johnsmith1

I bought a new SATA DVD drive / burner ("HP DVD i270 16x multiformat drive" or something) and it has no analog audio out or SPDIF out sockets! All there is in back are SATA power and SATA data sockets!

I can still play audio CD's but obviously it's no longer going directly to my sound card but through my motherboard instead.

Have I been shortchanged or am I worrying too much?

Does there even exist any SATA drive that has SPDIF out?? I know at least this one and another one I looked at don't have it!

Tyrsonswood

We haven't needed those jacks for years...... they all play through the system bus

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Judas

Basically since the introduction of Windows 2000/xp and ME..... we haven't had to use the Analog or Digital connectors to directly connect to any sound card...

As tyrsonswood stated..... even if those were there, they wouldn't be used... as everything goes through the data cable into the motherboard and is sorted there and output as it sees fit without any loss.

Back in the first days of this change.. there were a few senarios were some sound cards or machine didn't "play" nicely with this setup resulting in either emediate delays or oventual delays in audio or video.. or just plain syncing issues/stuttering/loss... but those machines are.. by todays standards... anchient dinosaurs... (pentium IIs and 1s and amd K5s) .... essentially anything under 250mhz really didn't have to oomph to do it.

actually all the machines that come in that are 10 years old even...... if i crack them open.. the first thing i do is yank out those cables as like i said.. they are useless and haven't been needed for years.

Although i find it funny that many dells "STILL" insist on putting them in..... and i don't get why lol

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