Best Hard Drive Jukebox

[witters]

I'm looking at getting something along the lines of the Yamaha CRD-HD1500. Does anyone have any experience of this, or anything similar to recommend please?

[gavp]

Theres only really the Yamaha or CA 640H (coming out in august)

From digging around my money is going on the 640H, why? Better on screen display, when you copy a cd onto the HD if its connected to the net it will search for the artist and title automatically and a usb port on the front for connecting and sharing music for ipods etc, the hard drive is only 160G though

[carefactornil]

According to another thread on here about these 2, the 640H seems to have a lot better OSD.

I'd be interested in seeing the CDR-1500's menu/functions though. Does anyone know if there's a manual out there on the net?

Couldn't see anything on Yamaha's site, but I know some companies (e.g. Pioneer) put the manuals as PDFs on the web - very useful for checking specific features.

[witters]

Have a look here:

http://www.yamaha-uk.com/pdf/owner_m...CDR-HD1500.pdf

[carefactornil]

Thank you!

Not sure why I couldn't find that search on their site though...

[carefactornil]

Well... having looked at the manual, I'd agree it doesn't seem that friendly.

I found the concepts of album/disc a bit confusing. Does anyone who has one know if it's easy to create play lists?

My biggest concern though is "CD Text". This is a new concept to me but it makes sense to have the album/artist/track information on the CD.

How can I tell if my CDs have this information on? If even 20% of my CDs need to have this information entered manually I think I'd blow a fuse
Did this only happen after a certain date?

[Ed Selley]

CD Text is fairly rare- Out of over 100 CD's that went onto my CDRH1300's drive, about three had it. Naming isn't that hard but playlists and the like are not especially self explanatory.

[cameronl]

hi there, imho the best (and cheapest) sound server is an HTPC with an RME9632 sound card. I use uncompressed music with Xlobby as the front end with Winamp playing the wav files. I used madnat with CAT5 as the cables. All up it would cost you about £1000 pounds and would sound amazing compared to the yamaha (imho).

CaM

[johndon]

Originally Posted by Tons of fun

CD Text is fairly rare- Out of over 100 CD's that went onto my CDRH1300's drive, about three had it. Naming isn't that hard but playlists and the like are not especially self explanatory.

I'd agree, only 1 of over 150 albums of mine has CD text.

John

[MAXY]

I have the same concerns as Carefactornil. The yam looks a great machine but the CD track info worries me. Is it a pain in the **** to put in.

[crocodile]

Originally Posted by Ed Selley

CD Text is fairly rare- Out of over 100 CD's that went onto my CDRH1300's drive, about three had it.

That's a better return than me. Of approx 1,000 CDs I have text on 1!

[fourtears]

Originally Posted by witters

I'm looking at getting something along the lines of the Yamaha CRD-HD1500. Does anyone have any experience of this, or anything similar to recommend please?

I don't know how much you are looking to spend but if you have a computer to do the ripping you could conider getting a network hard disk+network music player. I use a Sonos multi-room system as the player and a Linkstation (comes various sizes) to store music. You could also consider Sqeezebox + linkstation (need to hack the linkstation to run server for squeezebox but plenty of info on the net to do this).

[carefactornil]

When I get round to looking at this more earnestly I'll probably re-evaluate the 640h from CA. There were a lot of teething troubles but I'll be interested to see how it's faring 1 year on.

The Sonos & Squeezebox are interesting ideas. I have a laptop rather than a PC so it's not always on. Therefore the Linkstations are a good idea.
How would I get the musix onto the Linkstation though? My laptop has a DVD-reader so would I read the CDs in on that and have it connected to the Linkstation initially to copy the tracks onto the Linkstation?

The other major consideration for me is remotes. I have a Phillips Pronto TSU 7000 for everything now. I really don't want to have another remote if I can help it, even if the Sonos one looks lovely. Is there any way to control the Sonos using a remote like the Pronto? Am I right in thinking the RF properties of the Pronto / Extender are worthless for the Sonos?

Does the Squeezebox have a similar issue - the remote looks like a normal one? And would I get the tracks onto/off the Linkstation using the same method mentioned above?

Thanks.

[AMc]

As your laptop has a DVD drive then - yes you can rip your CDs with that then copy the music over onto the linkstation.
You would need to set up a small home network to get everything to work together if you haven't already done that for your laptop.

AFAIK the Squeezebox is a standard remote that you'll be able to teach your pronto to emulate - no idea about the Sonus.

I use an old small PC with a big hard drive, running www.twonkymedia.com and Netgear MP101 MP3 players at home. You may find more info on this type of system in the MP3 players forum here.

[carefactornil]

Originally Posted by AMc

You would need to set up a small home network to get everything to work together if you haven't already done that for your laptop.

I don't think I've done this - what is a "small home network"? i.e. what am I missing that I need? (assuming I get a Linkstation)