On Tue, 14 Nov 2017 00:39:09 +0000, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article
,
D.M. Procida wrote:
The cheapest CDROM drive has to scrape every bit off a disc in order to
function as a reliable device for digital storage of software and data.
Presumably it can do just the same job for a music CD.

You wouldn't want the average CDROM drive in a CD player. Too noisy.

That's only because, for the sake of convenience of eliminating the
analogue audio connection that was once traditionally used to link the CD
drive's audio output to the CD input header on the soundboard or that of
the MoBo's own built in sound chip, the CDDA data stream is delivered
over the data connection in a version of the process of digitally ripping
the music off an audio CD instead of allowing the drive to spin the disk
at the normal audio CD playback rpms (circa 600 to 270 rpm, start to
finish, for a full 74 minute CD).

The later CDROM drives usually included a digital audio output connector
(SPDIF?) to let you use your own DAC allowing the drive to run at
standard CDDA rpms which neatly avoided the use of an audio output
connection and the noise of spinning the disk at high speed ripping rates
used by the audio playback algorithm which simply read the CDDA data in
short but infrequent bursts in order to feed its own CDDA buffer.
Generally, these brief accesses to the data stream were frequent enough
to prevent the drive from timing out and spinning down so it would keep
whirring away at many times the normal CD playback speed for the whole
duration of a listening session.

If you cared enough about this issue of CDROM drive noise on audio CD
playback, you could install either an analogue or spdif connection and
configure the OS and/or player software to use those sources instead of
the default ripping over the databus to a buffer feeding the sound card's
DAC. Knowing Microsoft's propensity to take away more than it gives with
each successive windows upgrade, I suspect that possibly might no longer
be an option with win 10.

--
Johnny B Good