For years, my wife and I have complained about not being able to find a CD when we want it. I have also wanted the ability to create play lists, such as 10 favorite Grateful Dead cuts across three albums. I finally solved these problems with my old laptop (266 MHz and 64MB RAM), a Slink-e (from
www.nirvis.com), and a used ES series Sony CD megachanger. Basically the Slink-e sits between the laptop and the megachanger. The Nirvis site has free software to go on the laptop (or any Internet connected computer for that matter). The software, in conjunction with the Slink-e, will read the identification off every disk, go to the Internet to get album and track information, create a CD database for you, and allow you to select albums or tracks to create playlists. You can also search for songs, albums, or artists. If I do a search for Hendrix I find his songs on Woodstock and Monterey Pop along with the Hendrix CDs.
The Slink-e came with all the connectors I needed. I just hooked it up and let it go through my megachanger. My laptop has a wifi card for Internet access through the hub in my home office. My 8 year old daughter can use the software, but my wife can’t.
For my wife I created reports (off the database) listing the CDs by title and artist. I have made duplicates of the CDs that I want to have in the car, my office, or for auditioning equipment. I labeled all the CD cases with the corresponding slot number and have them in order in a cabinet next to the megachanger. The big pain in all this was cleaning each CD, putting them in the megachanger, and labeling all the cases.
It is easy to find any CD now. I can conveniently take them out of the megachanger (which is in my den mid-fi system) and play them in my living room (low end hi-fi) system or the bedroom. Playlists are easy for me to create.
I am very happy with this solution.
There are a lot of sophisticated things you can do with the Slink-e, but I have not tried them yet. The software does abend every rare once in a while, but I think this is a Win 98 problem as much as anything. I suspect if I reload the software the problem will go away, but it is not enough of a nuisance to bother with yet. I just restart and the problem is gone.
I am not connected with Nirvis or Sony.
