Still confused about playing mpeg and mp3 files without Quicktime

[opus.species at wanadoo.fr]

I try to play mpeg and mp3 files on Windows computers without Quicktime 
(beacause most of my customers dont have Quicktime on their computer and 
are not allowed to install it).

I tryed the following solutions :

1) PLAY
play "c:/revolution/test.wav"  -> OK
play "c:/revolution/test.mp3"  -> horrible noise
play "c:/revolution/test.mpg"  -> horrible noise, no video

2) PLAY VIDEOCLIP
I imported test.mp3 as test_mp3 and test.mpg as test_mpg
The mp3 do not play from the front page of the "property editor" but makes 
an horrible noise.
play audioclip "test_mp3" -> nothing happens
play videoclip "test_mpg" -> nothing happens

3) QUICKTIME PLAYER
I made a qt player with the qtplayer tools

set the filename of player "test" to "c:/revolution/test.wav"
start player "test"  -> nothing happens

set the filename of player "test" to "c:/revolution/test.mp3"
start player "test"  -> the mp3 is OK

4) MCISendString
In a previous metacard project i used succesfully mcisendstring to perform 
mpeg files on windows computers without quicktime but i do not know how 
reliable is this solution today.

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All these results are very confusing.
What is the most reliable way to perform mp3 and mpeg files ?

Claude Lemmel