# Cd - Dvd Players



## BondandBigM (Apr 4, 2007)

Having sorted the sound bit out and it's great for internet radio from my phone and laptop, I still play cd's in the old non de script dvd player. It sounds ok through the new speakers but would a dedicated higher end cd player be better or are some of the combo cd/dvd/blueray types up to the job.

I have looked at something like this, expensive but are they worth it bearing in mind when the old CRT telly blows up we will no doubt end up with better tv so might use the dvd bit of it eventually.

http://www.richersounds.com/product/blu-ray/cambridge-audio/azur-751bd/camb-751bd-blk


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## scottswatches (Sep 22, 2009)

I wouldn't buy any high end CD player now. The CD is going the way of the tape and minidisc, and the dodo.

I agree the absolute quality might still be on disc, but get a great flat screen tv instead (or another watch!)


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## jasonm (Nov 22, 2003)

I havent seen your post about what speakers you have, but they would be the limiting factor with a high end player , you need top speakers to hear the difference a top player will make, my guess is you will get 95% of the same sound from a player costing a third of that... Chasing those last % points costs big buck....


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## handlehall (Aug 7, 2009)

jasonm said:


> I havent seen your post about what speakers you have, but they would be the limiting factor with a high end player , you need top speakers to hear the difference a top player will make, my guess is you will get 95% of the same sound from a player costing a third of that... Chasing those last % points costs big buck....


Totally agree any system is only as good as it's weakest component. I'm not entirely sure what the question is anyway :wink2: Also how's your hearing? not much point in extracting the last bit of detail if your lugholes are shot.


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## BondandBigM (Apr 4, 2007)

scottswatches said:


> I wouldn't buy any high end CD player now. The CD is going the way of the tape and minidisc, and the dodo.
> 
> I agree the absolute quality might still be on disc, but get a great flat screen tv instead (or another watch!)


What will cd's be replaced with ???? I'm gussing digital down loads and so on. I like my old Panasonic CRT telly, imho as good if not better than nearly all the flat screens I've had a look at so as long as it lasts I'll keep it.



jasonm said:


> I havent seen your post about what speakers you have, but they would be the limiting factor with a high end player , you need top speakers to hear the difference a top player will make, my guess is you will get 95% of the same sound from a player costing a third of that... Chasing those last % points costs big buck....


I bought a BOSE set, not top stuff but good enough. It had the best bass of the ones I had a listen to. The subwoofer bit of it sounds, to use the much disliked phrase, awesome


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## William_Wilson (May 21, 2007)

BondandBigM said:


> The subwoofer bit of it sounds, to use the much disliked phrase, awesome


So you're saying it's banging? :lol:

Later,

William


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## BondandBigM (Apr 4, 2007)

William_Wilson said:


> BondandBigM said:
> 
> 
> > The subwoofer bit of it sounds, to use the much disliked phrase, awesome
> ...


:lol: :lol:

My beach bar chill out cd's have never sounded so loud


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## Kutusov (Apr 19, 2010)

I also gave up of my hi-fi long ago... now I have the tv, dvd, pc and ipod all connected to the same 5.1 sound system from Logitech and that thing is much better and powerful than my old Pioneer Hi-Fi.

Anyway, when I knew a bit more of this than I do now, the common believe among hi-fi sellers was that it was the amp, speakers and good cables that made all the difference. A better CD player might make a theoretical difference but the human ear would barely pick that up, if it would pick it at all.

But cables do make a difference... they range from a few quid to a lot of money (the ones made out of gold...). Getting the cheaper ones from a good brand (like Monster)is enough, from there on is pretty much throwing money away.


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## Roger the Dodger (Oct 5, 2009)

I bought an MP3 player because I wanted to transfer all my CD's onto it...but I can't do it for some reason, so now I just listen to the radio on it! :duh:


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## William_Wilson (May 21, 2007)

Roger the Dodger said:


> I bought an MP3 player because I wanted to transfer all my CD's onto it...but I can't do it for some reason, so now I just listen to the radio on it! :duh:


Do a Google search for a CD/MP3 converter. Find a freebie program and rip the CDs, then load the results to your player from your computer. It's been a few years since I've had to do it, so I can't give you a name off the top of my head.

Later,

William


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## Kutusov (Apr 19, 2010)

Lot's of choices there! I use Mediamonkey but I think WMP might be simpler to use. Just maje sure you are ripping the cd into a mp3 format or it might not work on players like ipod.


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## feenix (May 27, 2008)

Kutusov said:


> Lot's of choices there! I use Mediamonkey but I think WMP might be simpler to use. Just maje sure you are ripping the cd into a mp3 format or it might not work on players like ipod.


May be a silly question, but can't you rip with Windows Media Player?


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## William_Wilson (May 21, 2007)

feenix said:


> Kutusov said:
> 
> 
> > Lot's of choices there! I use Mediamonkey but I think WMP might be simpler to use. Just maje sure you are ripping the cd into a mp3 format or it might not work on players like ipod.
> ...


Damn straight, I'd forgotten all about that. :thumbup:

Later,

William


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## BondandBigM (Apr 4, 2007)

Roger the Dodger said:


> I bought an MP3 player because I wanted to transfer all my CD's onto it...but I can't do it for some reason, so now I just listen to the radio on it! :duh:


I've been doing it all the wrong way round, forget the cd player :lol: :lol:

Just play the files from my laptop using the media player which has an excellent graphic equaliser and the sound is superb. Now like you I just have to convert hundreds of my old CD's to MP3  The only problem now is that I will have to break my by local rule and buy my music online. Not sure how that works, I'll get back to on that.

But for existing stuff help is at hand, just google "convert cd to mp3" and loads of freebie software comes up.

Have you tried anything yet ???


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## William_Wilson (May 21, 2007)

BondandBigM said:


> Roger the Dodger said:
> 
> 
> > I bought an MP3 player because I wanted to transfer all my CD's onto it...but I can't do it for some reason, so now I just listen to the radio on it! :duh:
> ...


As a follow up on the converting CDs, as feenix said, MS Media Player. The latest version of MP will do it easily. Stick a CD in the drive, fire up MP, click on the "Rip" tab at the top and then choose "MP3" in the format pull down menu. Click on the "rip" button on the bottom and MP will dump the MP3s in your music directory.

Generally Windows stuff is sh!t, but this is actually easy and works. 

Later,

William

P.S. - If you are a Mac user, I'm sure there is some sort of self righteous arrongant holier than thou thing that will do the same thing on your machine.


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## Kutusov (Apr 19, 2010)

William_Wilson said:


> P.S. - If you are a Mac user, I'm sure there is some sort of self righteous arrongant holier than thou thing that will do the same thing on your machine.


Yeap, and you can use it with a PC too: ITunes. It has the advantage that it will tag your music better than WMP (tagging being writing on the track media the name of that track, the name of the album it comes from, giving it the cover art for the said album, etc. Pretty handy to have your library organized). Mediamonkey is free to use and does the same thing, even better in my opinion. It uses Amazon (.com, Uk, de, ca, etc) databanks for tagging semi-automatically your music (it searches automatically for the right album and shows it to you. If it's correct, you just click OK and it does all the work. If it's the wrong one, you can search manually).


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## William_Wilson (May 21, 2007)

Kutusov said:


> William_Wilson said:
> 
> 
> > P.S. - If you are a Mac user, I'm sure there is some sort of self righteous arrongant holier than thou thing that will do the same thing on your machine.
> ...


The test rip I did the other night with Media Player did all of that. Cover art, titles and whatever. If you bring up the properties of the individual MP3s (without playing them) all of the details are there.

Later,

William


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## Kutusov (Apr 19, 2010)

William_Wilson said:


> The test rip I did the other night with Media Player did all of that. Cover art, titles and whatever. If you bring up the properties of the individual MP3s (without playing them) all of the details are there.
> 
> Later,
> 
> William


Yes, it does. But the database it uses for tagging is not as good as the one on Itunes or MM. Let me rephrase that... it wasn't nearly as good. I've ripped all my CDs years ago(maybe 6 or 7 years ago) and I used WMP at the time. It was just fine for most of the CDs but with a more obscure band or album, WMP wouldn't be very helpful and you had to imput track names and all that by hand. I have about 5000 CDs so I made this move because the storing space for the physical CDs was getting silly and I could never find anything when I wanted it to, even having them more or less organized.

The big problem with ITunes is pretty much what you said before... it's a self righteous arrongant holier than thou thing. It's fine if you are just starting a digital media library but if you already have one, like I had, it goes its own way of tagging and organizing things and copying everything that's already on the HD to its own ITunes folder. It's a bitch to turn off too, it keeps on trying to assume control and behaving like an husky dog, always trying to be the boss. You'll need it on your HD if you use MM though... something about codecs or something.


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## bowie (Mar 12, 2005)

these look good

Brennan JB7 - Revolutionary HiFi

http://www.brennan.c...CFYUJtAodSXNB2Q

bowie


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## BondandBigM (Apr 4, 2007)

bowie said:


> these look good
> 
> Brennan JB7 - Revolutionary HiFi
> 
> ...


They do, could be one solution if it will also just play a single disc without all the saving malarky. The minor problem in all this is that Big M is old school. She likes to just stick in a cd/dvd, hence why I was looking at combo's that had decent cd playback, press play and sit back. She doesn't use a computer or any other sort of gizmo and has no interest either.


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## Roger the Dodger (Oct 5, 2009)

This is way too complicated for me...all I want to do is stick the CD in the tray and the MP3 in the USB and transfer the one to the other...just like when I used to transfer my CDs to cassettes to play in the car. :to_become_senile: Guess I'll just stick to the radio then.


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## Roger the Dodger (Oct 5, 2009)

Finally got it sorted...don't know what all the fuss was about! Though I did have to get my son to show me how to do it... :blush: Many thanks to him and all you guys for your help and advice. Rog. :thumbsup:


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## antonbhoy (Jun 24, 2010)

I added a 1Tb Hdd to my PC, ripped my cd's on WMA lossless. The PC's connected to an onkyo digital amp through to Monitor Audio speakers. My games and music sound excellent. In the future I'd love to have the space for a 5.1 system.

Just to add, if your still lokking for a good multi player, have a look at these.

http://www.oppo-bluray.co.uk/


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## Roger the Dodger (Oct 5, 2009)

Roger the Dodger said:


> Finally got it sorted...don't know what all the fuss was about! Though I did have to get my son to show me how to do it... :blush: Many thanks to him and all you guys for your help and advice. Rog. :thumbsup:


AAAAAARGH!....now the bloody CD drive's broken! :furious:


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## Kutusov (Apr 19, 2010)

Roger the Dodger said:


> AAAAAARGH!....now the bloody CD drive's broken! :furious:


Don't you feel nostalgic? It's just like getting back to the time of magnetic tapes and the decks ripping the bloody tape out of the cassettes


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## BondandBigM (Apr 4, 2007)

antonbhoy said:


> http://www.oppo-bluray.co.uk/


Any opinions on this or the Cambridge model I posted. Their top spec one is about the same price. I'm still keen to get something along those lines.

Unfortunately I went back in to the shop where I bought the speakers to buy a longer cable so I can move the sub woofer. The guy who sold us it was all over BIg M like a rash when I was having a look. Filling her head full of flat screen telly and dvd player nonsense..................really expensive flat screen tv's. Who pays Â£3K for a telly 

Big M is a no hoper when it comes to this sort of thing, she'll believe anything she's told..... "but the guy said"

yeah right !!!!

:lol: :lol:


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## William_Wilson (May 21, 2007)

BondandBigM said:


> Who pays Â£3K for a telly


In British currency, the TV set had better be bigger than a barn door. :lol:

Later,

William


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