DiscPlay

For many of us nothing beats popping a CD into our computer and enjoying a nice relaxing evening listening to the likes of the Smashing Pumpkins, Sublime, or the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Regardless of what your tastes in music are, having your computer play your favorite group's CD in the background while you surf the web, write a report for school, or develop a presentation for tomorrow's meeting can definitely help break the monotony and drudgery of normal computer work. If you fall into this group of CD audiophiles, you're probably familiar with the standard Windows 95/NT CD Player. The player is a great app considering its freeware status and that it is an operating system add-on program, but it does lack several features that would make it even more useful. Thankfully, as with most add-on software bundled with Windows, third party vendors have rushed to the occasion to offer alternatives that more than make up for the shortcomings of their OS-bound counterparts. DiscPlay is a great example of such a client. DiscPlay addresses the two most glaring deficiencies of the Windows CD Player -- lack of Internet support and traybar support -- and also adds a ton of useful tools that are cool to have at your disposal when playing audio CDs. The best of DiscPlay's features is its integrated CDDB Internet database support. With CDDB you no longer have to manually enter the title and track information for each new CD you want to play -- DiscPlay automatically connects to a CDDB database on the 'net and downloads the CD's information the first time you load it into your computer. If you've ever had to manually enter the information for CDs you know what a pain it can be, and you can probably guess how useful a service like CDDB is. Even if you haven't had the pleasure of this task, you'll quickly come to appreciate the extremely valuable (and free) CDDB service. And while there are at least ten different audio CD apps now available with support for CDDB, DiscPlay is by far the best of the bunch. Windows traybar support is the second area in which DiscPlay capitalizes on one of the Windows Audio CD Player's biggest drawbacks. The standard DiscPlay icon resides in the traybar when the program is running and a simple click of the icon brings up DiscPlay's superbly designed interface. Additionally, you can add your own audio buttons to the traybar for controlling aspects like toggling between pause and play, stopping play, and reversing/advancing tracks (for skipping to the previous song or the next song). DiscPlay also offers all of the same great features found in the standard CD player, including support for multiple CDs, repeat and random capabilities (although DiscPlay does lack the CD Player's ability to randomize multiple CDs on a song by song basis), intro play, programmable options, and graphical toolbars for configuring the app's options. Another cool feature in DiscPlay is the ability to create your own custom playlists. To do so, all you need to do is right click on selected tracks and add them to your list of favorites. If this sounds familiar, it should -- it's the same type of system used for adding your favorite web sites to Internet Explorer. Additional DiscPlay features include advanced CD management capabilities, statistical features (for tracking the most recently played albums and songs), automatic scheduling options, scripting capabilities, extensive configuration options, and one of the most visually attractive interfaces you'll find in a CD audio player. In addition to its CDDB support, DiscPlay offers a plethora of Internet features, including the ability to search for sites on the web with information on the current CD. You can use DiscPlay's 'net capabilities to find sites that allow you to purchase the CD (or others by the same group) or you can have it look for sites with information on the artists themselves (including any available tour date information). At just $15, DiscPlay is a must-have application for CD audiophiles as well as a great addition for the more casual CD listener. Pros: Outstanding interface and features, integrated CDDB and Windows traybar support, inexpensive price tag Cons: Lacks multi-disc randomize on a song by song basis, options menu could be better organized For the latest information on DiscPlay, check out: http://cws.internet.com/32audio#discplay