#Sound
I was looking at the Mitsumi CD-ROM drive in a store the other day. The
salesperson asked me whether I had a SoundBlaster card. When I told her I had
an ATI Stereo/FX, she said the two would just ignore each other. She went on to
say that when (for instance) playing a CD game, the sound would go through the
front panel jack on the CD player; but when playing a HD game, the sound would
go through my sound board.
My first thought was that that would mean I would need two sets of speakers. I
then realized that I could probably just put a 'Y' cable between my speakers
and both the CD and ATI card jacks. Is that reasonable?
My other thought was whether she was really correct about CD software playing
sound directly. I looked at a couple of CD software titles, and a couple
didn't mention anything about sound boards, but a couple did say SoundBlaster
compatible (etc). Do most CD programs play sound directly, or do they still
use your sound card or Windows sound driver? If they play sound directly, how
do the multi-speed CD drives handle that – do they have to slow down on-the-fly
to play the sound?
Thanks, Tom Schindler