Digital outputs on DVD drives (1 Viewer)

[Mike Veroukis]

Hello!

I have a Pioneer DVD-105S DVD drive which is equipped with digital output. My sound card unfortunately is the lame-o chip on the MB itself and doesn't have digital output capabilities. I tried to hook up the digital output from the DVD drive directly to my receiver. I bought a computer digital SPDIF cable and spliced it with an RCA cable. I hooked one end into the back of the DVD drive and the other end I hooked up to the receiver. I popped in a audio CD and I noticed the PCM indicator light up on my Yamaha RX-V2200. However, no sound was coming through at all. What gives? The DVD ROM drive is obviously outputting the signal and the receiver is obviously decoding it, why is the signal a blank? Interestingly, if I stop playing the PCM indicator goes out. This makes sense to me, what doesn't make sense is why I don't hear any music!

My drive is connected via IDE, analogue and digital audio cables. The analogue goes to the sound card on the MB. Perhaps this is causing the problem? I don't know. Can anyone give me any info on what the digital output on this drive is for? How can I get it to work? Also, will it output digital audio for DVD audio tracks like DD/DTS? I get the feeling that it wouldn't, but it would be nice if it did. Anyway, any info would be appreciated, thanks.

- Mike

 

[Matt DeVillier]

Mike,

the digital out on the dvdrom is for connecting to the sound card's digital input (which you don't have). This would allow you to bypass the DACs in the dvdrom drive for redbook cd audio only. However, it never caught on and most sound cards don't have a digital input. Nowadays, current OSes and cd apps support playing cd audio digitally over the IDE bus, so you don't need any connection between the sound card and cd/dvdrom drive. If you are looking to connect to your recevier digitally, you need to purchase a sound card with either a coax or optical SPDIF output. this will allow you to play audio cds "digitally" (using the DACs in your receiver) as well as pass the DD/DTS bitstream from dvd movies.