CompuServe Thread

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