Default CD Audio Player (98SE)

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Forgive me, but I’ve forgotten how to do this. I have a standard CD ROM Drive with my Dell, which is set as the default CD Music player in Multimedia Properties. When it plays music CD’s, it sounds like s_ _ t! I’m assuming the quality will be similar for ripping.

I also have a TDK external CD RW, which I’m certain is capable of both playing music CD’s & also ripping. I’m only given one choice for default CD Music player in Multimedia Properties > CD Music, however (“E”, which is the standard drive.) How can I activate “F”, which is the higher quality drive?

Thanks in advance,

mark4man

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First of all, your CD drive, if it’s not physically damaged, has nothing to do with sound quality. Quality of the sound when you playing audio CDs depends of (a) speakers quality, ( sound card quality, © audio software quality (in descending order). When you copy an audio track to your hard drive and then playing it from this location, is sound quality better?

Answering your question, connect your external CD-RW and reboot. Then go to Control Panel | System | Device Manager tab. Do you see both drives under “CDROM”? If so, you can change Default CD Music Player on Multimedia Properties. If not, you need to install driver for your CD-RW. Also, if you’re the music fan, you can download and install Windows Media Player 9 for Windows 98SE, Me and 2000

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kaplinb,

Thanks.

I thought I had actually solved the problem by replacing the TDK’s startup app back into the msconfig startup group. Windows then recognized the drive; & I was able to select it as my default music CD player (& I understand what you’re saying relative to “data is data/sound quality”, but 1/2 of the issue was also having the better drive as my default audio CD player. As you probably know, CD ROM drives are the pits for playing audio CD’s. The default CD ROM drive in my Dell causes music CD’s to actually skip…as in, audible gaps in the playback. It’s not damaged, it’s just cheap. And of course, CD ROM’s use block read, as oposed to syncronous read.)

Anyway, as it turns out, Windows only recognizes the better drive when it’s switched on at startup (as you were referring to.) I’m not sure if that’s normal behavior or not, so maybe I need to reinstall the drivers.

Thanks again,

mark4man

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