Amiga.org
Operating System Specific Discussions => Other Operating Systems => Topic started by: Matt_H on October 14, 2009, 03:48:13 AM
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As the CD burner in my AmigaOne is near death, I headed over to MicroCenter after work to procure a new one. I was about to buy one of these (http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0301943) when I noticed that engraved into the top of the drive case was a message saying something to the effect that the drive had no audio out support. The little key/legend that explains what all the pins are on the back of the drive showed [NA] for the audio cable header. Yet the pins and connector were present.
Anyone seen anything like this before? Is the message meaningless/erroneous? Why would the manufacturer waste money installing the components if they're not hooked up to anything?
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Drives (or PCs, really) have supported CDDA-out (I think it's called) via IDE forever, definitely makes more sense than a silly seperate cable for audio. (..in the PC world, at least, where everyone has tons of processor time to blow decoding PCM.) I imagine it'd be cheaper to make a CD drive that didn't need to decode audio itself and have a preamp and all that stuff.
Or maybe that batch of drives was just screwy and they sold them anyway.
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@ matt H:
It's been a while since you bought a CD drive, hasn't it?.....
It's all about the Windows world these days.....
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Yeah, I've been doing CDDA on my various PCs for...oh good lord, nine? Ten? years now.
...and yet I have a rat's nest of various types of CD Audio wires I can't bring myself to throw away!
(I need professional help! :D )
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@ matt H:
It's been a while since you bought a CD drive, hasn't it?.....
It's all about the Windows world these days.....
Correct! My newest drive is from early-mid 2006.
So these new drives only support CD audio over the data interface? I can't imagine the Amiga will be able to handle that in all cases. Am I SOL, or would a different/less cheap drive still support analog audio? There's nothing in the text description of the above drive that would have alerted me if I hadn't seen the actual unit in person.
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just go on-line. There are tons of places selling old stock cd drive with audio out.
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You know, I never even noticed when CD drives stopped coming with headphone jacks and volume controls on the front of them...
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You know, I never even noticed when CD drives stopped coming with headphone jacks and volume controls on the front of them...
I just noticed.
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I dont see it as an issue. os3.9 will play audio cds fine.
Its not a massive CPU hog because there is no compression unlike MP3
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os3.9 will play audio cds fine.
Good to know, wouldn't have bet on that.
..though, how does it handle the 44100hz 16 bit audio with only a Paula?
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Good to know, wouldn't have bet on that.
..though, how does it handle the 44100hz 16 bit audio with only a Paula?
@JJ: yeah, are you sure the Amiga can play audio through the IDE or SCSI cable? That would be news to me. Only way I've ever been able to play audio through any OS on the Amiga (legacy systems) is by way of that audio out cord. Sure, 3.9's CD player starts, stops, skips and fast forwards songs - but that's it as far as the data cable is concerned. AFAIK, Paula ain't up to the task and besides, that would mean massive amounts of D/A converting going on to which end, the audio would still sound like 8-bit mush. 14-bits *maybe* if you had all sorts of fancy D/A software and a very fast processor.
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@JJ: yeah, are you sure the Amiga can play audio through the IDE or SCSI cable? That would be news to me. Only way I've ever been able to play audio through any OS on the Amiga (legacy systems) is by way of that audio out cord. Sure, 3.9's CD player starts, stops, skips and fast forwards songs - but that's it as far as the data cable is concerned. AFAIK, Paula ain't up to the task and besides, that would mean massive amounts of D/A converting going on to which end, the audio would still sound like 8-bit mush. 14-bits *maybe* if you had all sorts of fancy D/A software and a very fast processor.
No weird D/A needed... Just play the upper 8bits of the audio sample... Though you would have to run in productivity mode unless you played back at 22050hz and then played only every other sample...
Not a ideal solution but it would work... To some degree...
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@JJ: yeah, are you sure the Amiga can play audio through the IDE or SCSI cable? That would be news to me. Only way I've ever been able to play audio through any OS on the Amiga (legacy systems) is by way of that audio out cord. Sure, 3.9's CD player starts, stops, skips and fast forwards songs - but that's it as far as the data cable is concerned. AFAIK, Paula ain't up to the task and besides, that would mean massive amounts of D/A converting going on to which end, the audio would still sound like 8-bit mush. 14-bits *maybe* if you had all sorts of fancy D/A software and a very fast processor.
I used to be able to play via SCSI using an unexpanded A600 with a Squirrel and YACDP back in the day.
Never been able to do it any other way since. Doesn't work with A2091 on A2000 or A4000. I gave up trying to get it to work in about 2004.
IDE was never an option.
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I used to be able to play via SCSI using an unexpanded A600 with a Squirrel and YACDP back in the day.
Never been able to do it any other way since. Doesn't work with A2091 on A2000 or A4000. I gave up trying to get it to work in about 2004.
IDE was never an option.
Yeah, doesn't work with my 2060 SCSI either. Only way I've ever been able to play CD audio on an Amiga was by using a Sunrize card. Any 3rd party Zorro sound card should do, but what Bloodline just projected sounds interesting - although I don't fully understand how it could work. lol And no, I've got waaaay too many other projects going on to fiddle with 1/2 wordlength data streaming. That sounds like more trouble than formatting a 4GB hard drive using OS 1.3 on an Amiga 1000. Like you, I gave up years ago trying to play CD's through Paula. If you have audio out on your CD drive, easiest solution bar none is to combine the signals at the Amiga's audio out jacks. Amigakit sells a nice clean solution for this.
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I never even thought of trying... I mean.... surely you have some better & modern way of listening to music ?
Tom UK
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If you use the Cybersound driver package, do the calibration and then use a 14bit AHI mode the sound is not that bad at all. Not on par with a modern sound card of course, but acceptable. Well, give it a try yourself and judge it with your own ears! It's also allways fun to push the limits of the classic machines and see what can be done with clever coding:)
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By the way, this will make any problem on the sound circuit caused by dead/leaking capacitors more visible, I've found the sound my A4000 sound circuitry was not doing very well with this because the A1200 was so much better and louder...
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@JJ: yeah, are you sure the Amiga can play audio through the IDE or SCSI cable? That would be news to me. Only way I've ever been able to play audio through any OS on the Amiga (legacy systems) is by way of that audio out cord. Sure, 3.9's CD player starts, stops, skips and fast forwards songs - but that's it as far as the data cable is concerned. AFAIK, Paula ain't up to the task and besides, that would mean massive amounts of D/A converting going on to which end, the audio would still sound like 8-bit mush. 14-bits *maybe* if you had all sorts of fancy D/A software and a very fast processor.
Of course I am Not sure :laughing:
I could be mistaken I have not used my miggy in quite some time and very well could be talking a pile of stinking poo.