Who has used the Pronto with a Slink-e and CDJ? I have the Pronto, and I am real close to buying the Slink-e. Is the slink-e worth the money? Any problems with the Slink-e? Any information about the Slink-e and controlling it with the Pronto would be appreciated.

I have just started toying around with the possibilities of using the slinke and pronto together. But let me just take a moment and say that the slinke is one cool product!

First of all, I received instant gratification from the slinke by having it run through my CDs one at a time and downlaoding the album name, artist and all of the song titles within 15 minutes of opening the box - literally (I started the process within 15 minutes but the process takes about >3 hours for 300 CDs). Out of 309 CDs, CDJ was able to find about 290+ CDs by accessing the CDDB online. It is really cool having the individual song titles available as my Jukebox does not support this feature.

As far as the Pronto is concerned, I am currently sending the Slinke IR commands to select 10 different music Genres for random play (I plan to do about 20 total). This takes a little more work, but the examples given are pretty good. This setup is much nicer than the Shuffle capability of my Jukebox as I can "bias" the slinke software to choose songs that I prefer in each genre and also classify different tracks of a CD to different Genres and some CDs to multiple Genres (like I have some Bonnie Raitt in both Blues and Light Rock Genre). It took me about an hour to figure out how to program slinke and CDJ to be controlled from the Pronto. The example of controlling genres from a remote is given in the notes of the CDJ maps.txt file in the CDJ directory (if you have downloaded CDJ already). This file, in combination with the slinke online help, gave me everything I needed to know to program the genre commands.

But the coolest part of CDJ and the slinke so far is the ability to display Album covers, song title and artist name on my TV as they play. Even my friends that don't appreciate technology love this feature. It requires that you have a Video card in your PC that will OUTPUT Svideo or composite video to your TV input (I could not find a Component Video out PC card) or a TV that will accept VGA input.

There is a possibility of having the CDJ2CCF program (available on this site) convert your entire CDJ database into a format that can be recreated in your Pronto for direct access of CDs by name. However, after reading the disclaimer that this program can lock up the Pronto, I've decided to manually program each CD one at a time in the Pronto.

Now, a few things that you CAN NOT do with the slinke:
a) download more than 13 characters of an album name to your Jukebox. b) download the artist name to your jukebox. Neither of these are limitations for me because the TV interface is all I use to display artist and album names (my jukebox is hidden outside of the primary listening room so I never see the front panel anyway). Currently you can not automatically download album covers. I understand that the most popular source of Album covers is JPGs and GIFs from Amazon or CDNow, but this is a manual process.

To me the slinke is worth the money. I have an easier time explaining to my non-tech friends why I spent $250 for the slinke than I do explaining why I spent $400 for the Pronto. But so far I'm impressed with both products.

Craig, is there any reason that you can't use one of the other jukebox tools rather than entering everything by hand?

I'm currently working on a new version of the Nudelist tool (this time with a full GUI so everyone should be able to use it without trouble). If there is any functionality that I can include in Super-Nudelist which will make life easier for slink-e users I want to do it.

(Super-Nudelist will be free, I'm not trying to get market research here. :-))

Craig,

Thank You. I have been going back and forth between the Slink-e and another PC controlled jukebox software/hardware combo, but I think the Slinke-e is the way to go!
Do you have a website with any more info/pictures of the slink-e/CDJ in action?

Ron: Your welcome. I've gotten more than my share of value from Daniel's site, so it is about time that I started giving back. Thanks Mr. Tonks! Unfortunately, I do not have a web site, but I can e-mail you a few of my files that should give you an easy start with slinke.

Leo: I would love to see a Super-Nudelist tool that has a GUI. I already use the Nudelist graphics when I enter the albums by hand and to see it automated would go a long way to close the loop between the Slinke and the Pronto. My biggest concern is the possibility of putting my Pronto into a state that requires my sending it into Philips for service to make it usable again. If there is a way to avoid this situation, and my udnerstanding is that this is a risk of using any tool based on CDJ2CCF (I'm thinking your tool would require this utility), then I may shy away from using it only because I've already done the work (in the most tedious way). If this risk can be removed, then I'd be very tempted to recreate my ccfs using Super-Nudelist. This would enable me to purchase a second Jukebox and move CDs between them to optimize fading back and forth between the jukeboxes (using CDJ and a mixer).

If possible, it would be cool to see the following feature in the generated CCF.

1. Having the CD number in the button of Nudelist (if the CD is on the second 400 CD jukebox and in slot 209, then 609 would work for me or somehow indicating player 2 slot 209.) I write the slot number on each physical CD with a Sharpie and put the CD number on the Pronto CD Album button so that I can take CDs out of the jukebox and put them in my car (and then back to the jukebox).

2. Personally, I don't need to have a hierachical search from Artist->multiple albums. I'm down to 17% memory free so if there is a way to just make the system somewhat efficient, then that would be great.

Thanks for asking. I think this will be a great tool!
(as long as it is safe)

Craig,

As far as I know there's no danger from using Nudelist and similar tools. The worst I can imagine happening is that the config becomes invalid and you have to reset the Pronto (pin in the reset button at the back) and send a new config. I've not used CDJ2CCF (no slink-e) so I don't know if it does something unusual.

I've added both your suggestions to my to-do list.

Thanks!

Ron,

I have had my slink-e for three weeks. It took 45 mins to down load the track information for 100 cd's and I then used cdj2ccf to convert the information for my Pronto. I didn't read the disclaimer saying that a possible 'lock-up' could happen but i have let my girlfriend use it. No problems to report so far, and one happy girly who doesn't have to touch 'all thoughs black boxes in the corner' just to play a tune!

I would like to be able to see cd tracks as well as ablum names, but that'll have to wait.

[Link: remotecentral.com]

Im am looking at buying a cd jukebox.
1. what one should I buy


thanks,
Todd