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I installed a Lite-On 48x12x48x CD-RW into my Compaq Presario 5000 series PC which was purchased 2 years ago.

It came originally with a CD-ROM, and when I installed the new CD-RW I just plugged in the IDE cable, and left the audio cable plugged into the CD-ROM.

I was doing a CD Speed test on the CD-RW tonight, and was SHOCKED to hear music from the CD-RW. How is this possible?

To compare, I have another PC that has an AMD K6-233mhz processor, about 5 years old. I installed a Cendyne 12x10x32x CD-RW into that machine over a year ago, and left the audio cable plugged into the OEM CD-ROM. Sure enough, on this PC I have no audio from the CD-RW.

Does anyone have any idea why I can get audio from the 48x CDRW?

Ahh, digital audio. The audio cable is an analog cable.
Digital Audio pros: Quality, cons: more of a system hog (pulls the data of the ide bus).
Analog: Doesn't use system resources (no Ide transfers), but a little worse on the quality, although I can't tell the differance.

I think that is because digital audio is enabled in the newer CDRWs so that even without a cable, you can hear music. It does not require an audio cable.
I am not too sure about this, have to read up on it a bit more.

Yes on older CD-ROM/CD-RW or older motherboard ( i am not sure ) you need an analog cable to hear audio cd . But with today hardware if you don't put an analog cable , sound will be transfered using IDE cable .
I was surprised when i noticed it the first time .

It isn't due to new hardware, since I can still do it with old hardware, but was only introduced with newer versions of windows. I think it may have been 2k but I'm not sure if they added it to ME or 98SE since I went from using 98 to 2k without ever buying 98SE or ME.

In fact it can still be done with older versions of windows like 98 if you download/buy a player that allows this. There is a free player that will use aspi, NT/2k's version of io which is sort of like aspi and whose name I can't recall at the moment or even mscdex (IIRC). This player runs on 9X, 2k and xp. It's called Digital CD Player from M. Yanagisawa and is available from a webpage (homepage2.nifty.com/~maid I think.) This player also displays CD Text.

Yes, that is the link. Here is a direct link to the download (as provided by the sorely missed Inertia in an earlier thread):

http://homepage2.nifty.com/~maid/fsw/dcdp_r107.zip

He also offers a free DAE utility as well. It is probably worth checking his English homepage:

http://homepage2.nifty.com/~maid/index_e.html

cfitz

Hmm, interesting. Both of my PC's run Windows ME, so OS wise there's not much difference, I think. They both also use Windows Media Player as well.

anyhow wrote:It isn't due to new hardware, since I can still do it with old hardware, but was only introduced with newer versions of windows. I think it may have been 2k but I'm not sure if they added it to ME or 98SE since I went from using 98 to 2k without ever buying 98SE or ME.

In fact it can still be done with older versions of windows like 98 if you download/buy a player that allows this. There is a free player that will use aspi, NT/2k's version of io which is sort of like aspi and whose name I can't recall at the moment or even mscdex (IIRC). This player runs on 9X, 2k and xp. It's called Digital CD Player from M. Yanagisawa and is available from a webpage (homepage2.nifty.com/~maid I think.) This player also displays CD Text.

I don't know about OS support for digital audio playback in ME. I do know it is built-in to 2000. And it is also a part of Windows Media Player at least from version 7 up (maybe earlier as well). You can enable digital playback in WMP by opening "Tools"->"Options...", clicking on the "CD Audio" tab, then checking "Digital Playback" in the "Playback Settings" section of the dialog. If you can see the fancy visualizations in WMP, you've already got digital playback enabled, because digital data is required for the calculations that produce the visualizations.

If you can't get it to work with your older Cendyne 12x10x32x, it may be because that drive doesn't support digital audio playback? Just a guess...

cfitz