BT Player

[olsson]

Hello
Can someone give me an advise on this. I want a BT player, CD, MP3 or WAVE, rackmounted. I have tried Numark, Gemini and Swissonic but they don´t work. They have an Instant Start witch means that the first 0,3 sek of the sound disappear, and also the first click. I want Anti-Shock, Single & Continius play and start at the beginning of the file and not at the beginning of sound.
Any advise ?
/Bertil

['Big Bose Man']

Hi Bertil,
To eliminate the 'instant start' problem try inserting a 'click' (such as a low high hat sound/ or rim shot) approx 3 or 4 seconds before the track is due to start, this will set the player off and give you the 3/4 before the actual Backing Track starts.
Have a look at the 'American Audio SDJ1' it may suit your needs.
It is rackmounted, has the option to play single or continuous, two SD Card slots. It only functions with SD Cards (up to 4GB) and only MP3 Files, but 4GBs of MP3 files is an awful lot of tracks. I believe there is a newer model which will play CDs - the SDJ2??
There's a lot of information on the internet - as I said above it could do the job for you.
If you put a 'click' or whatever at the start of your BTs the Numark/Gemini etc will probably work exactly the same way - give it a try.
Hope this helps,
Very kind regards,
Rod.

[DaveC]

Hi Bertil,

A crude but effective solution is a car-dashboard mounted CD/MP3 player. You would need to provide a blank rack mounting plate and cut a hole in it, and also a 12volt supply.

Regards
DaveC

[noelford]

I normally use my MacBook, but I've just ordered one of these to mount in my rack as an alternative/back-up.

[olsson]

Hello

Rod
I have tried that and it work, but it is a lot of job to change every tune, and the problem is when some other use it and have standard BT.
Dave
The car-dachboard CD does not have single play modes
Noel
I think Pulse have Instant Start the same as Swissonic.
Many thanks for Your help, does anyone have any more suggestion.
/Bertil

[harley]

Hi Bertil

i use a laptop which does whatever i ask of it. Does it have to rack mount?

regards
Ian

[olsson]

Hi Ian
I found it difficult to operate the PC on a live gig.
Noel
I am curious about the Pulse. Perhaps it is not the same as Swissonic: www.thomann.de/se/swissonic_cdmp_1.htm
Can You give a review when You got it ?
/Bertil

[olsson]

Hi
I just found this on the net:
www.blue-room.org.uk/index.php?showtopic=46544

/Bertil

[noelford]

Bertil, I'm waiting for mine to arrive, but I'll post a report on it here once I've been able to try it.

Cheers

Noel

[noelford]

Okay, the Pulse arrived today. Interestingly it was delivered just as quickly as the time promised for Express Delivery at an extra £20 - an offer which, thankfully, I hadn't taken up.

I first tried a home-burned MP3 CD and there was an immediate problem. Not missing off the beginning but playing a bit of the beginning twice! However, I tried more home-burned CDs and they were fine. Obviously a problem with my CD and not the machine

I then switched the player off and re-burned the first CD and switched the player back on to try it. At least, I tried to but it wouldn't power up. Checked the obvious things, like the power cable, but no dice. So, I contacted the seller, who is now sending me a replacement player.

Anyway, getting back to the CDs I played before things went awry, I didn't have any tracks with the start clipped off. All intros and count-ins were there. Now, obviously, because my testing was interrupted, I wasn't able to try a lot of tracks but, on the evidence of those I did try, it does seem that the Instant Start problem is not an issue - at least with my CDs.

Once I get the replacement player, I'll check a lot more tracks and keep you posted.

[SteveBGuitarist]

Hi Bertil,
I use a Cortex HDC500 rack mount unit and I have modified it to start from a foot switch. I tend to remove the count-in's from my backing tracks and I have it cue right up to the start of the track. it's handy for tunes like Atlantis where I start with the first 2 muted notes then step on the switch and it starts instantly and in time.
Here is the info,
www.cortex-pro.com/hdc_500.php
I paid £300 about 2 years ago but the price has come down a lot now and some of the newest models also have the foot-switch mod already done so look out for a bargain.

Best Wishes
Regards
Steve B

[olsson]

Noel
Thank You for that. I will wait for Your test.
Steve
I am not the only one who use it so I think I will have the BT with clicks. We also use it on other song where we have drumplayer, and he needs the click. But thanks for the information.
/Bertil

[noelford]

Well, finally, I can bring you up to date, as promised.

I got the Pulse MP3 CD player back and tried my home burned MP3 CDs again. Some were okay, others didn't play properly. I remastered the CDs, adding a few seconds of silence to the beginning of each track and that fixed it... almost. Occasionally a track would become garbled or searching for a track would be difficult. I tried re-burrning a CD at the slowest possible speed (x1) and this improved it but the problems still recurred. These problems were intermittent but, basically, the player was not reliable, and so it is being returned.

The cause of all the problems appears to be that the unit is just not happy playing home-burned MP3 CDs.

I am now looking at a couple of rack-mounted MP3 players that load from flash drives or SDI cards. From what I can see, these should do the trick – they can store the tracks and have a single play feature. Has anyone else tried one of these?

Noel

[John Haldane]

Hi Bertil,
Not sure if this would help, if you have Windows Vista or Windows7 you can use a remtote control for media player.
Regards
John H

[noelford]

A further update. I now have a rack-mountable Koolsound MP3 USB and SD card player and am VERY happy with it. Just a word of caution, though, to those of you who are Mac-based. Macs add invisible files which can cause problems with some of these players, so you need to clean them with an app such as CleanDisk, before using them. It's a very straightforward procedure - really, not a problem at all.

Noel

[olsson]

And more uppdate. We are trying Denon DN F-300:
www.thomann.de/se/denon_dnf_300.htm
and it seems to work OK. It takes both MP3 and WAV files. We have only used it at one gig, so further report is coming later. Once again, Thank You for Your help.
/Bertil

[fluffy]

Hello all, my first post is a question on these digital media players. Does anyone know how easy it is to select the next song? For example, on my minidisk when one song has finished it will autopause and the next song on the disk will be ready to go when the play button is pressed. Or if i decide to change the set, i can just turn the big scroll knob to select the next song.

I have downloaded various manuals for these machines & it seems that (though i may have missed something) you have to go into a search menu to select the next track............could prove awkward in a live situation!

The machine i am thinking of buying is the Cortex HDC500 that steve mentioned earlier, but reading the manual gives no mention of how this would work.

Any comments appreciated.

Thank you!

[tonybiker]

Hi Fluffy.

It maybe the CORTEX HDC3000 that would be more suitable for your needs. However, both units are mighty expensive and unless your a serious DJ, there will be cheaper alternatives to play backing tracks.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe2BdVQoAXE&feature=relmfu

Tony

[Rick]

Hi Fluffy,Personally i have been gigging with mini Disk and Cd for years and found both systems to be reliable and idiot proof so far,A far cry from when i used to use cassette tapes, .......... Now THAT was dodgy ! lol. Best wishes, Rick.

[fluffy]

Thank you Tony & Rick for the replies.

The cortex HDC500 is quite affordable at around £190, if i could be certain of how easy (or hard!) it is to navigate the song order i would order one for that price!

I have a minidisk as a backup in case my main playback gear goes down, but only at present use it for intro \ outro music.

What i am using for tracks is self programmed midifiles from a viscount RD800 active data filer which sends the data to a yamaha EX5, yamaha motif 6, yamaha W7, yamaha MU100r & roland sound canvas. As well as playing guitar i also play keyboards on some songs & as i get older i find it more time consuming setting this lot up! The EX5 alone is a 76 note synth & weighs a ton!

With this in mind, i thought about one of these sd card players as a way of cutting down on a couple of keyboards before my back gives up.

Have been searching the net for a couple of weeks now for this info............i also thought about buying a zoom R16 but it seems it would be a pain having to acces a couple of menus to load each song.

My quest goes on!

Thanks again.

[noelford]

Fluffy, I can only answer your question about selecting tracks with regard to my Koolsound SD and USB MP3 player. As long as you know the track number, finding it is very quick and easy using the selector knob. If you are playing tracks in order, and using single-play, the next track is cued automatically when the preceeding track ends. Track numbers and names scroll on the display. This unit cost under £120 and works fine for me, using both USB and SD.

Cheers

Noel

[fluffy]

Thank you Noel. That sounds like a good little unit......i downloaded the manual which is in french only & have only translated so much of it as yet.

Good to see balanced xlr outs too. I would prefer WAV format though....... but having said that, we worked with a solo singer a few weeks ago who used an american audio SDJ1 which only plays MP3's. The quality seemed quite good subbed through our pa rig, seemed to be plenty of detail in the tracks considering they were encoded to 128kbps.

[fluffy]

Just to update this. I bought this citronic.com/en/product/170.710UK Cost including postage was £99.

Works exactly the same way as my minidisc unit works. You can set it to single play mode & when one song has ended it selects the next one. The detented track select knob will jump through the songs.........usefull if you want to choose a different song for your set (you are not restricted to having to follow a playlist).

You can set the "auto cue" function on or off, it doesnt miss the count in on tracks.

Only caveat is it will only read MP3's, but the quality is quite good encoded at 320kbps. I did an A-B listening test to a track in WAV format & compared it to the same track using MP3@320kbps . There was a "very" slight difference in the high end sound spectrum (EG,cymbals) but not enough to make a fuss about! I am sure that, in a live gig situation, you & the audience wouldnt even notice it.

Hope this is helpfull to anyone looking for a new or backup player.

[olsson]

Hi
We have no used the Denon DN-F300 with very good result for a couple of months. We are going to replace yhe other players we have with the Denon and have bought two more.
/Bertil

[darkie]

Hi,I use my laptop all the time on stage.I use winamp and that has a pause system for the end of each track....Freddie

[fluffy]

Dec 13, 2011 8:58:53 GMT olsson said:

Hi
We have no used the Denon DN-F300 with very good result for a couple of months. We are going to replace yhe other players we have with the Denon and have bought two more.
/Bertil

Thank you for the update. I just missed out on a Denon before i got the Citronic, i would have prefered the Denon as it can read WAV's.....but with MP3's encoded at the highest bit rate i cannot hear any compromises in the quality of the tracks played back on the Citronic

I am impressed with the Citronic though, sounds fine through the PA & works just like my minidisc unit.

Thanks again.


Edit......i have a feeling the wife is getting me an ipad 2 at xmas, may be a possibility that it could be used for BT playback?

[noelford]

iPads can be used for BTs but I haven't found an easy way to do single plays yet. Using the iPad's iPod app, you either have to list each track as an album or be pretty nifty on the pause button.

[garystrat]

Hi Noel

I wonder if this might be a possible answer for the iPad:

www.dawsons.co.uk/alesis-io-dock-pro-audio-dock-for-ipad-and-ipad-2

Gary