# How to make a audio CD auto repeating?



## cutlunch (Feb 6, 2007)

Hi
I am not quite sure if this is the right forum but it is sound related.

I was wondering if you can make an audio cd in CD-A format that is self repeating when it has played the last track. The actual CD will be recorded on a CD-R. I just want any player that can play audio CD's off a CD-R to be able to handle this.

Anyone got any ideas.
Thanks
Cutlunch


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## gafftaper (Feb 6, 2007)

I'm not an audio guru, but my vote is for not possible. As far as I know a CD player is dumb. It just plays back the information it's given without listening to anything it's reading.


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## Jim_L (Feb 6, 2007)

You can't do it at the CD. You do it at the player. Most CD players have a repeat function. 

Jim


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## avkid (Feb 6, 2007)

What is this for? 
If it is for a specific application that just needs to keep playing for a long time why not just get a professional compact disc player?


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## Footer (Feb 6, 2007)

avkid said:


> What is this for?
> If it is for a specific application that just needs to keep playing for a long time why not just get a professional compact disc player?



What CD players don't have a repeat function? My old CD player that I got in the eary 90's does...


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## cutlunch (Feb 6, 2007)

I probably didn't give enough info but thanks for the replys so far.

I am a volunteer at a museum in the telecommunication section. We have old radios, phones and a 1920's Western Electric rotary telephone exchange.

The museum is open 7 days but the volunteers are only there one day a week. Why I am looking at an auto repeating CD is to have soundtracks playing to our visitors. The problem is each evening the power is turned off and we don't want people to have come into reset them each morning.

I was looking for cheap ways to get around this.

One thing that might work is a cheap DVD player from our equivalent of Radio Shack. The good thing about this player is, the power is purely mechanical. This means if you turn the power off at the wall then turn it back on the player will start reading the disc - dvd ,cd etc from the start again.

There doesn't appear to be any CD players which do this.

So I might have use some form of authoring softaware to create a an autostart disc with mp3 files on it.

Can anyone tell me of a good free program for creating autostart dvd, cd etc.

So as you can see I want this to be totaly hands free.


Thanks
Cutlunch


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## Chris15 (Feb 7, 2007)

There definitely are CD players out there which play on power up. The Tascam I had at school definitely had that feature. Dumb question for a sec. Does not someone have to unlock the door each day? Would it not be possible for them to hit the play button amongst turning on the lights and unlocking the door?


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## avkid (Feb 7, 2007)

Why not just use a computer and automate it to start on power up?
Heck, you could control it from your home PC using a free program like GoToMyPC: https://www.gotomypc.com


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## Footer (Feb 7, 2007)

http://www.museumtechnology.com/products/TRIO

Its actually not that bad of a deal, considering its everything in one package. For anyone interested, this site has some pretty good show control type stuff.


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## Chris15 (Feb 8, 2007)

Footer, slight problem. The unit you link to would work fine in your part of the world. The 120 volts can be gotten around using a transformer, but the 60Hz is very hard to get from the 50Hz supply here and across the puddle...


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## Footer (Feb 8, 2007)

Chris15 said:


> Footer, slight problem. The unit you link to would work fine in your part of the world. The 120 volts can be gotten around using a transformer, but the 60Hz is very hard to get from the 50Hz supply here and across the puddle...



I am sure there is a Euro version out there, If in doubt shoot them an email. There is just as big of a market for this stuff over there as there is here.


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## cutlunch (Feb 8, 2007)

Thanks for the replys. Because of budget costs I think I will have to stick my original idea of a cheap dvd player to play mp3's. Has anyone thought of a good free CD authoring program?


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## soundman1024 (Feb 18, 2007)

Perhaps if you got a UPS (interruptible power supply) it would charge up during the day..then when the power is turned off the CD player would run on the battery all night, then charge back up in the day. It would run 24/7, and potentially wear out faster, but it would loop forever if it were set to repeat. I imagine one UPS would have enough power to run a cd player for hours, but if it doesn't two could be daisy-chained.

As for a free CD authoring program, Windows Media Player and iTunes both write CDs just fine. If you're wanting to make an mp3 cd the burning software that came with your CD burner or computer should work just fine. I believe you just write a data cd with only .mp3 files.


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## anticowboyism (Feb 19, 2007)

why don't you just use a small mp3 player? They can be found for pretty cheap these days. With a CD, even on repeat, there will be a delay because of the mechanical laser needing to move back to the start of the track. Also because it is mechanical means it will not be a good choice for something that needs to run all day long for several years. An mp3 player on the other hand has no moving parts, the repeat is immediate with no audible time delay, and it will play forever as long as it has power. I got a small SanDisk Sansa player last year during the after Thanksgiving sale at BestBuy for only $30 with 512MB, which is like 10 hours or so depending on the compression rate.


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