Many thanks for your reply. I checked with an audio cable between the AWE and the CDROM drive: Analog audio from CD using an audio cable works fine. The CD ROM drive is a TEAC CD224E, connected to the main board with a 44pin IDE flat cable and a suitable adapter pcb tied to the back of the drive. But I have to refine the ideas behind: I wanted to use a virtual CD ROM drive, and therefore installed MagicDisc for W9x. MagicDisc seems to work fine in more modern systems. like WXP, but on my W98SE machine, the W98 version tends to crash, and I wasn't able to get any audio sound out of that drive. Then after some research I made two changes which changed everything, and now it all works fine:-) First I installed the AWE64 WDM drivers instead of the normal drivers, which offer more options in the settings dialogs, and finally enabled the Digital Audio enable dialog. (Why do the inofficial updates not include the WDM drivers?) Then I installed the Deamon Tools 347 for W98 instead of MagicDisc. The WDM drivers are the basis to the solution, and the Deamon Tools are the completion! Ironically the combination of my KD1610 main board, W98SE, the AWE CT4380, the AWE WDM drivers, and the Deamon Tools work in the DT default setting of analog audio in both the DT and the W98 dialog, but w/o the audio cable, of course... HTH