x-fi to cdrom connection?

[Darth Flatus]

In my last build my soundcard came with analog and digital wires to connect it to my cdrom. My X-Fi Platinum box did not come with these wires but the card itself retains the ports for them. Are these still necessary?

 

[schapman]

you don't need the analogue ones

 

[BBA]

You dont need the digital or analog ones anymore, but you can and you can select to use them even, why you would want to I don't know.

It's works over the data bus without the clutter of the extra wires.

 

[PGHammer]

You dont need the digital or analog ones anymore, but you can and you can select to use them even, why you would want to I don't know.

It's works over the data bus without the clutter of the extra wires.

Actually, I have a use for them: straight listening without ripping (using my drive as a straight audio CD player). This has been a *feature* of every CD-ROM drive practically from the beginning (back when Intel's 486DX was still on the drawing board), and even the fastest DVD DL drives *still* include this for backward-compatibility. Some motherboards (notably ASUS and ABIT) even take advantage by letting you load an audio CD in the drive and control it from the BIOS (no OS needed). Alternatively, you can use the analog connection if your drive has issues with over-the-PCI-bus (digital-direct) ripping (some non-Lite-On and non-Plextor drives DO have issues in this area).

 

[BBA]

So what is the general quality of the DAC's on the typical CDROM?

My thoughts were they were always cheaper than DAC's on a decent sound card so they were useless. Never though of the media player boot cd player functions.