Over the last several years I have relied on the simple but effective CDplayer.exe (from Win2K) on my XP systems for playing CDs directly to the sound card via internal SPDIF cable - and then out to a 5.1 sound system.
This has had a few significant benefits: bypassing the (poor) DAC in the hardware CD player, bypassing the IDE data bus (thus eliminating hardware interrupts), and allowing independent audio control for the CD player (if Windows meeja player
is used, it uses the standard WAV audio output, which is shared with every other WAV source).
Anyhow, this idyllic state of affairs is about to come to an end, as I am replacing XP with Win 7 64-bit. Testing shows that CDPlayer.exe is not compatible with this.
I would like to replace like-with-like, so does anyone know of and recommend a (free) cdplayer replacement that would fit the bill?
I know that Win7 has much improved audio handling - you can now separate volume controls for each source, so games, system sounds and CD audio can all be controlled separately, for example. But I would still like to ensure that I am bypassing the DVD transport's DAC (and the IDE data bus.
Thoughts?
SD