I was looking around to find the best dvd burner and found that the Plextor PX-708A and the TDK 420N Indi DVD were one of the best (at cnet). The only bad thing was, their is no drive to sound cable. Can someone tell me what the cable will do, and if it is a bad thing? Thanks!
Hi, Those cables are rarely, if ever, used anymore. All the audio from the drive is run through the system nowadays with no cable requirements so in answer to your query, it isn't a bad thing. For what it's worth, I'd get the Plextor if I were you - nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more!
The drive->soundcard cable is a bit of a legacy item. In the bad old days, this was used to enable users to play cd-audio through their PC. These days (ie. Windows 98 onwards [I think]) our operating systems / device drivers support the 'ripping' of cd-audio as binary data to play through your sound card. Have you noticed that the 'CD Volume' option in your sound config doesn't actually alter the volume of cd-audio playback? That's because it now goes through the 'Wave' part. The old method is still supported, but bear in mind that because it's a legacy option, the components used are cheap. You will likely only hear 12-bit sound when using the drive->soundcard cable. The excellent foobar 0.8.2 (http://www.foobar2000.org/) will happily resample cd-audio to 24-bit 96KHz (with the right sound card) and will provide a much more pleasant listening experience _X_X_X_X_X_[small]-- Anyone seen my bitch?[/small]
