Trouble playing CD audio on 9300. How's yours?

Hello, newcomer here.

I have Dell 9300 with DVD/CD-RW drive and I was trying to listen to a music CD.
Windows Media Player by default reads the CD digitally and plays through system's "wave" channel.
Microsoft calls it "Digital Audio Extraction (DAE)".

I don't like this because this causes CD to spin fast and makes noise.
So I set the media player to play in "analog" mode like I always do with other computers (by going to tools->options->devices and selecting the drive),
but then I don't hear any sound from the system (neither speaker nor headphone).
I can hear it fine in "digital" mode, and I have confirmed that it does the same with Winamp.
The MP3 files plays fine so volume control is out of question.
I have went through sound device property and DVD drive to see if I unchecked anything by accident, but I don't see anything wrong.

Is it Dell's design to only play audio CD in digital mode to save cost?
Or is there a remedy to this symptom? How's other 9300's behave?
please save me from this annoyance.

Thanks a lot for your help in advance

 

Welcome to the forums,
I've never tried switching over to analog, so I wouldn't know if that would cause a problem or not. I haven't had any problems with my CDs. Do you have the sony or NEC drive?

You could always rip the songs to your HDD, so you don't have to use the CD.

 

In order to play the analog sound there must be a wire connecting the analog output from the cd player to the sound card. There does appear to be a cd audio level control in the mixer. There is probably no wire hooked up assuming there is actually an input someplace inside.

A couple of people have gutted their systems, is the cd analog line hooked up? Is there even an inout?

 

Thanks for your input, guys.
if JustJimDelany is experiencing the same thing,
then I guess I can assume it is Dell's design (cheap one, that is) to omit CD analog output.
(I would still appreciate other 9300's behave, to confirm the fact)

Though it's still annoying, it does put my mind at peace a little bit knowing that my system is not defective =D

p.s. SouthernGirl, I think my DVD/CD drive is a NEC one.

 

I have had no problems playing CD's in my I9300. I think it plays quite well for being a laptop. I might have a different drive though, I am at work so I don't remember off hand which drive I have.

 

I can't really say I have ever played a cd on this system. I have played plenty of dvds. I just know this is how it works from years of building computers. The digital extraction should work ok except for the drive noise.

 

I've played several CDs and have never had this problem, but its always been in digital mode.

The NEC drive has been pretty good and is one of the better drives from what I've heard. Have you tried updating your drivers?

 

I have had no problem on mines

 

What I am curious is, "can it play audio CD in analog mode?" (meaning sound coming out from speaker)
I can play the audio cd in "digital mode" with no problem.
you can try yours by following the instruction I mentioned in original post.
If anyone can confirm that their 9300 plays audio CD in "analog mode," it would shed some light in analyzing the issue.

thanks!