Windows 7: CD plays on Hi-Fi but not computer!

Isobuster shows 'No media present' which I suppose is to be expected since that is what everything else shows, it is just ignored. So much for the comments I have seen elsewhere about CD drives treating these discs as normal CDs if HDCD is not supported. Presumably this format (seem to have blinked at some point in the past and missed this) has died/is dying and is no longer supported. I knew about SACD but not this, but probably just lucky with all the CDs I've bought.

The drive is an HP DVD A DH16AAL SATA CDRom with Lightscribe but not HDCD it seems. My Hi-Fi is quite old so fortunately it plays on that and presumably I'll be able to rip using Audacity (24 bit or probably 16 bit) but I'll be more careful about buying Cds in future. Don't think it's worth seeking a new drive just for one CD!

If anyone knows of a utility to check the capabilities of CD drives then I'd be grateful and I might have missed some setting as the soundcard is certainly capable of playing these discs. Thanks all.

You're very welcome.

It might be worthwhile contacting HP to see if they can offer any help.

I'm honestly surprised!

ISOBuster should at the very least see there's a disc with a finalized session containing multiple tracks in the drive. We can assume with some certainty that your drive itself is indeed incapable of dealing with HDCDs and just won't acknowledge them (or maybe believes the disc is empty).

ImgBurn btw is able to query most drive's advanced capabilities and even change a few settings, but usually they're along the lines of DVD book types or whether the drive operates in silent mode or maximum performance mode.

It is a bit puzzling as according to all reports the CD should be treated as a normal audio CD and play but without the HDCD enhancements. I tried Imgburn, Isobuster and dBpoweramp, and all show no media present like Explorer and WMP. Perhaps it is a driver issue (HD audio?) but other audio CDs play normally and data discs are shown normally in Explorer. The only thing I can think of is the recent install of the Creative SB X-Fi Titanium HD card and Creative software along with PowerDVD 9. This was a bit flakey, playing one DVD OK but crashing on another until I changed to allow hardware acceleration. I uninstalled the Realtek audio drivers before disabling the onboard sound in the BIOS before installing the sound card and as far as I can tell it works fine. The diagnostic HP software shows the CD drive as perfectly normal.

So a bit of a puzzle! Perhaps the CD is defective in some way - unlikely since it plays OK in Hi-Fi - but I have a replacement coming so this should sort that out unless there is a faulty batch.

Still puzzling - replacement CD is the same (as expected, and probably not faulty) and disconnecting/booting and reconnecting drive did nothing. A problem somewhere but I can't figure it. I'm sure the drive is OK and if I'm tempted to upgrade to a Blu Ray drive there still might be a problem somewhere. Can't seem to find anything about drivers for this drive so perhaps I'll have to ask the nice people at HP for some help.

I still think that your particular drive just can't see HDCDs or sees them as blank discs, possibly due to a rare firmware bug.
This might well go away if you switch to a completely different drive, blu-ray or not...

Just for chuckles you may want to try here:
HP Business Support Center

Even though it says "business support center" it's not paid support. It's HP users volunteering help. It's just when they made the forum they were owners of "business class" machines. The line is blurred now. You may be able to pick up a useful tidbit.

When I signed up they accepted a hotmail address as good enough if you don't want to give your main ISP email. Also it's a good resource since you can download original drivers and software that came with your machine, updates, PDF manuals etc..

I might try the forums, thanks. As the prices of combo drives are so low I could perhaps get another. What drives are reliable these days as the last one I bought was a Pioneer which was fine. If I upgraded to a Blu-Ray player or writer any info on these? I do actually have an image prior to installing the sound card that I could restore to but since I have made quite a few changes I am not excited at this prospect and that may not be the issue at all anyway.

Well, well, well!! I find I have some other HDCDs - King Crimson, Wake of Poseidon and Larks' Tongues and both play OK!

Bizarre...I think this is a one-in-a-million bug triggered by your very particular "problematic" HDCD on that very particular drive!