Foreward

This application needs WinMM.dll to work properly: that dll file must be found in Windows’ System sub-folder. If that file is missing on your system, it can be downloaded from http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?winmm.

Description

The Audio CD Player has the following characteristics:

1. when the audio CD has been registered in Windows-9x’s CDPlayer.ini or in this application’s database, the title bar states the track number, the name of the artist and the title of the album.
2. the markee displays the status of the application or, like in the image above, the name of the track that is played.
3. the main display window gives the following information: the number of the track that is played, the time played from that track, the time remaining to be played, the length of the current track, then, on the botom line, the number of tracks on that disk and the length of the audio disk.
4. a combobox to jump to the selected track.
5. eight navigation buttons:
• the first button is used to jump to the beginning of the current track or to the beginning of the previous one.
• a fast rewind button.
• the third one is a toggle button (pause/play).
• the fourth is used to stop playing: it moves the disk pointer at the beginning of the current track (rather than the beginning of the disk).
• the fifth is the fast forward button.
• the sixth is used to jump to the next track.
• the seventh is a toggle button (to start a musical loop/to mark the end of that loop/to kill the loop).
• the eighth is also a toggle button (to eject the compact disk/to close the drawer of the CD drive).
6. a button to quit the application
7. a slider to control the volume of the music.
8. a checkbox to indicate if the music should be played continiously or if the application should stop when all the tracks have been played.
9. an arrow image to open/close the Track List.

• I bought my first CD player in November 1983, six months after the first CD players appeared on the Canadian market. With that machine, I could create loops within musical tracks. That feature was handy to learn the exact pronounciation of a word or a sentence spoken in a Foreign language, or to learn a guitar solo from an old Jimmy Hendrix compact disk. Unfortunately, that first machine broke down a decade later and I couldn’t find the same feature among the affordable CD players since then. Now that can be done with any CD drive when this application is used.
• The Volume control doesn’t affect the level of the sound when music is listen through earphones connected directly to the CD player drive. However, when the sound is played through the speakers of a portable computer or obtained from a sound card or from the chip of a motherboard, this control allows the sound level to be changed with any pointing device. That control is handy for desktop presentations, tutorials, etc., when the sound level could have to be changed on the fly.
• The language of the interface can be changed from English to French or to German with a small change in the CDAudio.ini file (Thanks to a translation module done by Jonny Kwekkeboom). For example, when a semicolon is added at the beginning of the first entry in the [Language] section and the semi-colon which is front of Default=DE is taken off, the interface will be in German (DEutsch) the next time the application will be loaded.
  
  
  

• It works under Windows-9x or on system upgraded from Windows-9x. Under Windows-XP, it works only if WinMM.dll is found and copied in Windows’ System sub-folder,
• It works only with the CD drive with the lowest drive letter assignment; for example, if you have a CD burner (D:) and a DVD drive (E:), our application will only work when the audio disk is read from drive D:,
• Under Windows-XP, the scrollbar used to scroll the track list (illustrated in the image below) gives gross result (Tip: scrolling with the mouse wheel is more useful).
  

When the Edit “button” (actually, the arrow at the bottom of the main panel) is clicked, the Track List drops down. Click the Artist or the Album entryfield to edit them. To edit a track name, set focus to the appropriate row (click on it), then push the Rename button below the Track List. Click on the Select|Deselect pushbutton (it’s a toggle button) to add or remove the tracks among the ones to be played. When deselected, the track can still be played by clicking its name in the Track List or by selecting its track number in the combobox in the upper right corner of the panel. To move a track in the playing order, the user has to Right-click on a track name and drag it to the wanted position: in the image below, the sixth track will be moved to the second position in the Track List and will become the first one to be played.

Installation

1. Install the dBASE PLUS Runtime Engine (7.2 MB). This is the Virtual Machine needed for any dBASE PLUS application to run.
2. Download S_Audio.zip (176 Kb) in a temporary folder.
3. Extract the twenty-four files it contains in the folder you would like the CD Audio Reader to be.
4. Create a shortcut to CDAudio.exe on your Desktop or in your Start Menu.

If you want that application to become the default audio CD player, you will have to follow these visual instructions under Windows'98. Under Windows-XP, the steps are the same except that you’ll have to look for CDA rather than AudioCD among the registered file types (step 2):

History

• Version 1.0 (March 2003): That version reads the track list from CDPLayer.ini. However it offers no mean to edit that list.
• Version 2.0 (March 2003): The application automatically imports data from CDPlayer.ini. It offers means to edit the track list. It saves data in its own database. Moreover, thanks to Jonny Kwekkeboom (a German developer) who has provided the code, the application has multi-lingual capability; the [Language] section in the CDAudio.ini file just have to be edited.
• Version 2.01 (July 2003): A minor bug was killed (some of the data in the main display window was not updated when the player moved to a new track)
• Version 2.02 (January 2005): In the lower pane of the application, the Select All pushbutton has become a toggle button (Select All <—> Deselect All).
• Version 2.03 (April 2005): The player now takes into account that the theoretical track length written in the disk’s table might be erroneous and thus, updates its display correctly when it starts playing the next track “prematurely”.
• Version 2.1 (April 2005): In the lower pane of the application, the Select and the Deselect pushbuttons have been replaced by a single toggle button (Select <—> Deselect). The fourth button in that pane is used to print the track list. The quality of the printout is quite primitive for now. It will be subtantially improved eventually.
• Version 2.50 (April 2006): Under Windows-XP, any CD Audio disks read for the first time by this software is properly indentified as a new disk.
• Version 2.51 (April 2006): Under Windows-XP, the time and the remaining time are refreshed when the fast forward (or the rewind button) is pushed.
• Version 2.52 (April 2006): Empty messages boxes caused by the translation module no longuer appear when language of the interface is changed to French or to German.
• Version 2.53 (April 2006): Under Wondows-XP, an important bug was killed. When the application was called when an audio disk was already in the CD drive, the application worked as expected. However, when an audio disk already registered in the database was inserted in the CD drive drawer when the application was loaded first, that disk was not recognised. That bug is now corrected.
• Version 2.54 (April 2006): Up to now, the code that prevents a second instance of the CDAudio Reader from loading didn’t work under Windows-XP. Now the code works as well as under Windows-98.
  
• Version 2.55 (December 2007): The arrow keys can now be used to jump to the next or to the previous track. Moreover, the spacebar can be used to toggle back and forth between the pause/play modes.
  

 Nothing.

Thanks
 
The translation module was written by Jonny Kwekkeboom, a German developer.