Another sound question.

[Nikolas Britton]

Björn Lindström wrote:

>Nikolas Britton <freebsd at nbritton.org> writes:
>
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>>Yea kind, The sound card still has to convert the pcm data from the CD
>>into music and output it to the speakers though,
>>    
>>
>
>No, the CD-ROM does that and sends it to the sound card as a plain old
>analog audio signal, so the only part of the sound card that comes into
>play is the mixer.
>
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>
Actually yea now that I've had time to think about it, the cable that 
goes from the CD-Rom to the sound card is usually a 3 or  4 wire cable, 
like you see in head phones, so based on that fact it has to be analog 
already. What about the ones that have 2-pin digital audio out and what 
about direct digital playback (i.g. ripping)?

The point is still mute though, you have to have at least a 
semi-functional sound card to get the mixer working.