[mythtv-users] DVD audio with M-audio sound card

[Mike Jasper]

Joseph A. Caputo wrote:

> On Thursday 11 March 2004 11:09, Mike Jasper wrote:
> 
>>Hi,
>>
>>I'm putting together a new Myth box with an M-audio Audiophile sound
>>card.  I'm using this card because I also plan to do a bunch of
>>recording of analog sources using that box, and this is a good card
>>for that.
>>
>>However, the card doesn't have a connector where I can attach the
>>audio cable from the DVD-ROM drive.  If I attach the connector to the
>>motherboard header (Asus P4P800 mobo), will Myth be able to grab
>>sound from the on-board sound device when playing DVDs and route it
>>through the M-audio card?  Or is there a better solution?
>>
>>I'd hate to give up on the M-audio card but the more I look at it the
>>less it seems viable.
> 
> 
> The audio cable from a CD/DVD drive is typically only useful for 'dumb' 
> audio CD player software which simply instructs the CD/DVD drive to 
> start playing a particular audio CD track, which bypasses the IDE/
> ATAPI/SCSI interface and just outputs line-level audio.  This 
> capability is typically only useful for direct playback of audio CDs, 
> and some CD-based games that play CD audio from the game CD.
> 
> DVD drives typically cannot 'play' DVD content in that manner, as the 
> content is not 'raw', like CD-audio, but encoded MPEG-2 content 
> encapulated in a special DVD format (VOBs + special filesystem 
> structure).  Both the audio & video portion of the DVD stream must be 
> decoded (usually in software, but it can be done in hardware if you 
> have a PVR-350, DXR3 or other hardware MPEG-decoder board and software 
> that makes use of it).  The decoded audio + video streams are handled 
> by your player software and passed to the appropriate audio & video 
> output devices.
> 
> So, the short answer is you do not need to connect the audio cable from 
> your DVD drive to get audio in your DVD playback.


Thank you for a really clear explanation!  I have a lot to learn :-)

--Mike