> It can dramatically improve the sound quality you hear as you don't have > an ad/da conversion. That's the theory. Isn't an analogue CD input on a soundcard just routed directly to the soundcard hardware mixer though? Hence the need for its own fader in the software mixer? In my case any improvement was negated by the extra noise from the drive as it span at maximum speed - 16x DVD or whatever. I guess you could regulate the max speed in software if you wanted to go down this route. Cheers Daniel