ok im new here. my sb live platinum card came with a 4-pin cd cable and a 2-pin digital cable to connect my tdk cd burner. which one should i use. im guessing the 2-pin digital. are there any pros or cons to either cable?

Use the digital one.

Analog pros :
Many drives don't have a digital out
Many soundcards don't have a digital in

Analog cons :
Possible noise
Less than perfect sound

Digital pros :
Opposite of the analog cons

Digital cons :
If your soundcard doesn't support AC97 (with ASRC), you have to slave its clock to the CD player in order to get sound. Fortunately this is not the case with the SB Live, but the drawback is that you can't make a lossless digital copy.

ok so how do i get a lossless rip, get a different card? i've already read that the sb live cards are less than perfect, so getting a better good card would be fine with me.

To get a lossless rip, use a ripper, like EAC, not a CD cable.
Ripping and burning audio or data are all done through the main IDE (or SCSI) cable, you don't need any audio cable for this.

The audio cables are for "analog mode" (though it can be digital) audio CD playback. Especially with Windows CD Player, since it doesn't support "digital" mode playback. You don't even need them if you play your CDs in Windows Media Player 7, Winamp3, or have the digital CD plugin for Winamp 2 (called CDReader).

If you want a better soundcard than the live platinum, have a look at the M-Audio Audiophile 2496, or at the Terratec EWX, or the Terratec DMX 6fire.