Re: [Sound] Audio with CD player - why is the cable necessary?

[Alan Cox <alan lxorguk ukuu org uk>]

On Sat, 2003-03-01 at 18:40, SM wrote:
> sound to the soundcard without a cable as well. so is this simply a
> question of someone doing the appropriate coding,  or are there
> patent/licensing/philosophical issues involved?

There are players which read raw CD data, there are players that use the
audio cable. The audio cable set up is *massively* more efficient and
reflects the PC world pre XP. In addition some players seem happy to
play broken ('protected') CD audio discs via a cable but not read the
disk data.

Its a matter of what each distribution chooses to ship at any given
time. 

Alan