Audio Out from DVD drives

**Scafremon** · 04-26-2003, 06:25 PM

Do all DVD drives send their audio out signal through the IDE cable?

I'm in the process of hooking up my car computer, and during a test, I realized I was getting audio from my Toshiba slim notebook DVD player, even though I didn't have an audiocable hooked up to it. I've got another drive also (a pioneer 5.25" slot drive), and I am wondering if I need to hook an audio cable up to it. I wouldsimply do the test again, bubt I am kinda beyond that point, and would require that I go through a bunch of gyrations to test it. While I could go ahead and hook up an audio cable to this drive, if it has audio through the IDE, then I'd rather not have the extra cable hooked up. It might be a difference between digital sound and analog sound?

I'm clueless- hoping for some quick direction.

Thanks!

**hijinks21** · 04-26-2003, 07:26 PM

i'm almost sure that all drives send audio through the IDE channel. This is since the audio is encoded on the disc and it can't be sent right to the soundcard since the card can't decode it.

**Alphared** · 04-26-2003, 10:37 PM

Nope, depends on the drive. You can have audio out sent to your sound card. most DVD and cd rom drive can send audio thru IDE cable if you have Digital CD playback enabled. So you can use just the IDE cable or seperate one, depending what you want to do.

**aoLhaTer** · 04-27-2003, 03:25 AM

heh
i havent used a damn internal audio cable in ages, no need to anymore with modern drives and operating systems

**euro320i** · 05-02-2003, 09:54 AM

Hi ,

Most MS OS's have had digital Audiio for a while.

I you take a look in your Device manager a nd the properties on the CD or DVD drive you'll notice an option chech by default that says Enable Digital CD audio for this CD-ROM Device. It gets the music digitally and the PC converts it to an analogue output.

;-)

**churnopol** · 05-10-2003, 08:50 AM

if you use a usb enclosure, it converts the digital/analog outputs on the dvd-rom to a standard heaphone jack. Now you have two headphone jacks on your dvd. But on most DVD/CD-ROMS, if you plug an IDE cable into it, the front headphone jack wont work. This is were the USB enclosure hase the advantage, the back headphone jack always works, so you can plug it in directly into your amp. Another thing, you dont have to have your computer turned on to play CD(A)s.

**abbas** · 05-10-2003, 09:18 PM

I believe all PC dvd drive have SPDIF or digital output as well.

**digitallexus** · 05-11-2003, 12:11 AM

Audio out on a dvd/cd drive should only apply when playing redbook audio (i.e. standard audio CD's).

Dvd audio is multiplexed along with the video stream into a .VOB file. Decoding of audio does not happen in the dvd drive. Usually the dvd playback software will decode the stream (possibly downsampling or mixing the ac3 channels into 2 channel stereo), and then output to the wave device (or to directsound).

If you have a hardware assist dvd decoder card, then the audio decode will occur on the hardware. Usually these cards will have an audio out, which you can route to your sound card.

So the only reason to hook up audio to a dvd drive is if you think you will be playing standard audio cd's. As was pointed out earlier in the thread, most recent windows OS's will do on the fly DAE (digital audio extraction). This reads raw audio data sector by sector and outputs to the wave device. No audio will be present on the dvd drive audio out in this case.

**98explorerxlt** · 05-11-2003, 06:23 AM

for some reason i had to run a jumper from my video card to my sound card to hear dvd audio am i doing something wrong I ripped my internal audio cable out it worked fine before

**churnopol** · 05-11-2003, 09:05 AM

nope i have to do that too

Thread: Audio Out from DVD drives

LinkBack

Thread Tools

Search Thread

Display

Audio Out from DVD drives

Bookmarks

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions