Walk in music source?

[Frank Cox]

I just downloaded the user manual for this.

https://www.adj.com/cdn/shop/files/american_audio_media_operator_bt.pdf?v=18279710870094949072

It's not particularly informative about how you play a mp3 file through it. I get the impression that it just plays through whatever mp3 files it sees on your sd card or flash drive with no playlists or choices of what to play, but again it's not clear.

[Ryan Gallagher]

I just downloaded the user manual for this.

https://www.adj.com/cdn/shop/files/american_audio_media_operator_bt.pdf?v=18279710870094949072

It's not particularly informative about how you play a mp3 file through it. I get the impression that it just plays through whatever mp3 files it sees on your sd card or flash drive with no playlists or choices of what to play, but again it's not clear.

Is the reason for seeking a rack solution because you want the physical buttons and the rack ears? Or is it just that you want whatever solution you have to live "within" the rack and be integrated? If you ignore the licensing restrictions there are probably a billion approaches to skin this cat with software and a mini pc, signage machine, tablet, or rasberry pi etc etc. If you have a little programming experience getting it talking to automation is probably trivial too. At least for single screen situations.

[Frank Cox]

I just find it odd that there's no professional-grade rack-mount mp3 player that matches the features on a $14.95 mp3 player from the local bargain shop.

If I could find one that matches my current sandisk player in terms of being able to have different playlists and such, then I'd be tempted to buy one to add to my rack. If nothing else it would be neater and have bigger control buttons and a status screen that you don't need a magnifying glass to read.

It seems to me that this would be a piece of gear with a fairly substantial market for everyone who wants background music, restaurants to dental offices. Select the upbeat rock playlist, select the late night playlist, select the Christmas playlist, then let 'er rip until you want a different playlist. Kind of a modern version of the Seeburg 1000, I suppose.

[Ryan Gallagher]

I just find it odd that there's no professional-grade rack-mount mp3 player that matches the features on a $14.95 mp3 player from the local bargain shop.

You probably encapsulated the reason right there. The market is pretty small for people who would want to pay “pro/solution” pricing for something that can be done with cheap consumer hardware or free software, or with a feature like playing mp3 discs on their optical disc player.

Another reason pro gear avoids it, is because until quite recently, most of the popular digital formats were not lossless. There is nothing “professional” about an MP3 file, even though it became a defacto standard because of the space savings back when storage was fairly limited.

Digital DJ gear is gonna probably be the corner of the market that supports it the most. But even that has been taken over by software now.

[Gordon McLeod]

This the one we use it is USB mp3 and CD player

https://www.acclaim-music.com/gemini-dj-cdmp-1500-dj-cd-media-player.html?srsltid=AfmBOoooLso2JIC0JBnuDtjdlPnHlJ9uAS1F0DQ9zfsMAvxMetTKBriTZHg

[Ryan Gallagher]

This the one we use it is USB mp3 and CD player
https://www.acclaim-music.com/gemini...vxMetTKBriTZHg

That one appears to at least have a “folder repeat” function, playlists could be organized by folder on the storage media. It may also support common playlist files, but manual is a bit sparse there.

the cheaper American Audio unit might do the same, but I’d buy one with a good return policy,

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

That one appears to at least have a “folder repeat” function, playlists could be organized by folder on the storage media. It may also support common playlist files, but manual is a bit sparse there.

the cheaper American Audio unit might do the same, but I’d buy one with a good return policy,

Yeah the manual is extremely useless. But sounds like the Gemini manual was just as bad...I think I know why.....

Gordon's player is over $280 US dollars, back up into the "pro" territory. (But note that Gemini is another cheap DJ brand and I am pretty sure it's the same company who makes American DJ products.)

B&H has a decent return policy, as does Reverb and a few other places that sell that player. In my case unless it's defective I'm not concerned about returning it.

You hit the nail on the head with your other post:

<snip> The market is pretty small for people who would want to pay “pro/solution” pricing for something that can be done with cheap consumer hardware or free software, or with a feature like playing mp3 discs on their optical disc player.

Another reason pro gear avoids it, is because until quite recently, most of the popular digital formats were not lossless. There is nothing “professional” about an MP3 file, even though it became a defacto standard because of the space savings back when storage was fairly limited.

Digital DJ gear is gonna probably be the corner of the market that supports it the most. But even that has been taken over by software now.

I'd add that in many applications (like mine) it's a "start playback and let it run until the event is over" sort of thing. Think about it in the cinema environment, it's exactly the same thing.

There is nothing “professional” about an MP3 file

Ryan, we're talking about background music, so there is absolutely ZERO need to have lossless audio tracks. (In my case at the tracks, a Seeburg 1000 would have more than enough fidelity since my BGM plays through high power outdoor horns.) Even in a cinema with a great sound system, MP3 is more than adequate for pre-show and wallkout music.

I just find it odd that there's no professional-grade rack-mount mp3 player that matches the features on a $14.95 mp3 player from the local bargain shop.

If I could find one that matches my current sandisk player in terms of being able to have different playlists and such, then I'd be tempted to buy one to add to my rack. If nothing else it would be neater and have bigger control buttons and a status screen that you don't need a magnifying glass to read.

It seems to me that this would be a piece of gear with a fairly substantial market for everyone who wants background music, restaurants to dental offices. Select the upbeat rock playlist, select the late night playlist, select the Christmas playlist, then let 'er rip until you want a different playlist. Kind of a modern version of the Seeburg 1000, I suppose.

Frank, usb thumb drives are super cheap and with MP3 you don't need gigantic drives to hold 12-14 hours worth of music. Your playlist issue is a non issue...you build drives with each type of music you'd like to play and spend a literal few seconds swapping the drives. It's also foolproof, as ALL playlist based players can glitch out and start playing the wrong playlist. Remember this thread?: https://www.film-tech.com/vbb/forum/...estions-needed And be honest: how often would you REALLY need to switch playlists? Even if it's daily, swapping a USB drive is faster and easier than switching playlists on a device with a screen you "need a magnifying glass to read."

The bonus of using a player such as the one Gordon or I suggested is you can rip multiple USB drives easily to use if you have more than one screen, and you don't have to take the player to a computer to resync new content to it.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Ryan, we're talking about background music, so there is absolutely ZERO need to have lossless audio tracks. (In my case at the tracks, a Seeburg 1000 would have more than enough fidelity since my BGM plays through high power outdoor horns.) Even in a cinema with a great sound system, MP3 is more than adequate for pre-show and wallkout music.

I wasn't meaning to imply MP3s are inadequate for the use case, just that as device manufacturer/designers, except in extremely narrow markets, it feels pretty weird to build out a decent quality professional rack component with balanced outputs mostly to play mp3s in this epoch. That probably contributes to why many of the ones you can still find are bundled with other things like optical drives and other features like pitch shifting attempting to hit several markets with one device. I would hope the contemporary ones support all the downloadable formats, Apple, AAC, FLAC, WAV, etc too.

Obviously, if ya want dedicated hardware you gotta consider paying dedicated hardware prices unless you comfortable in the used and discontinued markets.

[Caleb Williams]

I just find it odd that there's no professional-grade rack-mount mp3 player that matches the features on a $14.95 mp3 player from the local bargain shop.

If I could find one that matches my current sandisk player in terms of being able to have different playlists and such, then I'd be tempted to buy one to add to my rack. If nothing else it would be neater and have bigger control buttons and a status screen that you don't need a magnifying glass to read.

It seems to me that this would be a piece of gear with a fairly substantial market for everyone who wants background music, restaurants to dental offices. Select the upbeat rock playlist, select the late night playlist, select the Christmas playlist, then let 'er rip until you want a different playlist. Kind of a modern version of the Seeburg 1000, I suppose.

The venues listed are often willing to pay for the convenience of not having to directly manage a playlist of songs. As a host at a venue, I'd want the music experience for each customer to be unique to each visit, and that would require going through a LOT of music by hand. There are many many options for playing music from the internet (since most of these places need internet for POS/email anyways) that manage the music for you, you just have to specify the genre and maybe give a few example songs. Most of those solutions also offer the option to put ads in-between songs periodically. Because of the ease-of-use and the low cost of entry for most of these solutions, they are more attractive (and cheaper) than having to pay a staff member hours of labor to curate songs and manage the player.

If you're feeling particularly scrappy, You could easily build a system that would fit your requirements running bog-standard linux/windows with an audio output. Hell, even a Raspberry Pi 3 running stock Raspbian would have most of the stuff you'd need to set this up. There are single-U rack shelves you could set this up on, or I'm sure someone has an STL file for a single pi 1U setup. Set up remote access to manage the playlists and Bob's your uncle.

[Ed Gordon]

I prefer FLAC. MP3 can be reasonably good, but depending how it is encoded it can also be very bad.

AI summary comparison of MP3 vs FLAC:
.
FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a lossless audio format that retains the original sound quality, while MP3 is a lossy format that compresses audio by removing some data, resulting in smaller file sizes but lower quality. FLAC files are larger and less compatible with devices compared to MP3, which is widely supported.

Overview of FLAC and MP3

FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) and MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer III) are two popular audio formats, each with distinct characteristics.
Key Differences

Compression Type	Lossless	Lossy
Sound Quality	High-quality, retains original audio	Reduced quality, some data lost
File Size	Larger (50-60% of original WAV)	Smaller (around 10% of original WAV)
Compatibility	Limited, requires specific software	Widely supported across devices
Bitrate Options	Up to 24-bit/384 kHz	32 kbps to 320 kbps
Metadata Support	Extensive, includes tags and cover art	Standard support for ID3 tags
Streaming Support	Limited to high-fidelity services	Supported by most streaming platforms

Use Cases

When to Use FLAC

• For audiophiles who prioritize sound quality.
• When archiving music for future use.
• If you have high-end audio equipment that can take advantage of lossless formats.

When to Use MP3

• For casual listening where storage space is a concern.
• When using devices that may not support FLAC.
• For streaming music where bandwidth is limited.

Conclusion

Choosing between FLAC and MP3 depends on your needs. If sound quality is your top priority, FLAC is the better choice. However, if you need smaller file sizes and broader compatibility, MP3 is more practical.

[Buck Wilson]

For theaters that run background music before the preshow, what is the source of that music? Is it played back on an auditorium by auditorium basis, or is a single music source distributed throughout the theater and fed into an auditorium when needed (resulting in all auditoriums receiving the same music simultaneously)?

I've worked at 2 bog standard multiplexes(an 8 built in the 80's and a 10 built in the 00s) which both had a central distribution system allowing a CD to be played throughout the entire building. We'd get shipped CDs roughly seasonally from MovieTunes. The 8 stayed with that setup for it's entire existence but it was playing custom staff made CDs in the later years. The 10 though has changed quite a bit since it opened. When we switched from preshow content shown from slide projectors to digital preshow content shown from a small digital projector, the walk-in music input was switched from our in house music player to the new digital system controlled by a 3rd party, which played Cinemasounds. You could tell that not a lot of care or thought was put into that because as the years went on, the volume ever decreased, and the songs decreased in quantity until it was JUST the Cinemasounds intro snipe, another trivia snipe I believe, and JUST the song "Blood Moon Singer" by William Matheny played on loop.... for YEARS. Then eventually it just went silent. Only recently did we get our own in house system hooked back up so that we'd at least have the capability to do it ourselves again, but with the automation controlled by corporate and no automation set up to switch from the movie sound format to the non-sync format after the movies end, it still doesn't get used often.

I don't know if any of this matters to the corporate theatres, given they're all running video ads.

Yeah pretty much. The preshow creeped so far back and the process got so automated that it just died off. Unfortunately. The auditoriums feel so awkward and dead without it.

[Justin d'Entremont]

We use a Dante network audio setup to distribute music throughout the complex. A headless computer in the office (accessible via VNC/RemoteDesktop) looks after the playback, and runs Dante VIA. Each auditorium has a regular Windows PC connected, which runs Dante Virtual Sound Card (along with digital signage software for ads and 'this movie is playing next in x:xx mins'). It's entirely network based. The software is not free but it is effectively enterprise grade, and only runs around $50. https://www.getdante.com/products/so...ual-soundcard/

If you didn't want to have a PC at the head end or the projector end, Dante makes encoder and decoder dongles (Dante AVIO adapters) which run off POE and are not much bigger then a BIC lighter. There are a variety of them, XLR in, XLR out, USB-C in, Bluetooth in. https://www.getdante.com/products/ad...avio-adapters/

If someone is interested in going down this road, I'd be happy to hold their hand through it.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Yeah Dante is a very robust strap on solution if you already have the network infrastructure, which most plexes will have due to content management. Digital distribution up to the receiving PC or Dante to analog transceiver. The transceivers are balanced output though if I recall.

Ahh nevermind, they have both varieties, I was used to the live variants.

Edit: What's more is that Dante is fundamentally expandable/routable too. If you have the occasional need for custom/different music in one or more rooms, you just add another player PC onto the Dante network temporarily and re-route the target room to receive it instead.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

The venues listed are often willing to pay for the convenience of not having to directly manage a playlist of songs. As a host at a venue, I'd want the music experience for each customer to be unique to each visit, and that would require going through a LOT of music by hand. There are many many options for playing music from the internet (since most of these places need internet for POS/email anyways) that manage the music for you, you just have to specify the genre and maybe give a few example songs. Most of those solutions also offer the option to put ads in-between songs periodically. Because of the ease-of-use and the low cost of entry for most of these solutions, they are more attractive (and cheaper) than having to pay a staff member hours of labor to curate songs and manage the player.

If you're feeling particularly scrappy, You could easily build a system that would fit your requirements running bog-standard linux/windows with an audio output. Hell, even a Raspberry Pi 3 running stock Raspbian would have most of the stuff you'd need to set this up. There are single-U rack shelves you could set this up on, or I'm sure someone has an STL file for a single pi 1U setup. Set up remote access to manage the playlists and Bob's your uncle.

Caleb, the two points I highlighted show you are entirely missing the point. Folks like you, me, and some others on this forum are highly technically skilled, computer savvy and often willing to take the time to set up BGM systems that will do all of those things to our exact specification. "The venues listed" are staffed by management and workers who don't know (and don't care) about all the technical crap to make it happen. (Most managers don't care if it happens at all.) Building up any kind of system that is anything more than "plug and play" with no setup required is well beyond what 99.9999999% of those folks can do. And they want operation to be hands-off. No booting up computers, searching for playlists, even pushing "play" at the start of the day is a big ask. And setting up remote access is another hurdle, and now exposes the IT network to hackers and other bad players.

And ANY playlist, especially one tailored to a specific need, requires SOMEONE to build it, which takes time. Even making the USB drives to use the device I suggested takes time. Switching playlists, takes time (and computer access). Switching USB drives takes seconds and most of the time can be hot swapped without issues. Switching pre-programmed playlists can fail if the old playlist is left in the device (see the thread I referenced with the iPod.) Someone with computer experience has to do the playlist switching. And if the venue itself doesn't want to take the time to build the playlists (or make the drives) who does the work? What if that person's musical tastes within a genre doesn't line up with what the venue wanted? All of which costs money, and time. How much are venues willing to pay for that? My experiences say, not much. (Been doing this for over 45 years till I retired.)

Bottom line is this: BGM, as with most tech used for public exhibition/performance has to follow the Golden Rule: KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). As the great Montgomery Scott once said: "The more you overthink the plumbin, the easier it 'tis to stop up the drain."