Problem with cd players except media player

OK firstly I am not sure if this is in the right section so apologies if its not.
Anyway I have a A7V333 mobo which incorporates a c-media 8738 sound chip.
My problem is straight forward - I have several cd players on my system - namely from the ATI Radeon software, cmedia itself, real player and windows media player. Although each of these players shows as functioning (the timer on each cd counts up/down for each track etc) none of the players comes out with any sound except for the windows media player! It seems that there is something simple to rectify this (all the other players are not on mute!) but I cannot seem to work it out - anyone have any ideas?
One other thing the dvd players I have seem to work fine on both windows media player and on the radeon dvd player (I have both a Lite On CDRW and a Pioneer DVD-ROM on my system).

Do you have an audio cable connected from your CD-ROM to your sound card (MOBO)?

I believe some players use the audio cable and some players use the IDE cable (I know that's true for CD rip programs).

Hmm no I dont. But would it be likely that the Radeon cd player would require this cable whilst the radeon dvd player would not? My CDRW did come with a cable that I have not utilised (for use on a 4 pin connector)...

OC Detective said:

But would it be likely that the Radeon cd player would require this cable whilst the radeon dvd player would not?

Click to expand...

Yes it's very likely, the reasons why I think it's very likely is that:
1) If you have a slow system, the (software) decoding of the digital signal might take up too many resources, so many programs use the analog signal as the CD-ROM's (cheap and crappy) DAC (Digital Analog Convertor) does all the decoding (I think it sucks that they don't let you choose).
2) DVD's can contain more than 2 channels, so the audio cable is useless as it can only handle 2 channels (left and right), so DVD player programs use the 'pure' digital signal from the IDE cable.

With 'pure' I mean that the signal is different from AC3 or SPDIF (Sony Philips Digital Interface) signals.

Could you define slow? My full specs are in my signature. Cheers!

OC Detective said:

Could you define slow? My full specs are in my signature. Cheers!

Click to expand...

I wasn't talking about your or any other particular system, I meant that software developers (for certain programs) may consider to choose one way over the other as not everyone has a 'fast' system that will handle decoding while doing other stuff.

I don't think you can define fast or slow, as it's different for each user.

Sorry for delay in feedback - been a public holiday over here! Anyway will try using the cable from the cdrom to my mobo - but where should I connect it to on my mobo?

On the left bottom of your MOBO (near the last PCI slot) there are 2 connectors (CD=Black, AUX=White), you can use either one of them or both (See page 37 of your manual).

You can also use the SPDIF input (If you haven't already) as it may sound a bit better (See page 39 of your manual).

I would connect the Lite-On to the CD input (4-pin), and the Pioneer to the SPDIF input (2-pin...but the MOBO header has 5 pins: SPDIF_IN - GND - 5V - SPDIF_OUT - GND, you should use SPDIF_IN and GND).

Thanks KILLorBE - double thumbs up! I connected the cable as you stated (even though its is only analog I can connect to on the lite-on using the 4-pin cable) and it works on all my cd players now - cheers! I dont have a 2-pin connector as the Pioneer was not retail - no software etc - but I will bear it in mind on my next trip to the computer store.