Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: CD players

This is topic CD players in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-12-2003, 07:30 PM:

For those who play non-sync music off CD (as opposed to using satellite transmissions or something), what type of CD player do you use? How long do they last? Is it better to get the cheapest bottom-of-the-line consumer-grade player and consider it to be a disposable item, or does it make more sense to get a high-end professional model (like the broadcast units from Denon, Marantz, and others)? Other than better quality construction and balanced outputs, do the higher-end players offer anything that the cheap ones don't for non-sync use?

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 01-12-2003, 07:38 PM:

I've had good luck with regular Sony 5 Disc changers.

Posted by Craig Hanham (Member # 1010) on 01-12-2003, 07:47 PM:

The obvious answer is service life and reliabilty. The extra dollars are worth it.
There are some good Tascam models., priced about the same as good domestic gear, with professional specs.
Shop around, oh yeah listen to your favourte CD any decent supplier should bring a model to you for a demo.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 01-12-2003, 07:48 PM:

When we needed a CD player for the hold music on our company phone system, we bought the cheapest player we could find that had a "Repeat" function so it would run continuously & unattended. It was a JVC, purchased new in 1995 for $79. That player was in service for 6 straight years, 24/7. It was plugged into a cheap UPS and literally never stopped in 6 years except for 2 or 3 times when I swapped the CD out for something different. I was kind of impressed. [Cool]

When we bought it, we figured we'd get 1-2 years out of it before it died; I never would have believed a bargain-basement consumer model could last anywhere near that long.

Posted by David Favel (Member # 1125) on 01-12-2003, 07:58 PM:

O.K. but what about running non-sync from a computer?

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-12-2003, 07:58 PM:

My DVD player (a Pioneer DV-C603 5-disc changer) doubles as my CD player. DVD players are often criticised for not having optimal CD playback quality over differences in the laser pickup. Not so for this moderately priced unit. It has a two different laser pickups, one for DVD and the other for CD. The only perceivable downside is the slight lag in the player switching pickups when you go from playing a DVD to a music CD.

One requirement I have for CD players is a pure digital output jack. I have a few DTS music CDs. Some CD players will digitally alter an existing Linear PCM data stream with DSP stuff or with simple digital volume adjustments. Any of those things will toast an outgoing DTS bitstream. The data on DTS music CDs is written to look like LPCM so any CD player will "see" the tracks and play them. But the slightest alteration to that data compressed bitsream will totally corrupt it.

The next DVD/CD player I'll get will likely be a "universal" player that handles both Super Audio CD and DVD Audio discs. I have not bought such a player at this point since the digital output issue remains unresolved. At some point, IEEE-1394 Firewire is going to be standardized for home theater hardware. It already seems to be on a fast track for HDTV. The wide bandwidth of Firewire I/O is needed for DVD-A and SACD high res audio tracks. Current digital outputs cannot handle data loads that high.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-12-2003, 08:01 PM:

Has anyone checked out the latest CD players from the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas? Pioneer has three different digital audio transports that function like the vinyl turntables rap DJs and techno people to scratch records. They have two models that use CDs and another that uses MP3 files and networks to a PC. The units seem really pretty cool.

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 01-12-2003, 08:34 PM:

These days I think I'd go with either computer playback or one of the newer cheap stand-alone machines that can play other formats as well as CD. My new DVD machine can do DVD-A, CD, and MP3 audio--for $70 US at Bust Buy. Certainly not built like a tank at that price but hard to go wrong with that as a non-sync source.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 01-12-2003, 08:50 PM:

I generally supply a 3-U clampable rack shelf for the customer to supply their own CD player. I normally advise to not get the best of the best..."just what you need in features" and treat it as disposable.

With the price of consumer CD players it is hard to go wrong. As for the Pro-sumer stuff (Marantz and Tascam)...sometimes the big difference is only the rack mount. We have been looking into Marantz pro and often the balanced outputs are an option that for a theatre you don't necessarily want. Most cinema processors are already set up to handle unbalanced inputs from a CD player (Dolby has been using RCA jacks since the CP-500).

One thing I have noticed is that on the Prosumer stuff you do have the option of "heavy duty" transports which, in my opinion, betters your chance of long term life but that is no guarantee.

Steve

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 01-12-2003, 09:10 PM:

Given the way some booth personnel take care of booth equipment, I would opt for the cheapest stuff I could find.

So I guess it depends who and what you have working with you.

Posted by Jamie Sanson (Member # 1161) on 01-12-2003, 09:59 PM:

I use YAMAHA audio equipment such as the CDC-685 cd changer and the KX-W421 double deck tape player.

Posted by Rob van Ede (Member # 1457) on 01-13-2003, 05:53 AM:

The theatre i work for is running for eight years now. All cd-players are the cheapest models from technics. All have been replaced once and last year, two of four were replaced for the second time. So here, they last about four years running on repeat during the shows. Reading non-perfect cds and skipping becomes a problem. Cleaning does not help, so i think the laser just gets old...

Posted by Brad Haven (Member # 954) on 01-13-2003, 10:45 AM:

I usually buy our cd players second hand as it's getting increasingly hard to find a store that sells cd players new (in perth that is), unless they are of the more expensive variety.
I have been finding many great near new decks being sold off to pawnshops, i guess everyone is trading up to dvd! I found a near new marantz deck going out at a quarter of it's original price, but i've been happy with the 5 deck sony of which i have bought a few of, there seems to be a lot of them going cheap second hand?

Posted by Jean-Michel Grin (Member # 1360) on 01-13-2003, 01:43 PM:

A good idea is to powered the CD player by the automation system or by a N.C. contact of a relay powered by the motor switch. With that, the CD player will just operateat the intermission or when the motor don't running, and will extend the life of the optical head of your CD player.
For background Music in the lobby, we tryed a lot of different players: Sony carousel with 300 CD but it was out of order six month later, an Ultrak heavy duty rack mounted CD changer was returned four times to the dealer [Mad]

Lately I put a Pioneer CD changer with 25 CD, modified for auto random repeat by the local dealer, It's work perfectly [Big Grin]

I know that Onkyo made a CD player with an Hard drive inside, to stock music in MP3 format. It could be interesting, but not easy to use....

Bye,

Jean-Michel

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 01-13-2003, 05:07 PM:

Personally, I'd expect repeatedly cycling the power to the CD player to be far worse than leaving it on all the time.

--jhawk

Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 01-13-2003, 06:36 PM:

When we opened and money tight we bought portable CD players for $40 a piece and used the one here that worked and Ky brought in his portable. They all lasted about a year. I then bought 5 Teac cd players from J&R in NY for about $80 per player. It seems that nobody makes cheap single transport CD players anymore. Just look for them and you will see. As a result, they have performed well and we get the J&R catalogue each and every month.

Posted by Dave Callaghan (Member # 1544) on 01-13-2003, 06:42 PM:

I tried using a computer: OS Windows ME / Windows Media Player / 128 MB of RAM. The computer runs an intermission video program. With this configuration I was able to play non-sync, but only for a while - a memory error would crash the system after about 3 1/2 hours of continuous play. End of experiment and back to the CD's.

Would expanding the amount of RAM make this practical? 185 minutes of Windows Media Audio at 64Kbps takes up about 86 MB of hard disk space. If setting up a repeating playlist transfers the the entire 86 MB into RAM before commencing play, then wouldn't adding another 128 MB of RAM prevent the system from crashing?

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 01-13-2003, 08:49 PM:

Dave, a repeating playlist won't load the entire playlist into RAM. At most the current and next song will be loaded, that's it. With that said, why not use at least 192kbps encoding so that the non-sync will sound at least half descent on your expensive kickass auditorium sound systems. [Smile]

Your problem is the operating system. Both Windows 98 and 2000 will run playlists for hours and hours and... I know that for sure, I use a playlist & taskmanager as an alarm clock and sometimes it takes all day for me to drag my but out of bed. [Smile]

And by the way, welcome aboard!

Ian, wouldn't a distribution amp be a little more practicle in the long run, now that you've got a little more cash to spend?

Posted by Dave Callaghan (Member # 1544) on 01-13-2003, 10:08 PM:

Thanks, Daryl. The figures I used were for an experiment on my Windows XP Home system, just to determine if the idea would work at all. It does run for hours and hours and ... exactly what is needed for non-sync in a continuous house.

So, if 98, 2000 and XP work and ME apparently doesn't, would you know of an MS update that dealt with what looks like a bug in ME, or did MS abandon it because they were busy with XP?

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 01-13-2003, 10:16 PM:

My experience with ME is limited as we didn't sell any copies of it due to it being no better than 98 or 2000 (actually nowhere close to as good as 2000) and simply a money grab before the release of XP.

The problem may be fixable by upgrading to DirectX 9 or updating to Windows Media Player 9. You may have better luck using Nullsoft's WinAmp though - it's probably one of the most reliable mainstream players.

Also, make sure to disable power management in ME... it's pretty flakey and could be contributing to the problem.

Posted by Barry Floyd (Member # 385) on 01-14-2003, 09:15 AM:

This unit is probably overkill for most cinema applications, but is a very reliable unit. This is the newer version of the one I have in my Mobile DJ rack.
DENON DN2100F DUAL CD PLAYER

I've used DENON CD players and GEMINI CD players for almost 9 years, and never had a problem with them. They're built very rugged, and can take the abuse of being moved around from night to night.

Mine has 3 different types of outputs on the back of the unit.
1.)Standard RCA jacks
2.)BNC Digital outputs
3.)Optical outputs (for use with fiber optic lines)

No cheap plastic cases here, all metal units, rack mounted.. just set it and forget it.

You can find them on Ebay pretty cheap every now and then.

Another option, like the others have said above is to use a computer program. I've used PCDJ before, and it's a great simple program to use. Again, it's features are more than what are needed for cinema use, but it's a rock-solid program

Posted by Michael Brown (Member # 890) on 01-14-2003, 09:44 AM:

quote:
I tried using a computer: OS Windows ME / Windows Media Player / 128 MB of RAM. The computer runs an intermission video program. With this configuration I was able to play non-sync, but only for a while - a memory error would crash the system after about 3 1/2 hours of continuous play. End of experiment and back to the CD's.

Woah thats a long intermission. [Wink]

Seriously, why do you need to play non-sync continuously for 3 1/2 hours?

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 01-14-2003, 04:40 PM:

FWIW, Barry, the buttons on the Denons tend to fail over time. Specifically, on an extremely heavily-used DN1000F, the open/close button failed after ~4 years. Of course, getting the part and replacing it was child's play, and it's still going strong a few years later, though it gets a lot less use than it used to.

--jhawk

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 01-14-2003, 06:34 PM:

Michael, if you've got say 10 screens and one non-sync source, it's going to need to be running a majority of the day.

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 01-14-2003, 08:56 PM:

We usually buy cheaper (~$60) Sony players. I try to get ones that self-play on power up. Since we run "MovieTunes" there's no sense getting a multidisk player, although I agree it's getting hard to find a single disk player anymore.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 01-14-2003, 11:09 PM:

If anyone is looking for an all in one...DVD, CD, DVD Audio, SACD type player look at the Pioneer DV-45A. This thing is super convenient, extremely fast at loading the different format disks, and has unbetable sound at three times its price range.
I would hope by now that some theatres with huge sound systems are taking full advantage of both of the Super Audio CD formats.
Mark

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 01-14-2003, 11:12 PM:

We program our preshow music to the second, so the film hits the screen as the very last bars of music end. For that we need a timer display that can count-down backwards. We have used a Sony 5 disk changer and our currently Denon 5 disc player - both middle of the line consumer models. The Sony worked for about 6 years weekends only and not in constant run mode, then crashed. We are now in our 3rd year with the Denon.

For our music-on-hold, we did need a 5 disk changer model running continuously -- I me CONTINUOUSLY -- 24/7. I went through a Teac, a Pioneer, and a Sony -- all mid-end consumer units and all lasted about two years each. Now we play the classical FM Station, WQXR -- it never craps out! I thought about using a computer, but there hasn't yet been a Windows OS that hasn't crashed at some point if the machine was left running continuously for any length of time. I take it back -- I haven't run XP yet, but something tells me somewhere along the line it will do just like all the other Windows OSs and hiccup without provocation and there ya go -- dead air on hold. Besides, a computer is a big chunk of hardware for a simple sound playback. I bet an MP3 player with no moving parts would run forever. That will be my next experiment for a perpetual motion music-on-hold playback source.

As for the current crop of "bring anything on" format masters, Sony and Philips both have players now that will play literally ANYTHING you can possibly throw at them --CDs, CDRs, CDRWs, SACDs, MP3s, DVDs....did I miss anything? And both are around something like $200. As for their ability to run from a theatre's opening show to closing show, that's anybody's guess....and luck -- but I would bet on a CD player's reliability over a computer's any day of the week.

Frank

Posted by Mike Rendall (Member # 1499) on 01-15-2003, 03:01 AM:

In our theatre we have a Marantz deck, so far lasted 5 years without any bother.

quote:
if you've got say 10 screens and one non-sync source, it's going to need to be running a majority of the day.

When I was working in a two screen theatre, we used to have a CD player in each rack and tailor the music to the feature in question, i.e. If we were running Titanic in one theatre we would choose either the Titanic soundtrack or something equally related, in another screen we may be running a hindi feature and so would have hindi dance music. I have never heard of a theatre only having one NS source for all houses, is this common in larger theatres? It makes starting the show in time with the end of a track very difficult! [Big Grin]

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 01-15-2003, 03:07 AM:

Most distribution amps accept two non-sync sources. Usually you load 'adult' music in one changer and 'kid' music in the other. If you've got a soundtrack for a movie that is popular, you can play it in all the houses. In fact, I hate listening to a movies soundtrack before that movie. I think it's kind of stupid... I don't know, just a pet peeve I guess.

Start at the end of a song? Sure, if you want too. Turn on the booth monitor and wait for the end of the song. Since I naturally thread to within a couple frames on an unmarked leader, I know it'll be 3 seconds from the time I hit start to the time the NS is muted. Besides, customers aren't even going to remember being annoyed because you cut off the song after they are bombarded with a billion commercials. [Frown]

On a related note... you could use one computer for two non-sync soures if you wanted too. Heck you could probably do four sources given a good harddrive and processor.

Posted by Dave Callaghan (Member # 1544) on 01-15-2003, 03:19 AM:

quote:
Woah thats a long intermission.

Seriously, why do you need to play non-sync continuously for 3 1/2 hours?

The non-sync source is played over the auditorium sound systems during program intermissions, and also played in the lobby and washrooms through a distribution amplifier. Once the doors open around noon, you need a source that will run without interruption for about the next 10 hours.

I guess it might have been better to refer to it as standard switched non-sync with continuous PA. It all depends on where you are listening. [Smile]

Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 01-15-2003, 02:38 PM:

Daryl C. W. O'Shea,

We bought 5 players and no distribution amp for one reason. We program music to the specific film.

I just love going to the competition and sitting in the room for Gangs of New York and listening to Rap on Movie Tunes. [Roll Eyes]