Numark CDN88 - Double CD Player Revoew

[QUINNY]

I took delivery of my first double CD player yesterday, a relatively cheap Numark CDN88.....and I've been having so much fun since.

Despite what many around here might say, CD players are IMO, better than having record decks. Sure, I'm finding it a little difficult to mix things quite as well as I'd like to (who's to say I wouldn't find it just as difficult with vinyl now that I'm 20 years older?), but I'm sure I'll master it given time. This unit does allow a method of speeding up or slowing down a track by rotating the scrub wheel, which is very intuitive and effective, very much in the way that we'd play with the deck/record BITD.

What is absolutely brilliant is the key lock facility which allows speed change, on the fly, without changing the original key in which the track was made. Even at +/- 12% there is very little, horrible sounding, quantization artifacts. Maybe I'll have a go at speeding up 'Rise' one day.

The CDN88 also has a BPM read out on each deck (sometimes highly inaccurate, but can be easily remedied by tapping the beatsync pushbutton in time to the beat for maybe 4 bars) that reads out in real time and supposedly helps with the interlock facility which should make the two CDs keep in sync with each other. It doesn't, and except for 4 to the floor modern House is just pants.

Another absolutely brilliant feature is the cue facility, which finds the beginning of a track automatically, or re-cues at the point of your choosing. BTW, cueing can be done via a scrub wheel which allows for frame accurate (1/80th of a second) lining up of tracks. You can scrub the audio at any speed desired to get right in among the beats, just like we used to do so with reel to reel tape. You wanna miss out the intro to 'That's Where The Happy People Go' and start directly at the first on beat, without any drag or slurring? No problem whatsoever. If anything, it makes segueing an absolute doddle and a joy to do. No fear of slur, slip or jogging.

Then there are the 2 loops on each deck. Not perfect (they start to loop immediately after the out button is pressed...an ability to preview and trim without commiting would have been nice)...maybe I haven't sussed this out yet. So long as you press the in and out in the right place the loops are absolutely seemless, with no clicks, pops or other noises. By pressing play you can return to the original cue point (i.e. at the start of the track), so between the three a real mash up can be achieved. What fun, although I'll have to use this sparingly if I ever play out.

All in all, give me CD players anytime. It's not as if I can't transfer my vinyl onto discs.

Numark CDN88 @ Amazon-US | Amazon-UK

[RetroRuss]

Have fun with it....it is exactly the same one my brother in law is getting! The difference being that the music will be siginficiantly different....if you ever want to hear what a Disco was like in the mid 80's in Dublin - he's your man!! :lol: