Ah, an off season vacation, and a few days to set up a new toy the
wife has allowed me to purchase, a Wintrax CD Jukebox package. After
spending a few days playing with the Wintrax Jukebox, it became
apparent that finding "Music Automation's Best Kept Secret" is going
to be a boost to music listening satisfaction around the house.
The exact terms entered into the Internet search which led me to
are forgotten, but being a native Texan, the "TX" in their name
caught my eye. After perusing the site and downloading a demo, I
drafted a few email messages to ask some pointed questions about
the program’s features and compatibility. All my questions were
answered clearly and precisely, so an order was placed.
For those of you wondering exactly what a CD Jukebox program does,
imagine this: being able to take advantage of your personal computer
to play music selections when you want and never handle another
CD again. A CD Jukebox allows you to accomplish this couch potato
antic with the upmost delight! Using one or more Pioneer CD changers
– each holding 50, 100, or even 300 of your favorite CDs – along
with this software, you have immediate access to all songs on all
your CDs, in a means very similar to the jukebox at your favorite
watering hole. The best thing is, you get to choose the CDs available,
and choosing songs is much easier than flipping through pages as
on a traditional jukebox. More on the ease of use later; but first,
a little more on how Wintrax ended up on my machine.
My search for a software system to control the six CD changers in
my home audio system began out of frustration. The aggravation that
led me here was a previous purchase of a supposedly comparable device
and software from Dancraft in California. After two years of laborious
efforts to get a very buggy program to meet my needs, I had finally
given up. Many features never functioned at all, and I don’t think
I ever ran the program for an evening without it crashing. After
one "upgrade," the software refused to run at all. Finally, I shipped
my entire computer to Dancraft for repairs, and the glitches were
eventually explained as "some DLLs that were missing."
After several phone calls were not returned and needed disks were
never replaced, I gave up on the idea of tweaking this software
to run my system. If someone wants to buy a copy of "Music Master"
(from Dancraft, not A-Ware) and IR interface cheap, please contact
me.
Dancraft now sells what appears to be the same stuff as CD Playmate.
When I bought it several years ago they called it Music Master.
This IS NOT the MusicMaster program sold by A-Ware which by all
reports is a fine product.
Enough of the past though. Tonight, new software is installed, the
connections are made to the current line-up of six, 100-disc Pioneer
changers and the CDs are loaded. As a trial, a search for "Grapefruit
Juicy Fruit" by Jimmy Buffett and "Pedernales Stroll" by Asleep
At The Wheel is made. Two simple little ditties that happen to be
in my list of favorite songs. The search is simple enough; now for
the moment of truth. The first thing noticed with appreciation was
how Wintrax turned on all the players when it started and now when
the "Play" button is clicked, everything performs as advertised!
As the first two selections play, a search is executed for other
songs by title and by artist. The list gets longer. I find that
songs may be selected by simply scrolling down the list, or clicking
on the A to Z buttons which advances to all songs beginning with
that letter. And don’t think you have to repeat this selection process
every time. Song lists may be saved under whatever name you assign
to them and called up later for immediate enjoyment.
Clicking on a graphic of the album cover displays all songs on that
album. The album cover is also displayed on the main screen while
any track from that CD is playing. These album cover bitmaps can
be found at several different sources, or scanned from the CD covers
if you have a scanner.
If a tone of excitement is expressed here, it is because this software,
along with the supplied PSR-8S interface, meets all my expectations
and more. The features are very well thought out, and any questions
that have arisen have been answered promptly and throughly.
The software will run on a fairly simple computer by today’s standards
and seems very stable. Mainly though, it enables music fanatics
to listen to songs of her or his choice with the upmost convenience
and ease. One of my favorite ways of listening to music has always
been to pick songs from several different albums and put them in
order of like subjects or moods. I am old enough that at one time
this process was done by swapping LPs on a "record player." CDs
have made this much easier, since each track can be immediately
queued up. The ability of a CD changer to queue up multiple CDs
is what makes Jukebox software a reality.
The question comes up of "How does it know." How does the software
know how to find each song or track? The Internet has made the task
of entering all the required data much easier. A database created
by Ti Kan, and updated by countless other people, is called the
CDDB project. It has been used by many Shareware programs for a
time to load the title, artist and tracks into the player when a
CD is inserted. All that is required is an Internet connection and
the data is quickly downloaded. Many people became familiar with
such players after Microsoft jumped on the bandwagon with their
"Enhanced CD Player."
Wintrax has the ability to import data from several of the shareware
players. They recommend one called CD Wizard from BFM Software.
This is the program I used. It is a great little player and all
are heartedly encouraged to pay the small registration fee for it
or any other shareware software.
At any rate, the procedure is this: place your CD in the player
while connected to the Internet; the data is downloaded and the
CD can then be placed in one of the changers; note the slot it is
placed in. After the CDs are all cycled through this process, a
database is automatically compiled that can then be imported into
Wintrax.
Now comes some real versatility. The software allows each CD to
be categorized as to the type of music, such as Rock, Blues, or
even Christmas music. Each song can be assigned to one of eight
different users, and each song can be rated by each user on a one
to 10 scale. If all this data entry and versatility sounds like
a lot of work, believe me it is much easier to do on your computer
than it is to read about here. All the user settings and ratings
are optional and are not necessary for system operation. The beauty
of this is all the additional ratings enable you to later filter
song selections according to an endless variety of preferences.
For example, you could display a list of all songs recorded before
1960 by female blues artists, that Dad rates at 7or better, or a
list of all Rhythm and Blues music that the wife likes, etc.
As the songs play, the next track in the queue is actually queued
up by software so that there is very little delay between songs.
This feature is enabled by one advantage that Wintrax has built
in that was deciding factor when I compared different software packages.
The signals to the changers to play each track, and the signal from
the player that the track has ended is sent "hard wired." Other
CD software uses an infrared signal such as is commonly sent by
a remote control. While this method operates, it does have problems
and limitations. The Wintrax interface supplied hooks up to the
jacks on the changers originally designed to synchronize them with
a tape recorder. The PSR-8S then is connected to the computer’s
serial port. The software works through the serial port to send
and receive data from the changers.
By the way, the software can also work through the parallel port
for a fewer number of changers, or other options are available for
Sony changers and other combinations of equipment. Much more information
on different configurations is available from Wintek.
As you can tell, "Music Automation's Best Kept Secret" is one that
I think deserves to be exposed. (In case you wondered the description
is from Wintek.) While this exposure may take a while, you can get
a jump on things. If you have a love of music, an appreciation for
state of the art gadgets, and are ready to start enjoying your CDs
instead of putting fingerprints on them, you really should check
out
