Simple Denon HD2500 Question.

[Shakermaker Promotions]

I think I know the answer but I'll ask anyway...

The Denon HD2500 is really a Media Controller isn't it. You can midi it up to the laptop etc etc....

Now, is there a limit to the amount of tracks it can search or does it start slowing down or go silly if there are too many? I know it has the ability to take 4 x USB's and I always have 2 connected that are mirrors of eachother.

If you use a HD2500, what kind of size HD are using with it?

The reason I ask is because for the last couple of months (yes really), I have been on a mission to get every single track I own on to some big HD's. I have a massive collection (bigger than I thought), even after getting rid of loads of stuff and it is a very labourious (sp?) task and I still have loads to do. I have been doing around 8 hours a day during the week ripping the CD's or copying etc.

I have 2 x 2TB HD's which everything is going on and my aim in the end is to swap the HD's that I am currently using and use these so that I have everything but I want to know if it will affect the way the Denon works? I imagine it is the same as a computer in that it just searches and plays the media?

I have plenty of stuff on the HD's covering all genres and many tracks by certain bands and artists but generally I will chuck on the most popular tracks by the bands...for example...The Cure...I have both of their best of's which should ideally cover me but every now and then someone may ask for an obscure album track and I know I have it but not on the HD2500 so that's why I am sorting everything. Does that make sense?

[Vectis]

I have plenty of stuff on the HD's covering all genres and many tracks by certain bands and artists but generally I will chuck on the most popular tracks by the bands...for example...The Cure...I have both of their best of's which should ideally cover me but every now and then someone may ask for an obscure album track and I know I have it but not on the HD2500 so that's why I am sorting everything. Does that make sense?

Totally un-Denon related, but I thought if I explained how I used to sort and store my stuff it might be of use.

I would always have 3 drives attached to my d2/DDS -

- a 200GB portable USB drive containing all of my commonly played stuff, categorised by decade, musical style etc.. So for example, 70s -> Disco, 70s -> Punk, 70s -> Glam etc.

- a 1TB powered HDD with a snapshot of the above PLUS my full catalogue all stored by alphabet. This was buried in the playout system and updated once a year at most.

- a memory stick with downloads since the last index rebuild, meaning that I only needed to touch my master drives a couple of times each year.

So... the 200GB drive would be fully indexed using the Numark Librarian software. This was done off-line on the mac once or twice a year.

The memory stick would be indexed on-device - with just a couple of hundred songs max it doesn't take long.

The 1TB drive was NOT indexed - there's no need - everything is there alphabetically, so to find that obscure Cure track it would be USB2 -> C -> Cure -> Obscure Album -> Obscure Track in order to find it.

Therefore no need for overly large indexes.


Of course when I say "a 200GB drive" I mean "multiple copies of"

At home the whole lot was sync'd off to a big NAS box for ease of replication.


HTH

[Shakermaker Promotions]

Thanks V.
At the moment I have the essential party tunes etc on the internal HD of the Denon incase the HD's go down. Connected to USB 1 is a Seagate 500GB and to USB 2 is another one that is an exact copy. Everything on the HD's are in individual folders from A - Z so A contains the likes of ACDC, All Saints etc and so on....Each MP3 is tagged properly so that if I have to do a specific search for genre or year etc, all the information is on hand and easy to find.

As I said (and again using The Cure as an example)...at home in my CD rack, I have every album they have released. On the Denon though I probably have around 40 tracks. I tend to update whenever anyone asks for something that isn't on there but I thought it would be easier (how wrong was I!?) to just rip everything so that I have everything with me and then of course, to copy that so that is mirror'd too. I am slowly filling up the 2TB drive and I think that it may be enough because I am only ripping at 128kb and the quality is fine.

By the way, every HD is powered and all connected to a powered multiple USB.

The other way round it is once I have completed the 2TB HD, I could possibly connect 1 of them up to the Denon in USB3 and then have the other one connected to the laptop with VDJ or Traktor as backup?

[Vectis]

Eek - have you played 128Kbit/s LOUD through a good PA?

I'd consider 192 an absolute minimum, ideally 256 or 320.


That aside, the problem you'll face when updating a large library regularly is that of fragmentation, long index build times etc..

My method (update the 'big' store infrequently) gets away from all that. By keeping the "play once in a blue moon" stuff in an alphabetically sorted structure means that those files don't need to form part of the index, because should you need them, you KNOW where they are ... there's no need to go searching.

So my index covered something like 5,000 tracks maximum, was rebuilt once or twice a year, and never became a burdensome task.

HTH.

[Shakermaker Promotions]

All the stuff on the mirror'd HD's and the Denon internal HD is at 320kb. The passport drives that I use with the laptop are all 320kb too. The idea of this originally was for my own pleasure so that I had everything in one place and then I thought it would be good to take it out with me. If it comes to it, once everything is sorted and I have it on one of the 2TB HD's, I will do another one but do it at better quality.

[Pe7e]

As far as I'm aware, 'Denon Music Manager' will only index up to 50,000 tracks on a single drive, anything above this will not be indexed, therefor not searchable on the keyboard connected to the HD2500.

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

But you don't have to use Denon music manager.

[Shakermaker Promotions]

Thanks for the advice guys (just as I start ripping again for another day).

[Excalibur]

But you don't have to use Denon music manager.

As Vectis explained above. Good explanation of his method.

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

As Vectis explained above. Good explanation of his method.

I was answering the post before.