Re: sound problems somewhat solved.


Subject: Re: sound problems somewhat solved.
From: Gordon Neault (gordo-x@shaw.ca)
Date: Sun Mar 10 2002 - 11:47:17 MST


"I haven't tried playing CDs with this setup, but I suspect from other
postings that it won't work because of a missing connection between the CD
player and the sound chip (so how does MacOS play CDs on this model then?
by ripping them digitally to the sound chip? That seems ridiculous...
Surely there is a connection...) ..."

All newer Macs use the digital datastream for audio; a digital audio
signal is never converted to analog except when output via the headphone
jack alone. Eliminating a host of the lowest possible quality & price A/D
and D/A converters doesn't seem ridiculous to me.

There are several advantages to this for quality audio production, but the
major disadvantage (for Linux) is how it affects sound with applications
and kernels initially designed to work in x86 architecture.

PCs use analog audio as the signal source (for sound/music from a CD drive,
  for example; digital data is run through the player's inexpensive D/A
converter and output as analog via RCA jacks), so my guess is a lot of
Linux expects to see the digital signal after the soundcard/motherboard
reconverts it from analog to digital via it's A/D converter.



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