog audio cable to hear them.