Why isn't the audio cd cable not needed anymore??

Phil2008 · 4 Apr 2006 at 20:51

I always thought you needed the cd audio cable pluged in from the soundcard to the cdrom.. When did this change? cos up until now i've always plugged in the cable

Ive just found out 5 mins ago that you dont need it plugged in anymore when you listern to audio cds.

james.miller · 4 Apr 2006 at 21:47

because since the release of winXP (and probably before) cd-roms have been able to pass the digital data form an audio cd down the ide cable and to the soundcard that way. welcome to the present

Phil99 · 4 Apr 2006 at 22:29

Pretty sure it worked fine without the cable in 98SE as well?

Something to do with DMA so it was possible to send the data over the IDE cable?

Not sure on the accuracy of this though.

jhmaeng · 4 Apr 2006 at 23:31

I've been using it sans problems in Windows 2000 for yonks as well. Don't need XP to use digital audio streaming from the CD-ROM. You do need to go to the Properties of the optical drive and then choose Digital Sound Streaming (or whatever they actually call it) in case it's not enabled by default.

Angilion · 5 Apr 2006 at 01:41

The usual term is, IIRC, Digital Audio Extraction. It needs to be supported by the drive itself, AFAIK. It did work with Win98, as I recall using it.