Is that a CD player I see in your rack of stuff?

Yes, it is. It's a Numark MPCD3, and I use it to play my backing tracks. As noted elsewhere in my musicians FAQs, I start with midi files, then mix them down into MP3 format. The MPCD3 allows me to put all my tracks on one disk and play them back by punching in the track number of the song.

What follows is a review I wrote on this model on Sep 9, 2003 after having to send it in for repairs. I'm placing it here in case you're thinking of buying a professional CD player and want to know more about my experience with this one. By the way, I've purchased two of these units now. The first time from bsless.com and the second from Chuck Levin's Washington Music Center (Bsless.com seems to be no longer carrying this model). I think I paid about $260 plus shipping both times.

First the bad news:
I bought the MPCD3 the first day it came on the market in 2002 and have used it for 3-4 gigs every week for the last 13 months. It has worked faithfully with no problems at all, until two weeks ago when it started sticking. CDs would begin to play and then stop after a minute or two. Start, stop, start stop, and finally stop.

Now the good…no GREAT news!
I sent an email to Numark’s tech support and told them my problem. I got an immediate reply from Brad there, who told me to send the unit back to them and they would cover the repairs, even though it was a month out of warranty. He told me to call the returns department and get an RA. I did this and shipped the unit back to them on a Tuesday. I figured I’d be lucky to see my box again in this life time. Imagine my astonishment when my MPCD3 arrived back on my doorstep, completely repaired, on Monday…. SIX DAYS FROM THE DAY I SHIPPED IT TO THEM. This is unheard of, folks! My hat’s off to the tech department at Numark. By they way, the repair tag said they replaced the transport and repaired the lens. Imagine that!

The MPCD3 is very easy to operate, sounds great, and I couldn’t do without it, but it does have some quirks that take some getting used to.

Note: The following observations are from an MP3 user’s standpoint and the same issues do not apply when using this unit to play back commercial disks or Wav files.

MP3’s downloaded from Kazaa begin playing with a “pre-echo”. That is, that the first ½ second of the song plays, pauses a beat, and then begins playing the song again from the beginning. I know it’s weird, but I don’t have this problem with MP3 files I’ve created myself, using Cool Edit Pro to encode the MP3s.

On my wish list of improvements in the next model is an improved LCD display. The LCD shows the minutes and seconds of the song counting down in REALLY BIG characters as the song plays, and the track number displays in really small characters. I would really like to see this reversed, since the LCD does not display the track title. When you’re cuing, you have no idea what the name of the song is unless you have a printed play list with the track numbers on it. MP3 players today are expected to have decent navigation features. This unit has none. To play a track, you must first know the track number, and then punch the number in on the keypad.

The unit has a good tactile feel to the key pad, but the buttons are small and hard to see in a dark room. A lighted keypad with large numbers would be better since this is the only way you have to select MP3 songs. The cue and play buttons are quite large so you can’t miss them, but the cue function doesn’t work with MP3 files, owing to the lack of time coding in the MP3 format itself. Again, to select an MP3 song, you have to know the track number and either punch it on on the keypad or use the “next track (forward)” button to move through the tracks in order, one at a time.

There is a nice big jog wheel that’s used to cue regular CDs, but has no function on MP3 disks.

The relay and remote jacks in the back of the unit are mini jacks. Why would anyone use a mini jack in a professional system? I took my box to the local pro shop and had them install a ¼ inch jack so I didn’t have to use an adapter on my foot switch.

It seems to me that this unit is designed primarily for normal CD playback. There are a lot of cool features built in for that. You can match tempos between two songs, find cue points, and jog between tracks. The MP3 features seem to be more or less an after thought and haven’t been nearly as well engineered. I find this curious, since Numark already makes several fine dedicated CD players. Seems to me if they were going to make an MP3 player, that the MP3 functions should have gotten all the goodies.

Having said all this, to my knowledge, this is still one of only two rack-mounted professional MP3 players on the market. This alone makes it worth having if you’re going to do a lot of MP3 work. It’s not perfect, but I DID purchase a second one when my original went bad and had to go back to Numark.. I can’t do what I do without it. And, besides, even with the MPCD3’s short comings, I’m so impressed with Numark’s tech support and dedication to customer service, that I’m a customer for life.