14 DAY TRIAL // There are people (I happen to know some) who really hate mp3 and its "cousins", and who do their best to avoid contact with digital music whenever possible. They are audio CD fanatics and I can't really blame them for falling in love with the awesome covers and wonderful-looking printed CDs, all combined with the utmost sound quality of their favorite music. One of them told me once that music sounds even better from the audio CD as he used to hold the CD case and browse its booklet.
Well, these people either have at home racks of fancy HiFi equipment or they have (also) nice software for their PCs. For persons like this, a broad range of software manufacturers do their best and produce dedicated audio CD-player applications, whether containing almost all tools and gadgets usable in connection with CDA formats or just the painfully simple disc player code.
I am in a rather extreme mood right now, so this is why I've decided to review (probably) the smallest audio CD software available in Softpedia's databases. 10 KB of pure code are the living proof of technical/ IT simplicity: that's why I asked in the subtitle of this article if anyone could do smaller.
The Looks & The Works
I really don't know what should I write down for such a software as a thing like "it's small, it looks OK and it works" could easily be covering everything. Don't be afraid, I won't beat around the bushes telling you crap!
First of all, the CD 1.1 looks very tidy and really nice. Being a very small GUI with just the basic control buttons (restart CD, next/previous, play and stop), without the fast forward or rewind possibility, it also contains 2 small counter-screens: one for the track number and one for the elapsed time. Minimize (which sends the CD 1.1 to system tray !!!) and close buttons are the last elements one may see on the face of this minuscule program.
The color scheme is also dead-simple as is has the native Windows-grey background and deep dark blue buttons. I hope you won't laugh as I add that CD 1.1 has no skins :). Remember the 10 KB size though...
As for the operation, I must say that once you launch CD 1.1, it will automatically detect whether you have an audio CD in your drive(s) and play it. I am looking forward to seeing what happens if there are more than only one audio CDs in the drives!
No shortcuts exist for the operation of the player, but, at least, it goes to system tray when minimized. Or you could use some shortcut letters as you right-click the tray icon, but that's a bit too much. One more interesting thing: the small GUI can float wherever you want, even above your quicklaunch or start menu! Needless to say that its small dimensions render it perfectly fit for placing in your taskbar. No auto repeat mode but again....the 10 KB...
The Good
The smallest CD player I've seen so far, yet reliable and working with no errors. Stylish and minimalist design, fit for placing in the taskbar and occupying an insignificant amount of room, the CD 1.1 runs on very low system resources and so, you won't notice it running.
The Bad
Since this is such a simple piece of code and it does what it was intended to do error-free, I can't see what bad things anyone could say on a 10 KB program. Add some shortcuts and FFW/REW options and I'll bow to you!
The Truth
The truth is that CD 1.1 is an unbelievably small audio CD player yet highly efficient at what it does. All free and lovely.
Get a detailed image on CD 1.1 while seeing the screenshots below:
