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locating an analog audio cable

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  locating an analog audio cable Haines Brown <haines@HistoricalMaterialism.info> - 2011-12-06 13:24 -0500
    Re: locating an analog audio cable Clemens Ladisch <clemens@ladisch.de> - 2011-12-06 21:46 +0100
    Re: locating an analog audio cable J G Miller <miller@yoyo.ORG> - 2011-12-06 20:56 +0000
      Re: locating an analog audio cable Haines Brown <haines@HistoricalMaterialism.info> - 2012-02-16 10:38 -0500
        Re: locating an analog audio cable J G Miller <miller@yoyo.ORG> - 2012-02-16 17:31 +0000

#901 — locating an analog audio cable

I need one of those simple wires that runs from a CD drive to the sound
card in order to play CD audio disks. I understand that the CD drive
output is analog and so not sent to the digital bus, and a direct wire
is needed.

I find these analog wires a nuisance because they are not standard in
terms of their connectors. The one I have in hand has four-pin
connectors with one pin blocked, but it is not what I need. Is this a
dated technology and newer CD drives don't require the wire to audio
CDs?

My question is how to identify this wire so that a Newegg, Amazon
, etc. search can find it.

Haines Brown

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#903

Haines Brown wrote:
> I need one of those simple wires that runs from a CD drive to the sound
> card in order to play CD audio disks.

If you want to play CD audio disks, I'd suggest to use a player that can
read the audio data digitally and play it over the sound card, like, e.g.,
"mplayer cdda://".

> I find these analog wires a nuisance because they are not standard in
> terms of their connectors.

There was a connector standard, eventually, but nowadays the standard is
to omit this cable.

> Is this a dated technology and newer CD drives don't require the wire
> to audio CDs?

Computer makers did not bother with this cable since about the time of
Windows 95, which used only digital audio extraction.


Regards,
Clemens

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#904

On Tuesday, December 6th, 2011, at 13:24:58h -0500, Haines Brown wrote:

> I need one of those simple wires that runs from a CD drive to the sound
> card in order to play CD audio disks. I understand that the CD drive
> output is analog and so not sent to the digital bus, and a direct wire
> is needed.

There are three ways of getting audio from a CD drive to the sound card

1) analog three wire connection which uses a four pin plug

2) digital two wire connection which uses a two pin plug

3) digital extraction via the IDE cable or SATA cable

If your CD drive and audio card have digital two pin connectors then
it is better to use this than the analog cable.

A number of GNU/Linux software players support digital audio extraction
(DAE) and this has been the default method under Windoze for some time.

The downside is that the manufacturers of the CD can add extra data tracks
to the CD and stop the DAE method as an anti piracy method.

So when searching for a new cable look for either "analog CD cable" or
"digital CD cable"

Some audio cards do not use the same "flat plug" analog four pin connector
(usually black) as on the back of a CD drive but a vertical four cell block
connector (usually white).

Example of standard internal analog CD audio cable --

   <http://www.cyberguys.COM/product-details/?productid=529>

For the digital cable, both ends are a small black flat black plug.
This cables are often referred to as SPDIF Digital Audio Cables.

Remember this is the best way to connect your CD drive to sound
card if both devices have digital two pin SPDIF connectors.

If you to to a locally owned PC computer/repair shop, they may even
be prepared to just give you an analog cable for free since they
are regarded as "old fashioned" on Micro$oft DRM infested systems.

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#1055

J.G., I apologize for the long delayed reponse to your helpful note, but
a question remains.

I understand that some CD manufacturers defeat the standard DEA
extraction method from a CD disk by adding some anti-piracy tracks to
it.

Is there any way to know if such tracks exist other than being unable to
play the CD disk? Is this mechanism now fairly standard, or is it
unusual?

Do I understand correctly that if DEA is defeated, then one must use a
suitable wire connection between the CD drive and the sound card?  That
is, does the wire connection get around the anti-piracy block of DEA?

Haines Brown

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#1056

On Thursday, February 16th, 2012, at 10:38:22h -0500, Haines Brown wrote:

> J.G., I apologize for the long delayed reponse to your helpful note, but
> a question remains.

No problem -- I do understand you are very busy with your project.

> I understand that some CD manufacturers defeat the standard DAE
> method from a CD disk by adding some anti-piracy tracks to
> it.

Yes -- from what I recall it is simply that they add a track containing
just data marked as non-audio, possibly just junk, between audio tracks and this
confuses the process under Windoze at any rate into not knowing if it is
an audio CD or a data CD and thus renders it unable to "rip" (DAE).

I do not know if there are any applications under Windoze which circumvent
this problem, but if there are, they may be illegal in the USofA because
of the DMCA.

And under GNU/Linux I have to confess I do not know if there is the same
problem with DAE used by CD players such as the CD player for KDE,
except to suggest that you try and see what happens, but do not be at
all surprised if it does not work.

> Is there any way to know if such tracks exist other than being unable to
> play the CD disk? Is this mechanism now fairly standard, or is it
> unusual?

To be honest I do not know.  It is possible for example to have a CD
with audio on and I think if I recall correctly a valid data partition
which you can mount (ISO9660) which does not affect playing of the
CD by DEA.  There was a time when some CDs were distributed with
extras such as images or even an application for windows.  In fact
some game CDs were hybrids -- they contained the game application
on one part of the disk, and regular CD tracks as music to play
with the game or just to listen.

So the extra junk data to prevent DAE is not a proper data partition
on the disk.

Thus the only way to check I think would be to install the pseudo
cdfs kernel module and to look at the possibility of mounting the
cd tracks as a filesystem and see if there is extra junk.

I also recall a big long discussion years ago in which it was made
clear that the actual audio tracks are not themselves files on a
filesystem, although with cdfs you can see them as pseudo files.

> Do I understand correctly that if DEA is defeated, then one must use a
> suitable wire connection between the CD drive and the sound card?

Yes, and if possible use the SPDIF digital audio (2 wire) cable
to digital out on the CD and digital in on the sound card rather
than the older analog (3 wire, four pin connector) setup.

> That is, does the wire connection get around the anti-piracy block of DEA?

It is not that it gets around it, it is because DAE is never used
and the CD is just being played as a regular audio CD.

Remember that with DEA, what is actually happening is that audio
tracks are being "ripped" from the CD and then played, and of
course this is being prevented in an attempt to prevent the
saving and copying which is possible after ripping.

DAE allows you to very quickly grab the audio contents of the CD,
whereas with the play the CD via SPDIF, although copying can still
be done through the sound card, it takes as long as it takes
for the CD contents to play.

Hope this is an acceptable and adequate, but not fully detailed, explanation.

For more details take a look at

<http://dbpoweramp.com/spoons-audio-guide-cd-ripping.htm>

particularly the section "Copy Protections Employed"

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