[GaryG]

I've got an Abit IP35 Pro XE motherboard and 2 DVD drives.

I am using the onboard sound from the motherboard, so no sound card is installed.

Do I need audio cables attached to the DVD drives to get sound from them i.e. play a music CD, or will the IDE cable take care of it?

The motherboard only has 1 AUDIO_CD connection so does that mean I can only connect one of the DVD drives up for sound?

[richardtryinghard]

I got a abit motherboad ab9 try your sound settings i have realtek hd audio manger and windows default i had some trouble with mine and i changed setting to realtek again.
Iam sure your motherboad has onboard sound you shouldnt need any other cables to play sound from drives.
Try setting someone esle on here will know more than me just a sugestion worked on mine

[serverguy]

I have never used any of those sound connectors on the back of a CD drive.

TBH I don't even know what they are for.

[philthomas]

I believe these were used for analogue audio many moons ago, but these days digital audio is extracted via the IDE or SATA cables and processed in Windows.

So NO ... you dont need them.

[ilop12]

yeah i have never used the audio jack in a cd drive. just plug it into IDE and use windwos to play it.

[serverguy]

I'm going to have to experiment with this lol.

My feeling is that as soon as you put an audio CD in the drive, it will start spitting it out of the connectors, unless you get Windows to do something with it.

[mctw]

You don't need any other audio cables. They're for analogue, or you can connect a CD drive to them and not the IDE, just for playing CD's if you wished. all the data goes though the IDE cable to your soundchip/board.

if the sound isnt coming out, look in device manager, under the properties of your cd/dvd drive. in the properties box there is a tab called properties. theres a tick box at the bottomc alled digital audio. when this is ticked, the cd audio is routed through your IDE cable. if its unticked it goes back to its default for the drive, which for most is the analogue out on the cd drive itself.

So unless your using a seriously ancient CD drive that doesnt support audio through the IDE, no you dont need to connect any extra cables. this box is usually ticked as default in windows, though sometimes its not never found out why!

[rbscooby]

i couldnt have any sound, in the exact same circumstances, turned out i needed the cable, and the drive was brand new, and that was 6 months ago, try it anyway, the cables are cheap as chips and most nice computer shops will have them and give u them for pennys too,