Have Window's sounds but no CD sounds? (1 Viewer)

[Ushabye]

My girlfriend just got a second hand computer which I've been fine tuning. But for some reason that I cant figure there's no sound coming from the CD drive, but the usual computer Window's sounds are working fine.

The sound card is ok and recognised, the volume levels are fine. But still NADA! You can hear the CD if you plug the speakers into the phone jack on the front but not from the jack in the sound card.

Any ideas?

 

[Jeff Kleist]

You don't have the digital or analog audio output from the CD drive hooked up to the sound card.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

To expand on what Jeff said:

Few people realize that cd playback is transmitted often in the analog realm to the soundcard. The backside of the drive has an analog output which is often routed directly from the drive to the soundcard (really nothing more hi-tech than plugging a cd player into your receiver).

When you select play in software- it really only sends the command to the drive, and the audio passes out the audio send on the drive directly to the card. The processor itself really sees none of the audio.

More recently, with the he-man hardware PCs have now, it is easier to actually read the digital info from the disc, and convert it to be sent to the card. Basically, you could think that it "rips" the disc to data and converts it to audio in real time.

In your system, you probably don't have an analog connection from the drive to the soundcard. You can force the machine to read audio in the digital domain (the most recent version of Media Player does this- by default I believe... and winamp has a plugin to make that happen). The only potential problem is hardware speed- if you don't have decent horsepower, you will get drop outs.

So, i'd try the most recent media player (check settings if it doesn't work by default)... if that doesn't work I can find the plugin for winamp. If you don't have enough processor power-- then you can potentially get the cable you need to wire it analog, and with some work can make it happen.

-V

 

[Ushabye]

Thanks for the advice! So when this computer was new and put together the analog connection was never plugged into the sound card? It's a pretty old system: Windows 95, Pentium2 200mhz. Would there be much of a point to me loading the latest Media Player onto it? Would it be much hassle opening it up and connecting the analog? I'd need to hunt down a plug for this, yeah?

Thanks again, dude.

 

[Rich Milak]

it may already inside it's a white 4 pin connector just connect it to the sound card

 

[NickSo]

The end that goes into the CD Drive is flat, and black.. it should have three wires (red, white, black) coming out of it....

The other end could be the same, or it could be a white plug

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Before even opening up the computer to check for wires, be sure to open the full audio mixer and make sure all the audio channels are not muted and turned up (it's possible that the CD output is hooked to the wrong jack on the card-- so it might be listed as AUX instead of CD in the mixer).

If you double click the volume speaker in the SYS TRAY at the bottom right, you'll get the full mixer. If you go to OPTIONS>PROPERTIES you will be able to pick which volume controls to display in the mixer-- pick them all and make sure all are unmuted and turned up before opening the case.

You never know, the CD output might be hooked to the "line in" connector on the card, so the line in volume might be the one you need...

-V