[SML] Sound playback for dance

[Bill Potter]

During our Spring Dance Concert last year, we had a couple of CD player failures where the player just stopped playing in the middle of a track and skipped to the end of the track, paused and ready to play the next track.

Looks like our aging Marantz CD players are approaching end-of-life status and we’re wondering if it’s time to ditch the CDs as our primary playback for dance performances. Our Director of Dance has checked in with her touring dance company contacts and has decided we need to go with some kind of sound back-up system, i.e. two sources playing simultaneously so the backup source can be unmuted in case of failure of the primary source.

Any suggestions for a dual-source system? If we go to a computer based system, (we have experience with both QLab and Macs Cue), then we’ll still need a backup. I’d imagine the backup would be a CD started at the same time as the computer based sound. The other possibility would be either a dual CD player or separate CD players. Anyone know of Dual CD decks where one button can start both players?

Thanks in advance,

Bill Potter
Arts Technical Director
St. Paul's School
Concord NH 03303
603-229-4696
bpotter at sps.edu