I'm surprised you are even using your computer to play CD's, judging by the list of reasons I don't want to use my computer to play my music.
Win 7 has Windows Media Centre which makes a pretty good fist of playing all sorts of media.
Gom player and VLC media player are good, and lots of others are around (Google)
But to be honest; wouldn't you be better off with a dedicated unit?
This seems a likely candidate.