Analogue or digital sound?

  • Thread starter Thread starter quietguy
  • Start date Start date
Q

quietguy

I am a bit confused at the moment re analogue and digital sound as
regard to input on my computer from DVD/CD drives.

On my mother board there are two inputs for sound - I had my Pioneer AO6
writer's digital output connected to one of them, and the analogue
output of my Samsung DVD/CD player connected to the other. All was well.

Until my Pioneer gave up the ghost and I bought a AO7 to replace it -
then when I connected the Pioneer digital output to the board I got a
constant 'whistle'. Changed the connection to the Pioneers analogue
output and all was well.

Strangely, if I omit the connections to the motherboards audio inputs, I
still get good sound when playing DVDs and music CDs.

While of course I understand the difference between analogue and
digital, I am not sure which method of connection will give me the best
results when I make my movies for DVD and CD in MM2.

eg since I am only getting analogue sound from any DVDs I want to copy
does that mean???? How can that be? I thought EVERYTHING on a DVD or
CD was in digital format.

Any help much appreciated

David
 
Hello there,

I did read up on this once because I had a DVD burner AND a separate CD burner
in the same box. I cannot now remember what was said but I do know that I did
not bother with the extra connection to the Digital Connector on the
motherboard. There are options in the sound control for setting Digital Source
only, I get white noise if I select that.

I would not worry about it too much. I record DVD's in stereo and am very
pleased with the result. I get perfect 5.1 audio from the dvd with pre-recorded
disks and great stereo from the cd.
 
Thanks mate- much appreciated

David

John said:
Hello there,

I did read up on this once because I had a DVD burner AND a separate CD burner
in the same box. I cannot now remember what was said but I do know that I did
not bother with the extra connection to the Digital Connector on the
motherboard. There are options in the sound control for setting Digital Source
only, I get white noise if I select that.

I would not worry about it too much. I record DVD's in stereo and am very
pleased with the result. I get perfect 5.1 audio from the dvd with pre-recorded
disks and great stereo from the cd.
Click to expand...
 
It's a historical thing. When CD drives were originally made for PCs, most
PCs didn't have a sound board (those came later). The CD drive contained the
circuitry to pull out the digital music bits and convert them to analog,
sending that music out the front headphone jack and out the back to a sound
board. There was little standardization, if any, regarding the actual
connectors on that audio cable.

More powerful PCs read the digital data from the CD, and do the conversion
to analog on the sound board...the old audio cable is no longer needed but
many motherboards and sound boards keep them for backwards compatibility.

Which is best? Good question - I don't know the resolutions of the different
Digital to Analog converters involved, but I'd assume the sound board would
have better electronics than the CD drive for this purpose.

Dana Cline - MVP
 
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