I'm a DJ at a non-comm community/college station in the Boston area.
Although we will eventually be digitizing our music library onto hard drives someday, that's not happening yet. We've still got a library full of CD's, and we need to replace some aging CD players. We're looking for suggestions for what professional makes and models currently available are being recommended for reliable, robust broadcast use. We're looking for reliable performance and durability above all else, over fancy esoteric options or elite audiophile specifications. We need to have players that do the basics well, and are the least likely to miscue, fail to cue, misread, cut out, freeze up, mistrack, or anything else that causes dead air and embarassed DJ's.
Many of the other college and professional public radio stations in the area went with the Marantz PMD-331 and PMD-340 in recent years. They worked very well for those stations, and I suggested them to our management. Last year they (finally) bought two PMD-331's to "try them out" and they are also working well for us, but now that they finally got around to deciding that they want more of them to replace our four remaining old players, they're no longer being manufactured!
About a half-dozen years ago, they outfitted our station with Denon DN-C635's. We've had a lot of trouble with them. Even when they were still fairly new, they often failed to cue or play certain CD's, and they often cut in and out in mid-track. They also had an annoying habit of recueing themselves to "Track 1" while a DJ was announcing during a break, after a different track had been previously cued up. These problems happened on many legitimate commercial major-label CD's, not just on burned CD-R's. These are the players that we currently need to replace, and we began to replace them with the Marantz players before they were recently discontinued.
Before the DN-635's, I remember that the station tried many other brands throughout the late '80s and '90s. I remember the "professional" lines of Sonys, Pioneers, JVC's, Technics, Teac, Tascam, and I'm sure there were others. None of them lasted very long. They were like disposable lighters. We were lucky to get a year out of some of them.
The Marantz professional models seemed to be the most highly recommended a few years ago, and the same units have been working reliably for years at the other stations in the area that bought them. We'd like to know if there appears to be any concensus on a successor that replaced them after they were discontinued.
Also, how often should a station that plays CD's practically 24-7 expect to need to replace professional CD players? We have two on-air studios with three players each, so on-air usage is divided between the two.
Thanks!
Although we will eventually be digitizing our music library onto hard drives someday, that's not happening yet. We've still got a library full of CD's, and we need to replace some aging CD players. We're looking for suggestions for what professional makes and models currently available are being recommended for reliable, robust broadcast use. We're looking for reliable performance and durability above all else, over fancy esoteric options or elite audiophile specifications. We need to have players that do the basics well, and are the least likely to miscue, fail to cue, misread, cut out, freeze up, mistrack, or anything else that causes dead air and embarassed DJ's.
Many of the other college and professional public radio stations in the area went with the Marantz PMD-331 and PMD-340 in recent years. They worked very well for those stations, and I suggested them to our management. Last year they (finally) bought two PMD-331's to "try them out" and they are also working well for us, but now that they finally got around to deciding that they want more of them to replace our four remaining old players, they're no longer being manufactured!
About a half-dozen years ago, they outfitted our station with Denon DN-C635's. We've had a lot of trouble with them. Even when they were still fairly new, they often failed to cue or play certain CD's, and they often cut in and out in mid-track. They also had an annoying habit of recueing themselves to "Track 1" while a DJ was announcing during a break, after a different track had been previously cued up. These problems happened on many legitimate commercial major-label CD's, not just on burned CD-R's. These are the players that we currently need to replace, and we began to replace them with the Marantz players before they were recently discontinued.
Before the DN-635's, I remember that the station tried many other brands throughout the late '80s and '90s. I remember the "professional" lines of Sonys, Pioneers, JVC's, Technics, Teac, Tascam, and I'm sure there were others. None of them lasted very long. They were like disposable lighters. We were lucky to get a year out of some of them.
The Marantz professional models seemed to be the most highly recommended a few years ago, and the same units have been working reliably for years at the other stations in the area that bought them. We'd like to know if there appears to be any concensus on a successor that replaced them after they were discontinued.
Also, how often should a station that plays CD's practically 24-7 expect to need to replace professional CD players? We have two on-air studios with three players each, so on-air usage is divided between the two.
Thanks!