The Many CD Drives (and problems therewith) of Mojo

[Mojo]

I have 3 CD drives in my computer, which I installed myself. I have, however, only 1 Drive-to-Soundcard wire thingy, which I think is what's causeing my problem...I can't listen to music on any of the other drives but the one the wire is in...Media Player recognises that there's a CD, and the number of tracks etc, but when I press play it runs with no sound. Is there any way to fix this without getting new wires (for I know not where to go)?

While I'm on the subject, Windows Media Player has stopped letting me copy CDs onto my hard drive...it copies the tracks (and takes it time about it) but when I play them back they are soundless...Any remedies?

Thank you in advance

[andrewas]

1) No. And even if you did, Most soundcaards only have the two audio inputs, and only one of those is marked for CD-audio. The other is marked aux in, and I have no idea if it functions the same way. So put the cable in your slowest CDROM and use the higher performance ones for things that require more performance, like gaming.

Northeast Peripherals will be your best bet to get a cable. I dont know anywhere closer to you than that. Although theres Gem Computers (or similar) in peterhead, but Ive never been in it.

Why do you have three CDs anyway? CD-R/DVD-R and a DVD-ROM drive, and I cant see why youd need anything else in there.

On your second question, analog ripping is a pain. Checking in volume control (from control panel) might reveal something.

Digital ripping is easier, since it dosent use the audio subsystems at all and reads 100% perfect from the CD. Look up "AudioGrabber" which is the best program I know of.

[Mojo]

It started off with just a CD drive and a CDRW, but then I aquired a DVD drive, and my original CD drive is faster than both the others for reading, so I still use it. Besides, I don't want an ugly gaping wound in the front of ym computer...hence the reason I have 2 floppy disk drives (one of them isn't connected, but it's still there) hehehe.

So there's nothing at all I can do?

My sound options are all up, and there's never been a problem with the analogue ripping before, but I reckon digital probably is better...is it faster?

[andrewas]

Ripping straight to .wav is at your CDs maximum speeds, so its much faser. Converting to .mp3 or whatever is slower of course, but then youd end up doing that anyway unless you have far to much HDD space.

[WOLFGIR]

Check your mainboard, if you have a builed in soundcard in it you can probably hook one CD up with it and choose the cd to use the mainboards soundcard features.

If you don´t have it, you will need another soundcard and oboy... then you do have too many things in your Swissputer!

[Mojo]

Well, now that you mention it, I do have another sound card... I use it to play old games with sound...

[WOLFGIR]

Well you can try and install it and see if you can get it to work alongside the old one, you might have to check the configuration of the IRQ adresses manually so it won´t collide with the installed one already.

[realbinky]

Is your original CD player really *that* much faster then the CD speed of the DVD? Wouldn't think a huge difference. If it is less than 20% (40X vs 50X) I'd yank the CD (or leave it to fill the void, but didn't you ADD the DVD and CDRW? Where did those faceplates go?) or at least remove the power and IDE cables. Keep it as a backup. Remember DVDs have a DVD and a CD speed, like 4xDVD and 32xCD.

[Sir Krustin]

I'm with Mojo, ide cd-roms are cheap - scsi-based DVD-ROMs and CD-R/RW's are not. I prefer to save the CD-R for recording, and the DVD for playing DVDs.

I wear out CD-ROM drives on a regular basis, so I prefer to buy the el-cheapo ones and throw them away when they start glitching.

[andrewas]

Id say to junk the CDROM. DVDROM and CD-R may be more expensive (for IDE models the difference is not large though), but only the CD-R is likely to suffer from heavy use. The DVDROM has a similar lens assembly to a CDROM so it can be cleaned easily, which will remove almost all glitches until the laser dies or something mechanical breaks.

The CD-R is more delicate and cant be cleaned as easily, so only use it for burning CDs.

I myself only have a CD-R and havent run into any problems with it. I use No-Cd cracks and rip music to MP3 as much as possible, but even so it sees some heavy use.