bristlehog wrote:

badmojo wrote:

And swaaye mentioned tracker music which makes me wonder about red book audio - how is this impacted by a given card's compatibility? Is the internal 'CD in' header impacted by which sound card driver is selected in a given game? Or is this data processed by the card directly? I.e. a 16 bit, 44.1kHz capable cards like the ES1868 AudioDrive will always play red book audio at CD quality?

I highly doubt that CD music depends on soundcard's bitness and sampling frequency. It is already an analog signal from CD-ROM drive's DA converter, why convert it back to digital and then again to analog? It would mean loss of quality, even on a 16-bit 44 khz card.

But it does do that. If not, you wouldn't be able to record the CD signal, or change the mixer level in software. At least ESS, YMF cards and the like always use their WSS part for that, regardless of the game's audio setting. Not sure about 8-bit only cards though.

It does not.
The mixer is a completely analog signal part. Mostly a resistor that can be set digitally.
So if you enable CD-In and set a record as well as playback volume, this is a completely analog route.

If you record, then you do it from the analog signal after the record mixer resistor. So the digitally converted signal might be 8 bit, but just routing through the mixer does ideally nothing to the audio signal.

elianda wrote:

It does not. The mixer is a completely analog signal part. Mostly a resistor that can be set digitally. So if you enable CD-In a […]
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It does not.
The mixer is a completely analog signal part. Mostly a resistor that can be set digitally.
So if you enable CD-In and set a record as well as playback volume, this is a completely analog route.

If you record, then you do it from the analog signal after the record mixer resistor. So the digitally converted signal might be 8 bit, but just routing through the mixer does ideally nothing to the audio signal.

You're probably right, there. I thought I read that somewhere in a datasheet, but now that I'm looking for a confirmation, I can't seem to find anything about it.

Your explanation does make sense. The signal to noise ratio specified in the YMF715 datasheet is 78db for recording, and 85db for pass-through. If the signal were digitized, the pass-through SNR figure would be impossible.

Anyway, both ways would answer the original question: CD audio quality is not affected by the in-game audio setting.

bristlehog wrote:

badmojo wrote:

And swaaye mentioned tracker music which makes me wonder about red book audio - how is this impacted by a given card's compatibility? Is the internal 'CD in' header impacted by which sound card driver is selected in a given game? Or is this data processed by the card directly? I.e. a 16 bit, 44.1kHz capable cards like the ES1868 AudioDrive will always play red book audio at CD quality?

I highly doubt that CD music depends on soundcard's bitness and sampling frequency. It is already an analog signal from CD-ROM drive's DA converter, why convert it back to digital and then again to analog? It would mean loss of quality, even on a 16-bit 44 khz card.

Regular CD audio is just like an analog line-in to the sound card, so there's no transformation of the sound.

Now, I remember that sometime around the 98se/2000/XP days, there were drives that had a digital output that could be connected to the sound card for a pure digital experience. I don't think anyone could ever tell the sound difference though.

Samir wrote:

bristlehog wrote:

badmojo wrote:

And swaaye mentioned tracker music which makes me wonder about red book audio - how is this impacted by a given card's compatibility? Is the internal 'CD in' header impacted by which sound card driver is selected in a given game? Or is this data processed by the card directly? I.e. a 16 bit, 44.1kHz capable cards like the ES1868 AudioDrive will always play red book audio at CD quality?

I highly doubt that CD music depends on soundcard's bitness and sampling frequency. It is already an analog signal from CD-ROM drive's DA converter, why convert it back to digital and then again to analog? It would mean loss of quality, even on a 16-bit 44 khz card.

Regular CD audio is just like an analog line-in to the sound card, so there's no transformation of the sound.

Now, I remember that sometime around the 98se/2000/XP days, there were drives that had a digital output that could be connected to the sound card for a pure digital experience. I don't think anyone could ever tell the sound difference though.

That's right, there are some CD drives with S/PDIF (TTL) output. You'll need an internal S/PDIF input header on your soundcard to use it. I guess that would've been used during the Win9x days, since I'm certain Win2K/XP can read digital audio straight from the CD.

Actually, all CD drives I've seen (starting from 4x ones) have S/PDIF output along with analog one. Only one later IDE DVD-RW of 2008 has neither.

The DVD drive in my Windows 98 machine has this connector, as does my SB Live!, but the 'digital audio' option in Windows for the DVD drive (which I assume is what this refers to) is grayed out. Not sure why, but it's never bothered me enough to investigate further.

98 and later support digital cd audio via ATA bus. USB too. I haven't used it much myself but that is what I find while searching.

Great to know that the digital audio was supported over the bus as well. I thought I remembered that, but couldn't remember. 🤣

Samir wrote:

Great to know that the digital audio was supported over the bus as well. I thought I remembered that, but couldn't remember. 🤣

Basically if you get CD Audio but no analogue audio cable connects the optical drive with the sound card, then you have fully digital audio over the bus 😀

I wonder if the headphone port at the front would have been the highest quality option...

So it actually detects the analog audio cable and greys out the digital audio option if one is present, or what?

I think it's grayed out, if the drive does not support the digital extraction.
There is no real reliable way to detect by software if the CD-ROM drive is analog connected to some sound card in.

But it doesn't make much sense that a DVD drive from 2005 wouldn't support digital, in my case.

Maybe Win98SE has problems with digital audio extraction on a SATA drive?

It's an IDE drive.

Well I can't have a physical look on the drive from here, but you may shorten this "quest" by reading the CD-ROM capabilities from the drive

In Byte 5 there is Bit 0 for CDDA supported and Bit 1 for Accurate CDDA supported.

Mode Select (Code 55h) then CD-ROM Capabilities & Mechanical Status Page (Page Code 2Ah)

I don't know if there is a tool that reports this back, but this should answer if the drive is capable if it or not.

I had a modern IDE drive and it simply didn't have analogue audio output enabled despite having a connector. Some drives simply don't have all the features.

I connected my sblive 5.1 to my dvd rom drive trough the digital connectors,selected digital cd in volume control and it works.
Altough i never checked if there's a difference in sound quality,between conecting the drive to the sound card via the digital conector or the analog 1.

There will be a difference but it depends on the DAC implementation. Also, it may not be audible.