CD Audio
Bill Baltra
JeffI have same problem and continues in 1611. I find that from fresh
reboot, Windac plays audio ok. If I try CDplayer, nothing. Then I go back to
Windac and nothing until I reboot.
See below from 1611 Release Notes
WDM Digital Audio
USB Audio Devices
This version of Windows 98 contains support for audio over USB speakers and
microphones. Until release, speakers are available to Windows 98 beta
testers from Altec Lansing Multimedia and Philips Semiconductors, and
microphones are available from Telex. For details on how to order speakers,
see the \Betaonly\Usbspeak folder on the CD. Additional detail can be found
on the following Web sites: http://www.pmc.philips.com/usbaudio/,
http://www.altecmm.com/, and http://www.computeraudio.telex.com/.
NOTE: Bugs and features listed in this section are not relevant unless you
plan to test USB speakers. Conventional audio systems and sound cards should
continue to operate exactly as they did before Windows 98.
This code is under intense development and will evolve in future releases.
The only USB audio devices supported are those made available with this
release.
? Recording capability is implemented. Test devices are available from Altec
and Phillips.
? WDM audio includes a software emulator for MS-DOS–based games running
under Windows 98. Its interface emulates the Sound Blaster 2.1 hardware.
There will be no support for real-mode MS-DOS–based Sound Blaster register
sets for USB audio. MS-DOS–based games run in "MS-DOS boxes" — that is,
virtual MS-DOS computers that run under Windows 98. Some games do not run in
MS-DOS emulation mode. At this time, there is no list available of which
games will and will not run in MS-DOS emulation mode.
? The current emulation supports monaural and stereo 8 bit.
? OPL-2 and OPL-3 music synthesis is not emulated. These are the FM
synthesis chips manufactured by Yamaha. The OPL-2 chip was used in the Adlib
and Sound Blaster boards. The OPL-3 chip is used in Sound Blaster Pro and
Sound Blaster 16 hardware. USB audio does not and will not support emulation
of these music synthesis chips.
? The MPU-401 is a music synthesis hardware interface defined by Roland.
Most recent MS-DOS–based computer games support this register interface for
generating music. The MIDI emulation today supports General MIDI wavetable
music synthesis.
? RedBook or CD audio is usually supported by sending a command to the CD
drive that causes the CD to play audio with an on-board DAC. This DAC is
connected to the system sound card that controls volume levels. Because this
is impractical for USB audio, Windows 98 reads bits off the CD over the
computer interface (SCSI or ATAPI) and sends them out to the USB speakers.
? Several CD drives are supported in this release of Windows 98. More drives
will be supported in the future. This release does not identify which drives
work and which do not. This will be fixed in future versions of Windows 98.
? CD audio usually plays through headphone jacks on the front of the CD
drive. Usually, there is a volume control near the headphone jack. This
release of Windows 98 does not support playing audio through the headphone
jack.
? Most Windows-based applications use 16-bit APIs to play audio. These APIs
will be supported exactly as they have been in earlier versions. In this
release, audio playback and capture is supported.
? The mixer is used to set volume controls. This API is supported in this
release of Windows 98. For example, CD-Audio, wavetable music synthesis, and
16-bit Windows-based applications can all play through a USB speaker
simultaneously.
? DirectShow is the preferred 32-bit API for audio. DirectShow is supported
natively by USB audio.
? In previous versions of Windows, MIDI is supported by USB audio in the
form of the 16-bit MIDI APIs. In this beta release, MIDI is not supported.
Only MIDI out is supported. Patch caching is not supported in this release,
but it will become an important memory optimization feature of future
releases of Windows 98.
? Wavetable music synthesis is supported with kernel-resident software. The
quality is better than in earlier FM synthesis hardware. System latency will
be improved in future releases.
PCI/ISA Audio Devices
One of the new features of Windows 98 is the Win32 Driver Model (WDM). WDM
offers several important benefits for audio, including improved performance,
better support for streaming applications (such as DirectShow), and binary
compatible drivers between Windows 98 and Windows NT 5.0. Many manufacturers
of audio hardware have developed WDM drivers as an alternative to the
existing VxD drivers. These are available for the first time in this build,
and will be installed by default if such a driver is available for your
sound card.
Because WDM drivers are new, you may experience any of the following
problems:
? AVI, MPG, and AU files may stop responding or time out when played with
DirectShow. Pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL will bring up the Close Program dialog box
and you can close the player that has stopped responding.
? You may hear occasional beep sounds from your speakers. Other than the
annoyance, this should not cause any problems.
? Your system may hang when system sounds events, particularly those
associated with Office applications, are played. If you experience this, try
disabling your sound scheme from the Sounds Control Panel.
? The volume control may reset the volume levels to the minimum with each
reboot.
? On some sound cards the mute check boxes in the volume control appear
grayed and are unavailable.
? The volume control may have duplicate entries for items such as
Synthesizer (MIDI), Wave, and CD Audio.