Jukebox Machines

Maier says:

Despite the fact that this jukebox was not created for Iphone 3GS (and you’ll get repeated alerts telling you so on your Iphone) it *is* working. Make sure the switch on the back of the unit is set to “internal speakers” and put your Iphone in Airplane mode (under the Settings icon on the Iphone home screen). It’s charging and playing great! And it’s a lot more fun than the generic black box units. I’m not an audiophile but I think it sounds great — at least as good as a 70’s boombox.

Erlandson says:

Yes you get listen to stations all over the world. But I have only used it maybe three times. Is easy to install just plug into a usb port and your done. So whyI have only used rarely? I have a program similar to this already in my computer. But if you need this it works and works very well.

Kaiser says:

I have aol radio, wi-fi radio & Aluratek usb & I love them all. The usb unit is very easy to use & you can’t beat the price. I got two for thirty somthing at amazon. Get this unit!!!!!

Ingels says:

I’ve had my TDK DA9000 Audio Jukebox for about 2 months now, and I’m enjoying every minute of it. For me, this was the perfect addition to my stereo system. For years I’ve made cassette compilations of my favorite tunes to play in the car. Now that cassettes have become `old’ technology, I’ve wished for a way to store individual songs on a hard drive, and to then be able to burn a CD copy for my car. That is exactly what this machine allows you to do.

Now even though I’m completely happy with this machine, and would not sell it back, there are several idiosyncrasies that I need to rant about. First, the jukebox is a computer, with all the faults and drawbacks of a computer. It does not come on instantaneously, nor shut off instantaneously; it first has to boot-up. When you turn it off, it has to boot-down.

The display screen is cheesy: a small green background with thin black readouts. You can’t read the screen from more than three feet away. If you are sitting across the room with the remote in your hand, you can’t read the screen. Not a big deal, but an annoyance.

The jukebox does not burn on normal blank CDs. You need to purchase special blank CDs designed for music. The usual computer CDs don’t work, and I had a little trouble finding CDs designated for music. Sales clerks kept telling me that computer CDs will also work for music.

There is no button for random play. So you cannot play the songs on the hard drive in random order. There is a mode button on the remote, that cycles through `normal play,’ `continuous play’ and `random play’ but it’s an annoyance to use. When you turn off the machine, it defaults back to `normal play.’ I would have preferred a random off/on switch.

TDK advertises that the machine has a 20GB hard drive. It does, but 2GB are used for operating software and a list of 450,000 CD titles and contents. The list is great for copying your CDs into the machine, as you don’t need to type-in the name of the album, the name of the artist, or the names of the songs. Unfortunately, the list is only as up-to-date as the date of manufacture. Any pre-recorded CD manufactured after the manufacture of the jukebox, will not be in the database, and you will have to key in the information. It is possible to up-date the list, but you have to have the jukebox connected to your computer and your computer connected to the Internet, all at the same time. In my case, that’s not easy to do. I found I had two new CDs and one old CD that were not in the database.

Any CDs you have that were burned on computers can be played on the jukebox, but they will not have any song or artist information available for display.

You can enter song information by using the remote, but it’s a real pain. I’ve found the best way to enter information and create playlists is to hookup my laptop to the jukebox. The DA9000 comes with software that you can load into your PC that makes manipulating the database easy. You are also provided with a USB cable to connect your computer to the jukebox. Your computer needs to be close to the jukebox.

I don’t believe the buttons on the jukebox are laid out intuitively, and after 2 months, I still have to hunt around the face of the machine. Many of the jukebox functions do not have buttons on the face, but require the remote control.

I have 500 MP3 songs now in the hard-drive, and I’m only using 1/18th of the available storage space, so 20GB seems a good size.

Bottom line is I’m very happy with the jukebox, and recommend it. It arrived in a short time, and has been trouble free.

Kelchner says:

I researched the various component models available for burning cds since I always thought that it was a hassle to sit up in my office and burn cds from my computer when I could do it from the comfort of my living room. After careful consideration I found the TDK da-9000 to be the best model for what I wanted to do. The hard drive is plenty big enough since it is dedicated to music only. The database works just fine and if you have a laptop it is a cinch to hook it up to the unit and download the newest version of the gracenote software or simply download the album info for the titles that the unit does not recognize. I find it very cool to have my whole cd collection in one spot without the pile of scratched cds that I had to deal with before.

The only problem with the player/burner takes a while to compress a full cd to mp3 format. The sound quality is fine with my Yamaha receiver and JBL speakers. Here is the sticking point. Once you download a cd into the hardrive it converts into mp3 format. In order to burn a cd from the hardrive it must decompress each song, burn it to the cd and then recompress it back to the mp3 format. To be honest it takes FOREVER. Fortunately I found a way around the problem. If the cd is in the hardrive, simply delete it and then use the rapid archive function. It will temporarily save the cd uncompressed until you turn the unit off (it will then compress it while the unit is in standby mode.) Because it has not compressed the cd yet it only takes minutes to temporarily save the cd and a few minutes more to burn it. Sounds much more complicated then it is, believe me.

Good luck, I think that overall it is a great product and doubt that you will be disappointed.

Justice says:

This is an excellent device if you want to play DivX movies on a TV or projector. With the latest firmware update available from the Archos website it can play DVD quality DivX movies and using the included adapter can output full screen to a TV or overhead projector. The best part is if you do download movies ( not that I am saying you should ) a lot of them come already in a DivX format AVI file that the player supports. So all you need to do is copy them to the device and your ready to start watching the movie. No need to convert the file to another format. And even if you do need to convert the file the device comes preloaded with software to convert movies to the correct file format.

The MP3 player on it is very good compared to other multi-function devices on the market. Sound quality is excellent and it has a very nice user interface that even supports album covers ( if you have them ) displayed in the MP3 player.

The picture viewer functions are nice and also work while displaying on a TV or projector and has a nice built in slide show function.

The game player is very basic and only supports playing simple cell phone games using the Mophun game engine but they are in full color with sound. The player only comes with a few demo games.

There is also a built in mic and audio recording function but I have not really used it all that much.

Overall it is a very nice device and there are only a few minor problems I have with it. First off the UP button on mine had to be pressed a little harder than all the other buttons for it to work. I am not sure if that is a defect on my unit or if all of them are like that. And second is it does take a minute to load very large play lists in the MP3 player. My default play list is about 1300 songs and it takes about 45 seconds to load the playlist before you can start listening to music.