Stupid Question - What's the 2 pin cd audio jack on my cdrom drive?

[mikeyd]

Stupid Question -

I've allways seen the 4 pin analog jack, but now I have a cdrom with a 2 pin cd audio jack and my sound card has an input for it. I know it is digital vs the 4 pin being analog. Anyone know exactly what the advantages are with using the 2 pin over the 4 pin and do you use them both or just one or the other.

 

[Jiggz]

It's the digital audio output. I'm not sure if you can use them both at the same time.

 

[nord1899]

Not sure if there is really an advantage using one or the other. The way I use them is my DVD goes thru digital and my CD-RW goes thru analogue. Just gives you more options.

 

[inqztive]

It's for digital audio input to your sound card. fpr example if you have a "Cd digital in" on your sound card (sound blaster Live!) then you can connect it to that port. In that case you don't need to use the 3 pin analogue out at the back of your Cd rom. But under Windows 200 or XP or ME you don't need either. Youc an just enable " Digital audio" and you are good. But when you enable digital audio you use the Data Cable (IDE cable) for tranfering the audio data to the sound card through your PCI bus and it takes some bandwidth of the PCI bus and that much less bandwidth is avlaible to your other IDE devices like Hard drive etc.

 

[bacillus]

mind you, because it's present doesn't mean it will actually work! 🙁