Sound source options

[Brian]

Laptop, SCS, and a USB DI box.

[sandall]

the MDS-JE510 (like the 300 range) doesn't have Auto Pause, so look at the 520 or 530.

The JE500 & 510 both have Auto Pause, but only via the remote (they claim to remember the setting during a power-off). There was some foible of the 530 that put us off it, but I forget what it was.

 

Tascam's designers were asleep as I need a PS/2 keyboard for the MD-350 just to enable Auto Pause because it's not available via the front panel knobs...

We had an earlier editing Tascam, which was a real pain, as you needed to keep updating the TOC as you went along, because it didn't always get around to updating when ejecting

 

I fell in love with the original stand-alone Instant Replay, but they don't seem to have made much impact on this side of the pond.

[tonytech]

Old!! Windows XP touchscreen laptop with Multiplay.,,Does the job,

 

 

[sandall]

Old!!

Mature, not old !! :)

[Brian]

The USB DI box I use...

 

[Alec]

You can't beat a laptop (ideally with a CD/DVD drive to rip audio from when you are given a CD, and a memory card reader to cover other physical formats) or an old refurbed small form factor PC. That, along with a sound card, would do you fine - you could take just about any format then (other than MD!).

 

Loads of HP Elite 8300 SFF units on eBay for under £70 (very popular office PCs - hence the availability, rock solid, and dead easy to work with). Replace the hard disk with a modest sized SSD (could keep the hard disk as a second drive - you can fit two in them) and a cheap USB audio interface.

[cedd]

For not a lot more than your budget you could have a second hand or reconditioned mac mini. There's always somebody who has a spare computer monitor kicking around so if you can source one of these and a cheap keyboard and mouse, you've got the makings of a QLab machine. At this point you'd only have the 3.5mm jack out but as you'd be running the free version of QLab, that wouldn't really matter.

Then as time and funds allow you could upgrade to a better USB interface (my recommendation would always be one of the Roland Octa Capture units. Or failing that Focusrite) with more outputs and then maybe eventually a QLab pro license (or rent them for not a lot when you need them).

 

It's a different approach to a laptop or a rack mounted CD/MD player, but it gets you the industry standard computer playback software and all the extra features that can come later with a license under a phased update process when money allows.

[sandall]

Sound advice (no pun intended) for anyone heading for the hi-tech end of the audio world, but the OP is at the 2-hi-fi-decks-in-the-auditorium end of the Am-dram world. Personally I wouldn't advise anyone who doesn't already live in Mac-world to even think of buying a 2nd-hand Mac, especially when you can get so many perfectly good professional-level Windows-7 laptops from around £100 on a well-known auction site. The Mac mini may well be more staple than the numerous varieties of Apple laptops, but you still need a monitor & a keyboard (plus a CD drive if you want to rip or play CDs), all of which take up space, before you can even switch it on.

 

I haven't worked with Macs for over 20 years, but colleagues who use various levels of Mac-books for video-editing seem to lurch from disaster to disaster with both their work getting corrupted & their hardware crashing.Just the mention of Apple on BR usually unleashes a torrent of horror stories.

[richardash1981]

I'm slightly reluctant to use a laptop as we've had quite a few issues with power-supply noise, or driver problems if attempting to use an external sound card instead,

To be clear, the standard solution to power supply noise (and it should be bomb-proof) is a transformer in the audio path, either a DI-box into a mic level input or a 1:1 line level transformer for line level inputs. With reasonably short cables either will work fine.This can either be fed from a headphone output (personally I have had no problems doing this) or from a USB audio device (see below). There are lots out there, I have one of these, and others have linked to other ones they use.

 

External sound cards which need drivers are a pain, but there are plenty of lower end ones which work with the standard USB audio class drivers (you don't need high sample rates or high bit depths), which are always available. This gives the option of patching your USB audio device to someone else's laptop if they turn up with a "but it plays fine on here" job. The phrase you are looking for is "USB Audio Class Compliant", but beware that there is a USB2 Audio Class, which allows more bits/samples/channels, but doesn't work on Windows before Windows 10 build 1703 (it worked on Linux and Mac from ~2010). You don't want one of those. The USB audio class compliant interface a lot of people recommend (but I don't have one personally) is the Behringer UCA202.

 

I'd appeciate all thoughts and suggestions; what equipment do you use and/or what would you recommend?

On the recording side I now nearly always use one of a couple of old iRiver hard disk MP3 players (ebay), running the Rockbox open-source firmware. The iHP-120 and iHP-140 models have both analogue line in and optical digital line in, the newer H340 only has analogue line in. Running Rockbox on both gives you a "set running and forget" recording solution for events, because it will do several sorts of automatic or safety-net gain control (for analogue input), lossless compressed recording and auto-split of files. Because they all have internal rechargeable batteries, you get power backup (and a sensible shutdown when the battery is low, so you don't loose anything you have recorded). Unlike a number of the SD / CF recorders I have used, they keep recording when the external 5V DC is attached / detached - most of the dedicated recorders I have used take power via a USB port, and stop recording to go into storage mode when power is detected ...

[rob_cheese]

Thanks to you all for your replies. We do have a laptop (running Windoze 7, I think) so maybe we should spend the money on a USB interface and software for that, although we do also still have a Minidisc player! It has certainly been interesting to read through all of your comments and suggestions, and I'll have a look at all the recommended software and interfaces.

 

Rob

[sandall]

The Behringer USB interfaces are only £20 or so (& come bundled with Audacity recording & editing software), but you may find the laptop's headphones output is good enough. Multiplay (free) is good if you have a lot of cues, but VLC, or even Windows Media Player, is fine if your cues aren't too close together. Multiplay works well with XP or Win-7. Avoid Win-10, as it might just decide to do an update in the middle of your show!!

[Jivemaster]

A W7 laptop could work well for you. Try the headphone output, isolated by a small transformer pair (stereo!) to minimise noise, Look into a "Port replicator" to have access to protected connections and raise the laptop off the bench enough for good cooling. If the laptop is "well used" -a W7 one will be!- clean out the internal vent slots, ten years dust is enough to cause thermal shutdown.

[Andrew C]

I'd not bother trusting the headphone socket. Buy a USB output box and have done with it.

Look at Sound Cue Systems; it is really good for the money.

 

[Brian]

I'd not bother trusting the headphone socket.

 

We have come across situations when running dual mono tracks out of a laptop (ie a stereo file but with very different content on the two channels). Some laptops mix a bit of each channel into the other side if they think headphones are connected. For a normal stereo track it's not a real problem but with timecode on one side....!

 

The unit I linked to above does not need drivers and has transformer balanced outputs so no risk of noise.

[mackerr]

I'd not bother trusting the headphone socket.

 

We have come across situations when running dual mono tracks out of a laptop (ie a stereo file but with very different content on the two channels). Some laptops mix a bit of each channel into the other side if they think headphones are connected. For a normal stereo track it's not a real problem but with timecode on one side....!

 

The unit I linked to above does not need drivers and has transformer balanced outputs so no risk of noise.

 

This has been my experience as well, and I have found no way to stop the unintended mixing of channels. A 2 channel USB output device is a small investment and fully worth it.

 

Peavey USB-P has 2 balanced transformer isolated outputs. Behringer UCA-202 has inputs as well as outputs, but is not balanced or transformer isolated. Either would be better than the headphone output.

 

Mac