I need to buy one, and possibly two, portable CD players: for use in the car, the office, and for wearing around the house. I had two, but one has been misplaced in the house and the other just had a hinge break on its lid. These are both Sony units, 3 and 4 years old, and two things i liked about them were the illuminated keys (essential for night driving, I think) and the digital signal processing feature. The DSP included a compression setting, which was ideal for compressing classical music's dynamic range for the car environment. The market has changed, and the features I want are generally no longer available. The DSP compression feature seems to have completely disappeared, and I can only find one Sony -- probably an older model -- with illuminated keys. I suppose I should be cheerful that the price has dropped about 50% since the last time I bought a portable CD player.53 responses total.
My MiniDisc recorder has a little remote unit, which is a much more common accessory in Japan than it is in the States. My CD player (another portable Sony) has a jack for a similar remote. The remotes geneally have a little backlit dispaly, and the controls (while not being lit themselves) are very easy to operate by feel.
Have you considered just getting a CD player for the car? You listen to enough music and drive enough that I think it'd be well worth it, especially since prices have gotten pretty reasonable..
My minidisc (also Sony) has a remote, too. I like it. But, I don't know, most of the CD players I've seen haven't had illuminated keys, and I've never checked into the compression feature.
Says Jim: Boy, some people really have problems.
I have thought about an in-dash CD player for the car. There are two problems. The first is that I still dabble in cassettes. The second is that the office parking ramp is the Car Stereo Thieves' Shopping Mart, so I don't want to put anything fancier than a factory stereo in the car. The built-in car stereo CD players don't seem to have the DSP compression circuit for classical music either, at least not the last time I looked at a Crutchfield catalog. I could give Jim my other problem to chuckle over. At home, our main stereo speakers are the old DCM Time Windows, the original model from around 1980. They look like cat scratching posts, and our new kitten Tristan is probably going to finish destroying them. DCM, originally an Ann Arbor company, was bought by another firm in the Southwest in the summer of 1999, so I'm skeptical that I'll have any luck in replacing these. And the next other problem: it seems likely the capacitors are shot in the 1983-vintage receiver. I'd talked with Accutronics about having the capacitors replaced, but while I was dawdling about it, Accutronics -- our favorite electronics repair shop -- went out of business.
What _is_ DSP compression?
I was reading this and thinking it over a lot-- I used to subscribe to _Sound & Vision_, a magazine that emerged from _Stereo Review_ and _Audio Magazine_. Dynamic range of speakers, reverb, and amplifier specifics were things I noted as varying factors among those that listen to different kinds of music in the home. Classical and jazz aficionados generally tend to shy away from much bass extension in speakers since it's just out of range of acoustical instruments. There was also a lot of debate over amplifiers-- there used to be a lot of vacuum tube purists, especially among those listeners. Now, what I'm curious about is-- how does DSP work? I wasn't aware that the dynamic range of classical music *had* to be compressed to work well in the acoustic setting of a car. Really, most cars have superb acoustics compared to the home setting. The stereotype of the car audiophile is of a young male basshead, but really, the arrangement is to be appreciated. Since I don't know DSP, I'm going to guess on some things based on typical car acoustics. I know most factory speakers are mid-range heavy, which I am guessing may actually work in *favor* for classical music. Your implication that the dynamic range needs to be compressed rather confuses me, unless you're driving in a car that doesn't have high-end speakers, which I kinda doubt. I remember a few Grexers who prefer to lower the dynamic high range for most music in the car, but I had always assumed that the car was otherwise an ideal acoustical environment. Forgive me if I sound like a know-it-all-- I don't mean to. I don't know the acoustical setup in your car, and I was curious, because there might be alternate ways around it. My car is an '87 Chevy Nova with a factory radio deck. That means no CD unless I install an FM device to transmit CD output over an FM channel, or install a CD player. I remember void saying that since the high end of FM is limited, that effectively makes a natural cutoff as well on CD output. I have treble and bass controls, which I generally use pretty liberally since mid-range *is* heavy. Sometimes I boost the treble a little more and lower the bass for the classical stations. I would have even finer control over this if I had a car equalizer, but it's not worth it. I have great deck speakers, but the front ones are terrible and poorly acoustically placed (they're in a spot pointing down). I'm guessing DSP is nice because it maximizes what you do have in your car for classical music. I also understand from previous posts that theft has been a problem, so any other tweaking might be rather expensive. They got rid of the backup lights? That's too bad..
The music-to-road-noise ratio in a car is pretty bad. I've thought about getting a compressor too.
if it's music-to-road noise, then I might understand. I know some car audiophiles will put material on the inside hood of a car to reduce noise coming from the engine. This might be a pad, or a spray on material that can also be put in other car areas to reduce other noises. Often, they get electrical filters to reduce noise coming from more powerful alternators (helping to drive a more powerful system). Radio enthusiasts will use them too for certain types of antennas and antenna boosters. really, though, I want to know *what* exactly a DSP compressor is, and where it is needed in comparison to these other things. There are so many factors in working with car acoustics, really-- the design and modeling of the car (because good luxury cars will close out external noises); placement of speakers (kick panel, deck, door, rear-view mirror clamp.. yes, the thing that meets the ceiling.., trunk or alternative area-- under seat, spare tire area); and specs of the receiver (tape deck, CD player, etc.)
Well, DSP stands for "Digital Signal Processing", which really doesn't mean that much. It's a neat way to do various types of signal processing without the dedicated analog circuits. Compression just makes the loud parts softer, which means that you can turn the whole thing up and have the soft parts louder.
Oh, that sort of compression. Okay. That makes sense.
While on the question of how things work, exactly what is magneto-optical recording (as used on mini-discs)? That is, how does it work and what aspects are magnetic and what optical?
((( Music #227 <---> Consumer #106. Thanks, kentn! )))
Magneto-optical uses both magnetism and light to do its recording. A MiniDisc reads more or less like a CD, using a laser to look for changes in a reflective layer. When recording, the laser is cranked up enough to loosen things up so that a magnetic field can change the position of the reflective layer.
Loosen what things up? Also, how does the laser "loosen things up"? By heat and, if so, by melting something, or exceeding the critical magnetization temperature, or what?
<shrug> Search for "Minidisc" on the Web, and you'll find some nice sites. That's what I did, but I don't remember absolutely everything. :)
Phase-change technology (part A), is used in PD disks. This relies on
using the laser's heat to change the phase-change layer of the disk back
and forth between a crystalline and non-crystalline state, thereby
indicating
a bit of data. (Although phase-change disks normally are rewritable, this
approach might be called Light Intensity Modulated overwrite). Data is
recorded magneto-optically, using both the heat of the laser plus an
external magnetic field, so direct-overwrite requires modulating both
optic
and magnetic systems.
(taken from http://www.minidisc.org )
Gets more and more interesting. I guess I need to find a technical source so I can understand the details from the perspective of at least my profession (chemical engineering). I was struck by the fact that the power supply for my daughter's minidisk recorder is rated at 800 ma, while the one for her Discman is rated at only 400 ma. It must be that high power laser that required more current (but, 800 ma?).
Are they the same voltage?
My own MD recorder will last several hours on playback, but less than one hour recording. Yup, that laser takes a fair amount of power.
Re #19: the MD wallwart is rated at 5 V 800 ma; the DM at 4.5 V 400 ma. Given the 'regulation' in wallwarts, that difference in V is 'no difference'.
Oh, and my MD wallwart is 1000mA.
resp:10 I was guessing something like that.
Sorry I never got back to the questions about compression. Yes, I was talking about dynamic range compression, which I find essential for listening to classical music, particularly opera, in a car on the highway. Classical music is recorded with a much wider dynamic range than is usual for rock or folk music, and I find that I have to "gain-ride" constantly to keep the quiet parts out of the noise floor while not overloading the speakers and my ears on the loud parts. And as I mentioned, such a compression feature was included in my two previous portable car CD players, purchased in 1995 and 1996, but now I do not think you can find any portable car CD player with this feature. I looked pretty hard, in about five stores, plus web searches. Here's another feature which is gone. The old CD players included a "resume" feature so that when you stopped the player, the machine would remember where you were on the disk, so you could resume listening at the correct place when you got back in the car. That feature is now gone from the new portable players.
Really? I found that one pretty much essential when I was travelling with a discman over the summer. Of course, it helps that the CDs Josh and I were favoring had an average track length of 20 minutes.
I think there are still players for sale that have the resume feature. It seems to have become a "high end" feature, rather than something included on all models, though.
I have 'resume' on two Sony portables. Have not seen it elsewhere. I would like it on the component CD changer.
A couple years ago I bought a Sony plug-in CD player for my car which, I discovered, will not start playing anywhere but track 1. So every time I stop the car and get out, when I get back in and want to start the CD again, I have to hit play, wait for the 10-second memory feature to load up, listen to the first note of track 1, and _then_ click ahead N times for track N-1 which I actually want. It's a nuisance, but compared to the nuisances of Windows and Apple user interfaces (equally dreadful, in my view) which most people seem to consider FEATURES that they actually LIKE, it's hardly worth complaining about. At least with the CD player I can get want I want with sufficient clicks, which isn't always possible with the mouse.
"what I want", sorry.
Hey, my Sony MiniDisc recorder does the resume bit. And you can get this modem (rz-55) for about $250 these days.
My Pioneer CD player remembers where it left off and resumes at that point. I'd always thought of it as a kind of annoying feature, but I suppose if you do a lot of start-and-stop driving it makes sense.. re #227: I like the idea of MiniDiscs, but I can't imagine myself investing in a portable player for another format with my huge investment in CDs.
Minidiscs make the most sense if you do a lot of recording (which I do of voice lessons and rehearsals to check on my singing progress) or if you like to make mix tapes in the minidisc format (which I also do).
Nice thing about using a digital format like MiniDisc is that pitch between decks is no longer much of an issue. I bet Leslie likes that feature even more than I do. :) I've been dubbing stuff I'm likely to travel with onto MD for travel purposes. A CD player just seems too huge and clunky, and I recently got a bunch of blank MDs at Best Buy for about $2.20 each.
Well, that price has improved recently.
Actually Best Buy has a number of MD things on sale right now. You can get a portable recorder for under $200, and they've got a home stereo deck for $180 or so (no digital output, so I passed).
I've decided that it's time to stop fighting with the Ford factory stereo and get an aftermarket unit. The AM section got very noisy two years ago; it was fixed under warranty and is now going again. The tape section started getting murky from the head drifting out of alignment last year; I paid to have it fixed, and now it's going again. In party, goose was talking up the virtues of the Aiwa stereos. Aiwa is the only brand which consistently includeds an auxiliary input jack in its front panel; I would want this to patch in the portable CD player I use in the car, as described earlier. Unfortunately Aiwa is not a very popular brand. So far I have checked leads at both Best Buy and Sears, and they carry one or two Aiwa stereos but not the entire line, and in particular not the high end. (You have to go to a high-end unit now to get Dolby B. See comments above about how decent features are being stripped out.) I'm also not sure I like Aiwa's control logic, so I may drop back to someone like Sony or Kenwood, and continue to live with the cassette adapter, as I have for five years. It's not intolerable. (As I mentioned before, I still use a lot of cassettes: mix tapes, radio timeshifting and tapes of old LPs. So I don't want to go CD-only in the car.)
Still, why not get a head-unit that can play both cassettes and CDs, assuming that one will fit in your dash? Car CD players are not very expensive these days (compared to what they were) and an integrated unit is likely to be a better option than a cassette-only player with a line in..
Head units capable of playing both CDs and cassettes seem to be (1) fairly rare; (2) large, generally requiring a double-DIN opening; (3) expensive, around $400. At least that's what I'm finding in my cruising around the web. If you have any specific model suggestions for me to look at, let me know. As long as I've got you here, Mike: who made the portable stereo you had in the dining room in your old home?
The wacky 5 CD changer? That was a Sharp..
Oh dear, what was wacky about it? www.sony.com tells me I was underestimating the cost of a car stereo head unit capable of playing both CDs and cassettes. Sony says their unit has a list price of $650. Does anyone have any experience with Custom Sound in Ann Arbor? In party, scg was telling me that's where he got a Sony unit installed. But I peeked in their briefly Saturday, and it didn't look like they had any mid-range equipment at all, just high end stuff, with prices on head units ranging from $400-$850. Unfortunately I was on a tight schedule and could not stick around to chat with the sales people.
Oh, the only really wacky thing about it was the disk changer mechanism.
Instead of working on a carousel system like most of the systems I've seen,
it had a set of five sliding trays which were positioned sort of like this:
\_______/
\_______/ ^ \_______/
\_______/ | \_______/
laser
where the appropriate tray would shift up and into position and the others
to the right or left of it would be displaced down and to the side.. It was
just a sort of odd changer mechanism, and not as reliable in the long run as
a carousel (or so I think.. anyway mine started having to re-seek frequently
when switching trays after only 1 1/2 - 2 years of use..)
Thanks for the info. Back in car-stereo-land, I did some shopping around the Lansing area today and was mostly very discouraged. Skory Auto Sound says they should get some mid-price Sony units in eventually, but right now there is a nationwide shortage of Sony units because the manufacturer encouraged everyone to clear out the 1999 models and then delayed the 2000 models. Electronic Outlet says that the only cassette units which are selling are the cheap $100 ones; they are willing to special order me a mid-price Pioneer unit, but they don't keep such items in stock.
Hrm.. ever checked with the Crutchfield catalog (I think they have an on-line site)?
Or J&R...
Ok, back to stereos and such. I'm trying to put together a mid- to low- end system for playing music in my apartment. I have a Bose radio, without the CD player, and an old Hitachi turntable with a Bang and Olafson needle-thing. The radio doesn't have much of an antenna, so I don't get much choice of music. I'd like to fix that. I have very few audio tapes, and a fair number of CDs. I can't hear either of these at this point. I'd like to fix that too. Suggestions? What about Kiwanis? Other re-use options? I really don't have very well trained ears, so high quality is a future variable when I can afford to think about my friends ears. Or, if I can get old but high quality now, I'll do it.
Do you like the sound of the Bose radio? I'm guessing that it has input jacks for a cd player or tape player. My suggestion would be to get one of the portable CD players from Sony -- they start around $50-$60 at Best Buy -- and play it through the Bose radio speakers, assuming that the interconnection is possible. Does the Bose radio have one or two screw mount points marked ANT for Antenna? If so, attaching any old scrap of wire there should help with radio reception. A proper FM dipole antenna from Radio Shack can't cost more than $5-$7. I'm not sure what the best way to go is regarding tape playing capability.
I put a standard CD changer on my Model 88 (competes with the Bose radio) You can attach a tape player to the same input and switch between the CD and tape with a little selector switch. Even a record player could be added provided you can find the little audio filter circuit that takes the emphasis out of the audio recorded on the vinyl. Phono inputs on receivers and amps of days gone by included this little filter. Some still may???
Yes, it has a left and right Aux In set of holes. And it has a teeny-tiny diameter hole that is labeled FM 75 Omega External. (The holes are really jacks (or is it plugs?)).
Kiwanis usually has those dipole antennas for about $1. Tape decks for $10 and up. We have some you can buy if they are out. Occasionally there are CD decks for $40 or so. Omega is probably ohm - FM antenna of a different type than the dipole one. You should also check if there is a way to plug in an internal antenna. Stop by with the creature if you want Jim to look at it, there might be some switch you have to set for the internal antenna, or a wire to put on that sticks out of the receiver (with two ends). The other type of FM antenna is 300 ohm (omega stands for Ohm) and is the type you spread out on the wall.
75 Ohm is just a single lead wire, 300 Ohm is usually a dipole antenna usually made of (yep!) 300 Ohm twin-lead wire
I'm looking over a Crutchfield catalog at my parents' house and realizing that cassettes are on the way out. In car stereo, Crutchfield offers very few cassette units which aren't lowest low-end.
<nods> I was chatting about cars the other day, and there was an interesting split between people in the conversation. About half still thought of tape decks as luxury options in a car. The other half thought of tape decks as an outdated idea, and a sign of a pretty cheap car. Apparently "real" cars these days just have CD slots.
One of these days I really must replace my flaky tape deck. Maybe it's time for CDs... would certainly be more convenient than tape, although I like have a few trashable tapes in the car instead of CDs. Of course now that I have a CD burner I could just burn CD-Rs for the car. I'm certainly sick of all the tapes I've accumulated in all the little storage spaces within reach of the driver.
You have several choices: