CD Players for On-Air and Production Studios?

[ChiefOperator]

Hello All,

We're looking at replacing our cheap, failing on-air and production CD players. We're looking at the Denon DNC615, which looks like a good value: good price, built for studio, and has remote start. I think it's the "little brother" to the popular DN635.

www.d-mpro.com/users/folder.asp?FolderID=1504&CatID=1&SubCatID=1

I know that many stations are using everything from the very expensive Denon and Tascam to the inexpensive Gemini and others often found in night clubs.

Just curious which you're using and whether you have any suggestions.

Thanks!

 

[jboydingram]

I am sure this will not set well with some, but our policy is to buy systems like the Gemini, and when they give a problem, junk them. Sure, they are not top quality, but spend 8 times more for a pro unit, and see what happens when you try to get it serviced. We have been on both sides and you know what we determined. Our
2 cents worth...Thanks

 

[littlejohn]

The Denon Cart style CD players last forever, but cost the world.
Likewise, the 680 is excellent for production, but is far from cheap.
Both are maintainable, parts are easy to come by, and they do speed change, cue-to-music, play locally recorded discs, etc.
If you don't need the features, and don't want to repair/maintain, get a Rolls or Henry 'matchbox' and then buy the loss leaders at Wal-Mart or Costco, and when they hiccup, can them and break out another one. The interfaces will last forever, and the machines themselves are dirt cheap. If you can find the optical interface and buy the ones with TOSlink output, the audio performance is usually excellent. Again, the TOSlink interfaces don't bust, they'll outlast a dozen cheap players.
Some of these things have a year warranty, buy about five of them, and when they puke, mail them back if they're in warranty and they just send you another one.

 

[jboydingram]

Right On Littlejohn! You have seen the Light...

 

[BobOnTheJob]

As a contract engineer in the real world of small market radio, I regularly encourage owners to buy the cheapest CD player that meets their needs & keep spares on the shelf. The expensive ones cost an arm & a leg to service. Between paying me to come in & box it up & then paying a several hundred dollar service invoice from Denon, this seems a no brainer in all but the highest end studios. Hey, I like the expensive stuff as much as the next guy, but I insist on giving my clients sound advice, even if it costs me a call in or two.

 

[jboydingram]

Bob is on the job.., Cheers!

 

[littlejohn]

We had at one place some early 90s production dates on the Denons. They'd run 24 hours in on-air service for the intervening years, until digital storage replaced them for normal product, and still do specials, 'best of' stuff and other locally produced and burned CDs. They were used in a + 1.8% speed increase, which isn't obtainable on the cheap ones. The cart feature was worth the cost fo the shucks, we didn't have to worry about greasy little fingers from the jocks' pizza killing the songs. They happily played locally burned CDs with or without copy bits. Over that time, we'd replace one or two pickups at just under $50 per, a couple of ribbon cables to the carriage at about $10 a whack, and the upper platter bearings at $6 a time or two per machine. One got noisy once, so we shotgunned all the electrolytics in about twelve machines for maybe $100 from DigiKey. They're still there, and still work. At something like $1200 a copy when we got them. If I do two throwaways a year over the intervening ten years, and look at the cost of money, the total is about a wash. In a circumstance where there isn't fulltime technical support, and the support that is there is relatively expensive, I'd go with the throwaways. Those locations where there's only contract help tend to be in markets where the need for speed changes and burned stuff isn't nearly as critical. And often, the capital simply isn't available to invest in a bunch of high end machines.

 

[amfmsw]

Funny, no one mentioned fidelity. I've listened to 'em all. Cheap, disco-DJ, reputable, "standard", cart style, self and shelf-load. The best sound comes from the Denon's. When a song is played from the hard-drive storage, even thought it's .wav and on premium cards, the Denon sounds better. It's their D/A convertor.

 

[NE Miss Radio]

If you buy a consumer cd player, I suggest one with the 0-9 buttons so you can directly cue a track instead of >>'ing (is that a word?) to the proper track. Buy it at the right store or at the right time and some retailers throw in a one year warranty.

P.S. IMHO it's hard to go wrong with Sony. Usually durable and well designed for ease of use.

P.P.S. When you replace your console, look for one that accepts hi-z and lo-z inputs, balanced or unbalanced. I liked mine that took bare wires to the terminal strips. It's one piece of eqpt I would buy again if there's a next time for me.

 

[syvjeff]

I'm going to step on a few toes here, but for a production room just use your CD ROM Drive and production/ripping software like Audition. That way you can do anything you want with the audio prior to air.

Also for an on-air room for the now rare use of a CD player, a cheapy with a matchbox does the trick. Even for my facility we are just using the CD ROM drive and Windows media player if we have to use something on the air.

 

[littlejohn]

Nothing wrong with using a workstation that way, if you have decent audio coming out of it, or if you keep it as a bitstream. Which is the way to beat poor audio from cheapie standalone players... get the TOSlink and either an outboard converter or leave it digital. Actually, the cruddy audio in them is usually due to the analog section more than the D/A system. One of the outboard converters I saw takes optical as well as SP/DIF or AES3. All the outboard ones do a pretty good job of making audio out of bits.

 

[desert_er]

The Denon CD "cart decks", and their non-caddy counterparts have been out of production for over a year now, and Denon service is notoriously slow, assuming they can even get parts. If you're trying to get a '950 repaired, you're pretty much out of luck, and the last '951 I sent to them took over 6 months to get back. I've been replacing them with the Tascam CD-01U Pro, wich has +4 balanced, and AES/EBU outputs. It fits in one rack space, and is slot-loading wich is much faster than messing with an eject button and motorized tray. The airstaff seems to like not having to mess with caddies anymore. They run about $450.00.

In a prod room, you should be ripping tracks anyway, to limit the unnecessary d-a/a-d conversions. In all reality, you shouldn't even need a "mixer" in a prod room anymore... just a good clean mic input(s) into a PC. Our prod guy does mic processing, eq, and effects processing all in software. All that is in his studio is a Shure SM7 mic, ASI 5111 audio card and a Production PC. He accesses a Maestro automation workstation (just to load the finished spots) via Windows virtual desktop.

 

[jorr]

I am suprised no one has mentioned board firing the decks. Even if you use the cheap ~ intermediate decks without remote fire abilites adding it is never usually an issue. In my experience 90% of the time, you can simply find the switch on the control board and use an external closure (console "start" or "on").

If any one has a question about how to do this, let me know.

 

[ChiefOperator]

I am suprised no one has mentioned board firing the decks. Even if you use the cheap ~ intermediate decks without remote fire abilites adding it is never usually an issue. In my experience 90% of the time, you can simply find the switch on the control board and use an external closure (console "start" or "on").

If any one has a question about how to do this, let me know.

Yes, how would you do that? I assume that you would solder a cable pair across the CD's "play" switch solder joints and then run the pair to the board. Pressing the console channel "on" button would cause a closure that would, in turn, start the deck. Yes? Do you know of a way to connect tally (EOM) and other features to the deck.

Thanks!

 

[littlejohn]

I'd use a relay and stick it inside the CD player... a lot of the cheeeep ones have the front panel button(s) hooked directly to the logic chip(s)_, and noise on the wire going to the console will do Bad Things. IC size relays in almost any coil voltage are available of two or three dollars a shot. Use one and don't worry about static smacks. You can usually solder them directly to the circuit board which has the switches on.

 

[ChiefOperator]

I'd use a relay and stick it inside the CD player... a lot of the cheeeep ones have the front panel button(s) hooked directly to the logic chip(s)_, and noise on the wire going to the console will do Bad Things. IC size relays in almost any coil voltage are available of two or three dollars a shot. Use one and don't worry about static smacks. You can usually solder them directly to the circuit board which has the switches on.

Thanks for the guidance, but I must be missing something... So, I can't simply solder the pair across the CD "play" solder joint at the circuit board and then attach that pair directly to the console? I need a relay to prevent noise? I'm not sure that I understand how doing so would cause problems at the board--however, I'm quite new and inexperienced, so I have no doubt that you're right. Okay, so I need a relay to isolate the "play" switch from the board, yes?

If you don't mind explaining the theory for needing the relay, I would certainly welcome it.

Thanks!

 

[littlejohn]

The worry is that the front panel switch is connected in many cases directly into a VLSI CMOS chip. As long as everything is inside the CD machine box, this isn't a problem. When you bring a wire in from the outside world and connect it directly to the chip, you run the risk of introducing electircal noise picked up by that wire into the chip. In the worst case, the jock draws a static spark to the CD machine, which grounds through the wire you've added. Exit the CMOS, all at once. Take a look at the shcematics of almost any equipment, and contrast how the remote connector is wired, relative to the same function on the front panel. It's bypassed and protected at a minimum, run through a relay or optoisolator at a maximum. You don't really want the outside world inside the CD player. You can use optos, but the relay is somewhat easier to iterate.

 

[jorr]

LittleJohn is right about the noise in some instances. For example, the air console my primary client uses has a 100% isolated control switch on the on/off buttons. On that console paried with some rack mount dennon CD-players (had to replace those CD-cart decks from 1991 sometime!) I actually do just have the external "on" switch tied across the mechnical switch on the CD-deck. However, on some of the cheaper decks made for DJing, I have seen this screw them up. In that case, you really would want to use a simple reed relay or OPTOisolater. It really all depends on how the CD player runs.

If you want help setting this up with your setup let me know what console and CD player you are using.

 

[ChiefOperator]

Everyone-

Okay, now I understand the need for the isolating relay. Thank you everyone for your replies.

Jorr, Thank you for the offer to help, but at this point, we haven't decided on a specific CD player. However, it looks like it may be the Denon DNC615 (which already has a remote start input). Or we're also looking at the Tascam CD160MKII (new model). Our console, by-the-way, is an Auditronics 212 (I think).

If anyone has evaluated the Denon DNC615 or Tascam CD160, I'd be interested in your thoughts. Good decks or bad?

Thanks again...

 

[Uncleralphie]

Chief Operator....good luck in getting a Tascam CD-160MKII. We want them since some of our program special stuff for the weekends is on a MP-3 format.
I've always had good luck with Tascam. Better than Sony.
But the wait to get the 160MKII is insufferable. Back order. It is a new unit. It's over been over a month now.