CD audio quality

[[email protected]]

I just put together a spare computer all from dump parts. It has a
hard drive with Win 98 on it. I have also installed another drive
that has all my dos programs on it and I boot with a dos disk when I
want to run those. I installed a CD unit in this machine from one of
the junkers. Windows recognized it without software and installed it.
Data disks seem to work fine on it but there is a problem with the
analog audio. I didn't have a sound card so I took the audio directly
off the small sheilded cable on the back of the CD unit and connected
it directly to the input of a receiver. At times it seems to sound
fine and then other times its very distorted and weak. Is there
technically any reason why this method of connecting the audio should
not work? Thanks, Lenny Stein, Barlen Electronics.

 

[Adrian C]

technically any reason why this method of connecting the audio should
not work?

No. CD Rom drive must be broke.

Just get another drive from the dumpster...

 

[Meat Plow]

I just put together a spare computer all from dump parts. It has a
hard drive with Win 98 on it. I have also installed another drive
that has all my dos programs on it and I boot with a dos disk when I
want to run those. I installed a CD unit in this machine from one of
the junkers. Windows recognized it without software and installed it.
Data disks seem to work fine on it but there is a problem with the
analog audio. I didn't have a sound card so I took the audio directly
off the small sheilded cable on the back of the CD unit and connected
it directly to the input of a receiver. At times it seems to sound
fine and then other times its very distorted and weak. Is there
technically any reason why this method of connecting the audio should
not work? Thanks, Lenny Stein, Barlen Electronics.

Go through more junkers until you find one that works all the time.

 

[boardjunkie]

Go through more junkers until you find one that works all the time.

Better yet....get a soundcard with *good* DA convertors. They're not
expensive these days. Check Ebay.

 

[HapticZ]

distorted and weak- bad connection?

bad impedance matching, most cd output is very low power driving capacity
as most PC sound card inputs are matched to the expected cdrom output.

check the audio adjustment on the cd drive, sometimes they get used so
rarely that the internal wiper on the potentiometer gets cruddy and doesnt
make contact well. some cd driveaudio adjustments are really poor quality to
begin with, since nobody uses them anyway.