Russ,

Windows 2000/XP can get the audio from a music CD by using DAE (Digital 
Audio Extraction), and sending it to the audio subsystem. This would be the 
same extraction that it would do if you are ripping tracks from the CD.

The only downside to this is that it uses some CPU power to do it, whereas 
the audio cable plugged directly into the sound card has no CPU overhead.

This feature can be turned on or off by opening the properties page for the 
CDROM device in device manager and setting the checkbox as appropriate.

Russ Poffenberger
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At 11:01 AM 11/25/2006, you wrote:
>Some computers require the small audio cable be connected from the CDROM 
>to the motherboard to get sound out of the speaker jack.  Others do not 
>require the audio cable to be connected so the audio signal must be 
>carried on the IDE cable.  Is this just specific to some motherboards? Or 
>is there some standard that specifies how the audio gets from the CDROM to 
>the audio chip on the motherboard ?

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