CD-ROM Drives that Can Be Used as Standalone Players? 55
An anonymous reader asks: "I am using an older, standalone CD-ROM drive as my audio CD player in my sound system. It is a NEC 4X SCSI in a small case with power supply. The case outputs very clean analog audio, great headphone output and a SPDIF coax link which plugs directly into my receiver. It works great standalone, it has a complete front panel, ie backlit LCD display, stop, play, pause, next and previous track buttons. But it doesn't read CD-RW, it uses a caddy and it heats up the CDs quite a bit. I know that all recent CD-ROM drives have only the eject button, not all of them output SPDIF (and with DRM who knows what the future holds) and who knows if they will work with only the power connected? Which CD-ROM drives, old or new, support being used standalone, have a decent set of front panel controls (at least a play and a skip button) and output SPDIF?" Generally for this type of purpose, I'd use a regular old portable CD player, but these generally do not output to SPDIF, either. Has anyone managed to find decent examples of either piece of hardware?
Use a damn cd player! (Score:3)
Re:Use a damn cd player! (Score:1)
Re:Use a damn cd player! (Score:3, Interesting)
Why anyone would spend $50+ on a high end CDROM drive is beyond belief!
Dear slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Some VHS decks do play DVDs (Score:1)
Does anyone know where I can get a beta vcr that plays dvds?
I don't know if anybody makes a Betamax/DVD combo deck, but I do know where you can get some VHS decks that play DVD Video discs [google.com].
Sarcasm (Score:1)
My experience... (Score:4, Informative)
Know what? It's a Sony D-EJ815 [sonystyle.com] Discman.
old rat shack RS-3400 has spdif (Score:3, Informative)
if you could find a used (ebay, maybe) radio shack cd3400 portable you might be happy. the line outs were supposed to be some wicked clean and accurate signal. and it had a 1/8" mono jack for coax spdif out.
we (dat-heads, back in 1994 era) loved this deck, except for its clicking in the phones out. if you don't insist on perfect phones out and really care more about the line out and the spdif out, this is your deck.
google cache search result [google.com]
now go hunt one down.
Well then. (Score:1, Informative)
Of course, both of these drives lack SPDIF, and neither have the LCD screen. But then again, I didn't even try looking for 'em. o.O
Creative Infra (Score:1)
Re:Creative Infra (Score:4, Informative)
1) Earphones output
2) volume (up/down buttons)
3) Remote with numbered buttons etc.
4) play/next/rewind/prev buttons
5) Stop/eject button
6) Mode button (?)
7) Windows software which enables the remote to be a mouse etc.
On the back is a normal large 12V/5V/GND power socket, IDE port, master/slave jumper, analog audio out and didgatl audio out (2 pin cable thing).
The thing the laser sits on and moves kept sticking whenthe case was on though, but worked ok with the case off.
As mentioned elsewhere, a cheap AT power supply would work it great, I bet ebay as a few. Dunno if the digital out is the same as a coaxial digital out on DVD's and tuners etc.
Re:Creative Infra (Score:1)
OT: 1-bit dacs and Monster Cable (Score:2, Insightful)
Additionally, there is absolutely NO reason to ever buy anything but the cheapest digital audio cable. Why? It's DIGITAL! If there's degradation of any kind, you'd hear it extremly well. There aren't multiple levels degredation. It's either total signal loss/corruption, or perfect signal. Just buy the cheapest cable you can find that works. Heck, for coax digital, even a cheap composite video cable would work. An audio cable might work, but it might not have enough bandwidth. A composite video signal needs about the same bandwidth as a digital audio signal. For optical cables, you'll want to find something that isn't going to snap if you drop it while you're installing it. There's a new method for making plastic optical conduits, that have a smaller minimum bend radius than the current cables.
Re:OT: 1-bit dacs and Monster Cable (Score:3, Informative)
Does this happen in real life with digital signals?
Sure it does, why do people make sure they get good quality IDE cables (esp. for UDMA), why do we need good quality network cables and connections?
It is true that the lower the data rate the signal will be less susceptable to cheaper cables; but don't be deceived into thinking it doesn't matter; especially in cases where impedance matching is important, or good sheilding is important (to protect the equipment as well as the signal; many a badly designed device has locked up in a damaging mode because of bad signals - this is what the FCC regulations regarding "must be able to accept
Sam
Re:OT: 1-bit dacs and Monster Cable (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you'll find that for one pretty well anything will work for 100base-T. Gig is different, but you'll get away with murder at 100Mbit. And secondly that SPDIF is a far lower data rate than either. You could send the signals over a coat hanger and still have no appreciable loss.
Dave
Re:OT: 1-bit dacs and Monster Cable (Score:2)
Re:OT: 1-bit dacs and Monster Cable (Score:2)
Re:OT: 1-bit dacs and Monster Cable (Score:2)
If there are a lot of retransmissions you may find on a busy network that you get ethernet melt-down (due to data collisions cos of the amount of traffic) a lot sooner than you would have done with decent cable and connectors.
Does spidf re-transmit on error? or do you have to hope the error wasn't so great it can't be corrected?
Are you going to wait till your neighbour starts arc-welding before you replace the coat hanger with a decent spidf cable?
Cables quality does matter, _even_if_ low quality cables work somewhat.
Having said that, I don't buy monster cables either, I merely imagine what I may be losing.
Sam
Re:OT: 1-bit dacs and Monster Cable (Score:1)
Re:OT: 1-bit dacs and Monster Cable (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:OT: 1-bit dacs and Monster Cable (Score:2)
Dave
It's a bit of a hack... (Score:2, Informative)
But looks fun nonetheless.
Non an answer to the question (Score:1)
About the SDPIF (Score:4, Interesting)
I have to ask... (Score:1, Flamebait)
I've heard of SPDIF - Sony Philips Digital Interface - but I can't find any info online on this new-fangled interface that you've got on your Creative and AOpen drives.
Could you please elaborate with some detailed technical information for the less enlightened amongst us?
Re:MODERATORS... (Score:1)
Re:Comic Book Guy sez: (Score:2)
Yay! (Score:3, Informative)
OK, let me clarify. I used to have a decent A/V system years ago, consisting of a stereo VCR, Laserdisc player with optical SPDIF, carousel CD player and Minidisc recorder. I got most of it stolen 6 years ago, leaving me with only CDs and my Minidisc recorder (MZ-1).
This left me somewhat bitter and paranoid. Eventually I bought a Sony portable CD player with optical SPDIF output, the D-E805.
It's a piece of crap, it skips randomly on my CDs, which all look like masters, ie there's not a scratch or speck of dust on them, and this even on a stable surface with the AC adapter. And we all know about how wall warts take up too much space on a power bar, right?
One day I'm at a used computer store and spot a nice NEC external CD ROM case with internal power supply. I figure for 30$ canadian I can do something with this, thinking the 4X SCSI CD ROM is going to fly in the garbage. At home, I realize the headphone output on it sounds better than most Walkmans I've had, the analog line outs are dead quiet (except for the music, of course
Plus the CD ROM itself is unusual for the complete control panel and LCD display on it. Like I said, most CD-ROMS have an eject button, if that.
All in all, I was so impressed with this thing, it became my main CD player. The fact that it's only 7 inches wide by 12 inches deep was pretty cool too. It's also a neat conversation piece as I discovered.
I don't want a standard 19 inch wide CD player. Those things are flimsy, empty boxes. I don't see why this size still exists.
I'd have thought that at
The fact that it's smaller, uses a standard 120V power connection and only needs one cable to connect to the receiver are the reasons why I like it.
It raises the question why CD-ROMs don't play back MP3's natively, most DVD players seem to do it. That would be even cooler.
So no, I don't want to connect a portable CD player to my receiver. BTDT. I don't watch enough movies to justify a DVD player (another 19 inch empty box). I like the small form factor, OK? I want a newer CD-ROM that plays CD-RW and has enough buttons for standalone use, OK?
Yes I called all the local big boys in Montreal for computer crap, there simply are NO CD-ROMs with anything more than an eject button, OK?
And yes, I use my computer for ripping and playing MP3s and the occasional DVD, I just don't want to have to turn on the damn machine (at 200+ watts and fans) just to listen to some music. The NEC is quiet and fast.
That's all I want for crying out loud. I just want CD-RW read capability with buttons... Waahhh!!!
Oh and yes, I used to use my Hi-Fi stereo VCR to record 6 hours of music at a time, have you seen the specs of these machines lately?
Thanks to isorox and malraid for some of the only relevant posts so far!
Re:Yay! [mod parent up] (Score:1)
Second time I see this kind of question in a week (Score:3, Informative)
Another guy wants to recycle a CDROM player in his audio set. Seen on the debian-user list : http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/debian-us er-200301/msg00942.html
Better get yourself a used CD player on Ebay !
CD copy control (Score:2, Informative)
The upgrade should be very simple, and will consist of the following pseudo-code:
IF (cd is printed) AND (cd has audio tracks) THEN read_only_the_first_session
MP3 hardware decompression (Score:2)
Now they should REALLY make CDROM drives with build in MP3 and Ogg decompression. These modular drives could then be inserted into car and home theatre players with no problems. I certainly wouldnt mind paying extra to have mp3 processing off my processor.
Re:WHY WASTE YOUR TIME???? (Score:1)
We don't see too much software distributed on DVD's YET, but once DVD players in the PC are as common as CD-ROM drives, we'll see them.
For now, we can play movies on the PC. And when your favorite software is distributed on DVD, you'll be glad that you already have a DVD-ROM drive in your machine. In a few years, we may even be able to install RedHat from two DVD's instead of 15 CD's.
They make these things called cd changers (Score:1)