I've done everything I can think of at the CD-RW, including the volume dial. I read on another post that the audio cable has to run from the soundcard to the drive so I check that too, and it's fine. That didn't really make much sense though considering that the external drive doesn't have such a cable, just the USB. I wonder if this is something handled by the player software so only really old versions of WinPlayer will even let the audio come out someplace other than the computer headphone jack.