SATA DVD internal burner question.

[fritzfield]

I've always had PATA, but I'm upgrading MOBO, etc. I bought a Lite-On Model #LH-20A1L. It does not have an audio connector. All my PATA CD and DVD drives had such a connector. Am I missing something here? Does the SATA interface somehow provide the audio functionality? I never gave the audio connector a thought when I bought this, but now that I am installing it, I can't figure out how I'll get sound when I play an audio CD or a DVD.

BTW, I am not a total Luddite.

 

[Synomenon]

I've never seen a SATA optical drive with a separate audio connector. All data (including audio) is sent through the SATA cable. Even with most IDE drives, you didn't need to connect the audio connector on the drive to anything as all the data and audio was sent through the IDE cable. I think the audio connection was just left over from the days when optical drives had headphone ports on them.

 

[drebo]

The Audio cable was originally needed because operating systems pre-Windows ME had no way to process the digital audio information from the CD. So, the CD drive itself did it and sent the raw audio stream directly to the sound card.

Obviously, Windows 2000, XP, and Vista do have the digital capability to read the audio data right off the CD, and as such the audio cable is no longer necessary. This applies to BOTH PATA and SATA optical drives.

 

[fritzfield]

Thank you, both, for the quick and simple explanation. I fell better now.