Bought a new DVD-RW drive. Sony DRU-810A. Upon install, I notice the spot where I've always plugged in my sound card wire had no metal pins in it! Distressed, I looked at the manual diagram/booklet. It seemed to clearly indicate this was not needed and that there aren't any pins. (see attached picture). So I plugged it in and yes, the sound works. Music CD's, game CD's, so far seems fine. Ok, maybe some new tech, doesn't need direct sound card connection?

 

I Google reviews. I Google Sony's website. No one mentions such a thing. review has a picture of the back that kind of looks like it has pins in that port, but it's hard to tell.

 

Anyone have any comments? I'd like to know if I should take it back and get one with pins, if indeed it has any...and if I need any? Is this normal now?

Why would you want to connect your DVD directly to your sound card? I think its to enable the headphone jack on the front of some drives. Pretty pointless feature IMO.

 

So basically, don't worry about it.

Well, I've never had a headphone jack on any of my cd or dvd roms. There was a time when I wouldn't get any sound without the wires plugged in. *shrug* I guess that's changed now, for some reason, and I didn't know it.

 

I still think it's weird there's no pins, but since it works...like you said...guess I won't worry about it.

 

I take it, then, that no one else has soundcards still plugged into their drives?

The feature is completely useless. Older systems used to send Audio CD output directly to the sound card so as not to unnecessarily overload the processor. This could be disabled by turning on the "Digital" option for Audio CDs somewhere in the sound configuration. Nowadays, I don't know if you can even use the "Analog" path any more.

Thanks, that would explain it then. When I asked hubby about it when he got home, he said about the same thing...He didn't know it'd changed either. We don't pay much attention to changed details on "common" hardware like that, heh.