Best CD player choices for crappy CDs...?

[Ynot]

I'm sure many of us have had the age-old problem of the dance schools bringing in crappy CDs that have likely kicked around the teacher's bag or the studio floor (fill in your own alternate here) meaning it's scratched to bejiggery. And despite their protestations that "Well, it ALWAYS works in our player at dancing" the ruddy thing either won't start or skips when placed in the venue's machine...

 

Some of them are getting better when bringing source music for their own shows - especially as they're told up-front that they MUST deliver the audio/video content ahead of first rehearsal.

 

But when it comes to the manic free-for-all that is a dance festival, all that goes out of the window. :(

We host 5 days of festival dance events every May, over 3 weekends, and the kids' music has in the past arrived on everything you might possibly imagine from cassettes to CD, MD to iPods and of course phones. We put a restriction in place last year saying that we would ONLY accept CD, MD or memory stick from now on and any medium that was presented would be rejected, AND that CDs should be new copies and not rehearsal discs.

On the whole most of them seemed to comply EXCEPT that the CD quality of many still fell short of the mark. Which means that the guys running the desk for the days continued to have problems.

 

In the past we've found the budget DJ twin-decks (think Numark/SoundLab etc) have been rather more forgiving than a more expensive machine - we've had Sony, TEAC and a couple of others over the years. But this year in particular the guys had problems with 2 different twin-decks and a Sony stand-alone and a couple of other choices that were tried. It seems the only way to play some was in the house sound PC, which did take a little longer each time for the disks to fire up of course.

 

So the question is - What CD player(s) do the hive mind FROM EXPERIENCE find tend to be the most suitable for coping with the crap?? Including CD-R burned in a variety of ways...

 

And yes, I know the solution is to stick with only accepting new-burned disks, but experience has taught me over the years that using different software to create disks can cause other issues even on a new one (Windoze Media player for one is a no-no for me for example). And when you have 20 to 30 kids queueing up at a time each of whom will have paid to enter the festival, you do need to at least try to play their music...

[Shez]

Is it at all practicable to grab the discs from them as they arrive and rip them on to the sound PC in readiness?

 

I've had similar issues with unplayable discs; the problem even with a player that attempts to play them is that without playing the full track through in advance, you just don't know whether it's going to succeed in playing the whole thing live. Ripping it is quicker and the (right) software will tell you that it's ripped successfully in less time than it takes for a test play.

 

I appreciate that you'd ideally need an extra body to make this happen. I've done a couple of events where we've had a tech at the registration desk with a laptop, ripping tracks there and then as people arrive. It flags up problems early on and makes life so much easier for the tech on the desk.

[J Pearce]

I concur with Shez. Rip at registration to a shared file server, naming with participant name or id number, playback from file server with VLC or something similar.

 

Means any "your disc is broken" happens before the stage and gives a little time to work out that their track is the same as participant no563 and you're sorted.

[beware]

In this day and age would it not be possible to get this all in hand before the day?

[Shez]

In this day and age would it not be possible to get this all in hand before the day?

I suspect you may not have worked on many dance school shows before... ;)

[sandall]

In the days when I did proper dance festivals EVERYTHING came on cassette, specifically on (unlabelled) TDK D90 cassettes, with the music starting anywhere up to 15" after the end of the leader. They were usually delivered either at the end of the track (following a last-minute rehearsal) or at the start of the leader, but every now & then, just to catch you out, a cassette would have been very precisely cued-up half-way through a track, but nobody would have thought it worth mentioning the fact.

 

These days it's mostly dance schools, who arrive with their tracks on a variety of phones, for whom I have one golden rule - if it's on a phone YOU provide someone to press the button (I'm more concerned about whether it was recorded at -20dB or, more likely, +20dB). I take a CD player just in case, but very seldom need it.

 

Going back to the OP, I've found that the cheaper the portable CD or DVD player the more likely it is to cope with dodgy discs.

 

For media-players VLC seems to cope with most things you throw at it.

[cedd]

I realised it was time to get out of the dance schools market when somebody brought me a CD telling me they'd skipped it forward to the right point in the track......

 

Sorry I've no practical experience Ynot but might be worth trying to get hold of one of the old portable CD players (yes kids, we used to wear them on our belts). They had plenty of prevention methods for skipping whilst walking which may be of use here.

[MarkPAman]

Another popular one is a scribbled note with a youtube address. In one case with instructions to skip to part way through another track after the intro.

 

Or, what's on the CD is a shortcut link, not the track itself.

 

On the other hand, 8 year old singer & mum (actually pretty good & soon to be/recently on Britain's Got Simon or something) brings iPad with a pro audio interface and everything set up on Go Button.

 

Back to the question, I've got an old Sony CD Walkman that has a 30s buffer. This tends to be able to play stuff that's been "handbagged" better than most, but it's not foolproof and if the data's been scratched off it can't guess! The buttons are also small and not very positive.

[dosxuk]

I've been handed an iPhone 7 to play a track from seconds before the act walks on stage - yes, the ones with no headphone socket, and no, it didn't have one with it.

 

The high end Pioneer CDJs can handle surprisingly mangled discs pretty well in my experience.

[Ynot]

Is it at all practicable to grab the discs from them as they arrive and rip them on to the sound PC in readiness?

Not really.It's one of those things that's not a popular job (and remember, we're ALL volunteers) so it's a hard one to cover. Over the 5 day festival it's been done by 3 different people this year - couldn't get one guy to do all.

And even if we did, it would have to be someone VERY light on their fingertips to get everything ripped and labelled accurately and then sorted ready for the main button pusher to find the correct track each time...

 

It is (sort of) comforting to confirm what I've suspected in that it's not just here that has the problem.

We've gotten quite good as I said at making the beggars cough up their CD early for a structured show, but these festivals it's hell on wheels to coordinate.

 

 

 

 

[Stuart91]

I've been handed an iPhone 7 to play a track from seconds before the act walks on stage - yes, the ones with no headphone socket, and no, it didn't have one with it.

 

I had the same problem, but in the opposite direction recently.

 

We were supplying a bunch of IEM systems to a function band. I'd made a point of telling the players to bring their own buds. Lead singer had a set of earphones with a lightning connector fitted instead of a minijack...

[kerry davies]

Thank you to Shez and Beware for that moment of hilarity.

The dance teachers who arrive bearing a Tesco bag full of C90s should be shot out of hand because they all insist that the one that they, and only they, call "The Flower Song" is somewhere on side 2 of one of them. "I wound them all back to keep them neat for you!"

 

Those days are gone and doing community festivals the CD Mix Numark with an iPod dock was the best we found and now they have a memory stick slot so might even be better. Community festivals could be like dance festivals with added rain but over the years I managed to get regulars to produce their required music in order on CD and the festival organisers were persuaded to make it a condition of appearance.

[themadhippy]

so is 1/4" tape recorded at 7 1/2 thingys per wotchamacallit out of fashion now?

Another vote for older,cheaper players if it must be cd, however id be trying to get them onto a usb stick,at registration a simple wrap of tape around there stick and there position in there show scribled on it,dedicate sound pc with every possible codec on it,plus the other 27 you forgot and you might get to day 2 without a problem

[Ynot]

The trouble is it's the lowest common denominator that gets through.

 

'Everyone' can burn CDs now, though not all to a decent standard. And they think that because it plays at home (despite being kicked around the studio) it HAS to be the theatre's equipment that is at fault when it complains at the venue.

And FAR too many of them rely on phones (iTunes compressed formats - yuk!) to play stuff that when they get to somewhere where it matters it's screwed.

[Bryson]

In this day and age would it not be possible to get this all in hand before the day?

 

** laughs out loud **

 

I nearly fell off my chair.

 

Some of these people can barely get you a CD in time for the start of the show. Even if they did give it you in advance, it would be wrong, or they changed their mind, or something.

 

We bought a Denon DN-300Z which hasn't choked yet, plus has the ability to also play USB, SD Card and Bluetoooth. Quite handy for dance season insanity.

 

http://denonpro.com/products/view/dn-300z