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MPC2 audio cable splitter?

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First post, by mattrock1988

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Since I'll be running two sound cards in the foreseeable future, I just arrived at a bit of a conundrum. I want both cards to play CD audio, but I believe only one MPC2 cable can be plugged into the disc drive at any time. Is there a way I can use a splitter in order to feed one cord to two sound cards simultaneously?

Retro PC: Intel Pentium III @ 1 GHz, Intel SE440BX-2, 32 GB IDE DOM, 384 MB SDRAM, DVD-ROM, 1.44 MB floppy, Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti 4600 AGP, Creative SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold, Aureal Vortex 2
I only rely on 86box these days. My Pentium 3 PC died. 🙁

Reply 1 of 5, by gdjacobs

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Sure, as long as the input impedance of the sound cards is high enough. If not, you'll have volume attenuation.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 2 of 5, by Jorpho

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If the question is whether such a splitter exists, then no, I expect you'll have to cobble together your own. (It might be possible to do it with just a couple of staples.)

If you can get a CD drive with a headphone jack, then you could use the MPC cable for one card and the headphone jack for the other, routed through the card's Line In port. (I'm not sure if you would need to unplug the headphone jack when using the MPC cable.) Or you could conceivably put together some kind of mixer that will take as input the CD audio and speaker outputs of both cards, but that might be overkill.

Reply 3 of 5, by mattrock1988

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Good suggestions! I might also try running both cards under Windows at the same time, assuming that's even supported. CD audio and DOS software will run through the AWE64 while my Windows apps like Cakewalk as well as games run over the PCI card.

Retro PC: Intel Pentium III @ 1 GHz, Intel SE440BX-2, 32 GB IDE DOM, 384 MB SDRAM, DVD-ROM, 1.44 MB floppy, Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti 4600 AGP, Creative SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold, Aureal Vortex 2
I only rely on 86box these days. My Pentium 3 PC died. 🙁

Reply 5 of 5, by Jorpho

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Errius wrote:

I think with Windows ME/2K onward you don't need a cable. The OS can read the audio tracks digitally.

Yes, I think it ought to at least work in Windows 98 SE as well. (There have been some suggestions lately that WDM drivers might be required.)

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