Cortex, Denon or Numark.....??

[ianm67]

Hello chaps,

Just wondering if those of you who have or are thinking of abandoning CD's can offer any help..... I have for some time been pondering over whether I should retire my CD's and burn them all onto a couple of USB hard drives for use with an appropriate controller.... I would mirror the drives to protect me in case of failiure of one but my question is which controller...? The Coretx HDC1000 seems an okay pice of kit for the money but I have no real idea as to how user friendly the user interface is and what its acess times are like.... The Denon is tempting due to the built in hard drive for even further resilience and after my bank account recovers it will also control a dual CD tray (nice if I want to go old skool.... ;) ) Lastly the Numark... built in 60gb hard drive and it comes with dual CD drawers. It's the most expensive and the longest in the tooth........
I'm not looking for lots of bells and whistles, just fast access to tracks via a nice intuitive interface that an idiot can use.....
Anybody care to point me in the right direction.....:confused:

Many thanks,

IanM

[ian8limelight]

I, and a number of others, have got the Denon HD-2500 and personally am very pleased with it.

There have been a number of threads regarding the Denon (and others) over the past few months - try the search facility above, you should find some interesting facts and opinions amongst them.

[Dragonfly]

ive got the cortex ... no problems with it , it passed the throw it on the floor test , i find the search speed very quick and never had a shut down or freeze problem. it depends on your needs totally, the denon is a nice bit of kit but i wouldnt know where to start with all the features on it? one or 2 have likened the cortex to the d2 but claim the d2 has a few more bits and bobs on it and a better user interface although ive never used one.

[Vectis]

Evaluated the Cortex... bit clunky for me, especially with a 60,000 song library it was just too sluggish.

Couldn't justify the Denon (it's got slightly cheaper since I was looking but still very high £££) especially as I already have the external HDDs fully loaded.

Plumped for the Numark d2 Director and I'm loving it. The only feature I wish it had which I think the Denon already has (correct me if I'm wrong guys) is an auto-mix because at present if I leave it running for background tunes it will "chase" them but if there's any silence at the end/beginning of tracks it doesn't skip over it. Hopefully that's in a future firmware update somewhere.

I think the Numark you refer to in post#1 is something other than the d2 as this sits nicely price-wise between the Cortex and the Denon?

[ianm67]

Hello Vectis,

The Numark that I was refering to is the HDCD1. It's still available from a number of suppliers for around £750 and seems to offer a bundle of features that are hard to resist... Realistically I will probably opt for one of the other products as they appear to be more widely used. Just bought myself a couple of 500Gb external hard drives, so just gotta get burning now......:cool:

Cheers,

Ian

[Corabar Steve]

Hello Vectis,

The Numark that I was refering to is the HDCD1. It's still available from a number of suppliers for around £750 and seems to offer a bundle of features that are hard to resist... Realistically I will probably opt for one of the other products as they appear to be more widely used. Just bought myself a couple of 500Gb external hard drives, so just gotta get burning now......:cool:

Cheers,

Ian

I'm suprised there are still any of them around. I thought they'd stopped making them. I seem to recall they had no end of problems with them & loads were sent back.

[supersounds]

Hi Ian
IVe had a cortex and a numark d2 director and the numark runs rings round the cortex the cortex is better looking but for all round proformance the numark is king of the road great peice of kit wouldnt go out with anything else now get 1 and see for yourself good luck you wont be dissapointed

[spin mobile disco]

Same as supersounds I have cortex and numark, numark has more features than the cortex, but the cortex is pretty robust being mostly steel construction.

[CRAZY K]

Same as supersounds I have cortex and numark, numark has more features than the cortex, but the cortex is pretty robust being mostly steel construction.

Im a Cortex user and for my simple needs--Country discos, playing from Playlists at Weddings and taking a few requests on the night absolutely perfect, no freezes, crashes, nothing---im almost disappointed its so good after all the slagging off ive heard of Cortex.

I havent tried the Dragonfly test yet:D :D :D

VV--60, 000 tracks?

That sounds a lot of tracks--:eek:

I have around 10,000 on my Cortex and thats because half of them are duplications at least but havent got time to delete them.

Even on 10,000 tracks search speed is pretty good though.

Whatever you do make sure you have BACKUP.

CRAZY K

[Vectis]

VV--60, 000 tracks?

That sounds a lot of tracks--:eek:

Whatever you do make sure you have BACKUP.

CRAZY K

Yup. Admittedly there are a few dupes in there, but after a purge about a year ago there's probably at least 55k unique tracks.

Thing is as well as a DJ I'm also a really avid music lover and have been for the last 30 years... kinda explains things! If I ever get round to digitizing the bulk of the vinyl collection (or buying it again) that'll burst 100k easily.

Backups - oh yes!

[ianm67]

Afternoon chaps....

Well, I've made my decision and I'm going to order a D2 on Monday.... The key was the price I can get one for. I can get one from the States for approximately £260 including shipment. I've spoken to Numark tech' support and the external power supply is auto sensing so will be okay for use with a 240V supply. That means that I can get a couple of decent fan cooled external hard drives as well for the same money as the D2 on its own in the UK. I've just started to burn all of my CD's into MP3 format, at the rate it's going at the moment it'll take me a couple of months.........:rolleyes:
Anyway thatnks for all of your help with the decision making process !!

IanM

[CRAZY K]

Afternoon chaps....

Well, I've made my decision and I'm going to order a D2 on Monday.... The key was the price I can get one for. I can get one from the States for approximately £260 including shipment. I've spoken to Numark tech' support and the external power supply is auto sensing so will be okay for use with a 240V supply. That means that I can get a couple of decent fan cooled external hard drives as well for the same money as the D2 on its own in the UK. I've just started to burn all of my CD's into MP3 format, at the rate it's going at the moment it'll take me a couple of months.........:rolleyes:
Anyway thatnks for all of your help with the decision making process !!

IanM

Buying direct from USA.

What are your consumer rights in the event of problems?

Send it back to USA? :eek: :eek: :eek:

Will they hit you for export tax--or has that been charged?

Just a few thoughts --

CRAZY K

[spin mobile disco]

yeah i buy from the states, when it goes through customs they slap on tax and you have to pay when you collect. Works out dearer than buying here.

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

yeah i buy from the states, when it goes through customs they slap on tax and you have to pay when you collect. Works out dearer than buying here.

So why do you buy from the States then? :confused: