What is this cable for?

[slinky22]

I can't for the life of me figure out what in the world this cable is for. It has two female ends that are black with four small holes in them. The wires are white, black and red. I thought all a DVD drive needed was a regular power connector and an IDE cable? What in the world is this for? It's small enough to be an LED connector.

 

[fireontheway]

sounds like it's an analogue audio cable.

 

[slinky22]

Do I need to use it?

 

[AnotherGuy]

i think ur talking about the Audio cable... that is needed i think... if u want to hear music directly from ur dvd/cd rom... like u just pop a music cd on it and do not want to open Windows MediA pLAYER or anything like that... so u just press the play button on ur cd rom and cd will start playing...

If u dont connect that cable to the right place in ur mobo then u wont be able to do that...

 

[slinky22]

I also have an NEC 3500 and it didn't come with such a cable. Does this mean the NEC won't be able to play CDs and movies etc?

 

[whiteagle]

It's an old sound CD audio cable. Pretty much useless these days. That is if it looks something like this.

 

[whiteagle]

Geez, never have to wait for an answer on this board.

 

[slinky22]

Tell me why it's useless.

 

[fireontheway]

go to my computer>right click on on your drive>click the hardware tab,from the window select the targeted device>click properties,from the device properties' tab select properties again and make sure the box is checked to enable Digital CD Audio for the device,then you wont need it .

 

[slinky22]

What's the advantage to using that over the analog cable? Does it read sound directly off the CD instead of filtering through the cable?

 

[Auric]

Ackshilly, 'tis best to use a digital audio cable direct to a sound card to avoid loading the PCI bus. However, that function has been dropped from some of the latest ROM drives thanks to the DVD standard being the bus method and popular OS' long having the feature. The analog method is generally least desirable because it uses the craptastic DAC in the ROM drive and is also prone to RFI/EMI.

 

[whiteagle]

When you use the cable it translates it into an analog signal which travels over the cable to your soundcard where it is reconverted back into a digital signal. When you use the digital signal, it is read as a digital signal, goes down your ide through your ram, across your cpu, and into your sound card all as a digital signal. Not to mention it's one less wire in your system, and for me, that's always a good thing.

 

[batmanuel]

The cable is also pretty much useless if you are like me and buy a CD, rip it to your hard drive, and then put it back in the jewel case - never to touch it again for years. Audio extraction is better and faster if you use just use the IDE cable. I haven't used the analog cable with my CD/DVD drives for years.

 

[JBT]

That cable hasn't been needed since win 2K came out. It defaults to digital which travels through your IDE cables.

 

[lenjack]

It's useless.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Analog CD-ROM audio is only really useful for two things - old DOS games, that utilize the CD-ROM's audio-playback commands, and listening to audio CDs in the background on your PC, without taking up PCI/IDE bus bandwidth. Also if you have a drive with physical front-panel controls, and you use those to play the audio CD. I still hook that cable up, but don't really use it for much, can't recall the last time that I booted into DOS to play a CD game.

 

[Auric]

Playing an audio CD while doing anything else intensive, especialy gaming, is the primary use of a direct audio cable versus the bus method but of course the digital audio cable is much preferred over analog. Many players these days, however, default to the bus method regardless of the OS setting.

 

[dc5]

anything from win2000 and later will not need the cable.