One more cool trick the Beosound 9000 CD mechanism had up its sleeve is that after spinning your discs, it would always leave them in the exact orientation you placed them in - so if you had CDs worth looking at, they would always remain the right way up.
until the rotation sensor failed and it couldn't tell which way round it was ;) But it (at least on the later versions) would also read the discs faster than it played them - effectively the same concept as shock protection - so the music would keep playing while it changed discs. That machine really is a display piece more than anything, since many of them have reliability issues because it uses optical sensors for aligning the player and the discs, which makes it sensitive to dust. One of my friends in school (or rather his parents) had one and it ended up only being able to play discs in the one slot after a couple years because it couldn't find the other slots anymore. The Beosound 2500 had similar issues with its sliding doors where the drive belt would snap, or it'd just stop being able to tell if the doors were open or closed.
@@dcpayne5264 Forget B&O if your that cheap ! cheap dreams ? Absolut formats .... Record ? LP ? Ortofox element is enough, any direct drive player, $100 max ???
If I were rich, I would buy a TON of these and display my favourite albums one large wall. Then, whenever I want to listen to a specific album, I'd just press the play button.
Or a collectable - Often times Kpop singles/albums will come out in multiple versions just like variant covers for comics, and as far as I know fans must like collecting them
In the 1940s, we had 78rpm records, which were utterly obsolete by the 1980s and only found in museums. Whereas you can still buy new CD players and CDs.
Oh wow, the second one really looks nice. It is also smart that it doesn't even try to mount the speaker by itself and let say if connected to ceiling speakers, it might even be neater. A few of those mounted on walls, color matched, and you are set to have a museum look.
Thank you, Techmoan, for using our album Second Sight on the compact disc format to demonstrate the features of the wall-hanging CD 💿 players in your latest video. The km5 CP1 is a beautiful-looking device! Thanks for shining a light on it! 🍬🍎🟦
Thank YOU, for providing excellent music, and letting that music be freely available for tech RU-vidrs to use in demonstrations, without fear of DMCA or Content ID/Monetization issues! 👏
Mat, though I have no interest in buying this product, I’m still grateful that you made a video about it. You make Saturday nights (I’m on the other side of the world) better. Especially cold winter nights like this one.
Big thumbs up for the Pete Rock and C. L. Smooth and also for Eric B. and Rakim CDs!👍 Anyhow, an even better solution would be an option to attach the whole jewelcase, without a need to take out the the CD booklet. ( I wrote this before seeing the end of the video. 😊)
How many times do I have a thought and then read the comments to see other people had the same thought. Given that at least three of us had the idea to put the jewel case in there, what’s going on in those product design meetings? How do they miss this stuff?
@@nickwallette6201 Well, that would probably need a bit brighter cover door and more an more material cost. I don't think that all those people are that stupid not recognizing the better solution, but they chose a cheaper one, unfortunately. The competition and the price war on the cheap "Chinese" market is too strong.
8:35 - "Because of it's origins it does have an effective shock protection buffer" I didn't get that at first, but then I was like "Oh, right, earthquakes!"
An even better idea would be to replace the front window with an E-Ink Display that automatically downloads and displays the album art of the disk you put in. That way you would not have to take out and replace the booklet every time you change CDs.
That's an excellent idea. Heck, at that point it could just be an e-ink display that scrapes whatever is playing on your phone or computer now and gets the art
The second one looks very fancy with its clean minimalist design. Looks almost like a picture frame especially with the album artwork. But hey, if they reduce the Amazon one, at that price you can hardly complain!
For those wanting to buy from an English interface, Yanko Design has it listed on their shops as well. It's sold as a frame CD player and there's an option for one with a built-in speaker.
"Most CDs are not decorative" might be true for your collection but definitely not all. Almost every CD i have has at least the album cover or original artwork on it, which is why i was originally fascinated when I heard about these, I've never understood why there weren't more players that show off the disc inside rather than just hiding it away.
If you're going to put the booklet into the window I feel like at that point it's more of a permanent fixture rather than something that needs an internal battery. If it wasn't held together with clips I imagine one could easily mod it to take out the battery (for long term safety) and replace it with an appropriate power converter so it can be wired directly into a wall hole as if it was a light fixture.
you just have to use the right tools and be careful when you take it apart and put it back together. I do it all the time with laptops and it's really not a big deal. Of couse if the plastic is really poor quality it will break no matter how careful you are, but in that case the whole thing is usually also not worth keeping
@@daw1kurp Or you could put it on a recessed wall box with a USB outlet and that flex cable. Qi works too, but the USB route would probably be cheaper, and you're already putting stuff in the walls.
That gave me an idea: it would be cool to have a square LCD screen hanging on your wall, that automatically shows the album art of whatever album you're playing. But square LCD screens appear to be in short supply.
Well what you could do is since the device itself is a rectangle, and the view window is a square. Is use the bezels of the view window to block off the unwanted parts of the display and have your image only show in the windowed part. I think that technique has been used before for round displays, before they became common.
@@adlz518 You could also just use the whole display, and have the part that isn't used for the album art display other information, play time, CD text or other metadata, make it a touch screen and have playback controls there, but at that point you may as well just mount a tablet to your wall
David Niven. The idea of having your favourite albums displayed on your wall, that you can play at a touch, is fantastic! Thankfully there's a bunch of ways we could achieve this now! Thank you for the inspiration 🙏
I like it; It's easy to forget album running orders are often considered, so you get an extra creative kick out of sitting down and listening to the whole thing, plus it showcases the cover art, adding more creative back for your buck!
I could imagine the second one being useful for people still wanting a CD player in a modern car. As those often come without AUX-in, the BT feature would be perfect.
Me too! I've thought about buying a walkman to modify and put on the wall but this is actually quite a nice device and will probably look quite a bit better.
As a person who still collects physical music cds, or at the very least gets CDs as presents during Christmas or birthdays... this was a neat video. Plus that new Japanese wall mounted cd player does solve one problem when it comes to playing a cd in the Muji one... the Disc isn't exposed.
This is a nice idea, despite CDs being basically dead for the mainstream market. It would have been great if they could have made some sort of swappable cartridge system which keeps the CD and cover in and just slots in, but that would have made it way more expensive. Future idea for any companies listening: a FLAC playing picture frame with an e-paper display for album art.
The design is super clean, but not sterile. The device includes legacy features (as it is a CD player afterall), as well as some great modern additions. Really neat product.
I have to say, I absolutely love the passive aggressive pre-emptive responses you sometimes pop into a video. It can be insanely grating seeing the same inane comments, those random barbs always catch me off guard and give me a cathartic chuckle. Great video as always.
I really like the one displaying the album art! I do agree with you it should be able to take the whole case for convenience. On the topic of discs, it might be interesting to do a video on UMD, Sony's proprietary format for their PSP. It was supposed to be a universal media disc, so that means it played movies as well. You could connect the PSP up to a TV as well, if I recall correctly.
Now for the next evolution of such devices: One that can understand the contents of the CD somehow (the difficult part, I'm sure), and then displays album covers found on places like Discogs or MusicBrainz. Data CDs can just have MP3s with embedded album art, or folders with a cover.jpg or something, but sadly the Red Book didn't really allow for much in the way of metadata from my knowledge.
CD-G for graphics. It was what the Philips CD-i used. There were some titles in the early 90s which used it, though they weren't marked and are very rare.
Lmao. There's much simpler solutions around used decades ago even in Windows media player older than windows xp: an album can be identified by the number of tracks and their individual lengths and positions on the cd.
How bout this... forget the CD player, just make a 12"x12" digital picture frame with a built in Shazam app. You hang it on the wall, and whenever music starts playing, it does its thing and displays the album art. And when music's not playing, it could just be a digital picture frame--cycling through your own pics, or all the album covers you've previously listened to.
Thank you for this video! I've been having a hard time picking a CD player for my work area that would display some of the discs I listen to, and your past videos + my own shopping around painted a pretty bleak image for finding a new CD player that can go on my wall. I had looked at the Amazon wall mounted CD players featured in the first half of this, but always found them a bit to "melted bar of soap" aesthetic. The km5 player is sharp and crisp looking, and the ability to slot in the album art is a win. Perfect!
Something like this with a transparent display built into the front glass to digitally display the album art or a visualizer/video while still vaguely seeing the disc spinning behind would be neat. Maybe a multi-CD one for bigger display area and spiffy CD-changer action. Too expensive for me to buy and not something I would even if I could afford it.. but neat!
A better idea would be a digital picture frame with a built in Shazam app. Forget the CD player, that's not the selling point. Make it 12x12 like vinyl record sleeves. People mount those on the wall anyway. It'd be pretty cool to have a "now playing" one that updates itself.
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This reminded me of that weird CD player which looks like it's embedded into a "door frame" you can see during the intro sequence of Melanie C.'s Never Be The Same Again clip. I always wondered if that's an existing device you can buy or just a functional prop.
If I'm not mistaken the "door frame" is the actual system, but I can't identify it. We did however have over a thousand brands of audio players in the 90s because very semi-capable electronics company made them, so it's very likely a real system, just not one that's well known
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@@thesteelrodent1796 the clip is not very sharp and it's hard to figure out what exactly you are seeing. I've always thought it was meant to be part of the future-minimalist furniture of the house and the CD player is literally part of the house or something. But it's probably some kind of standalone system with the Icelandic LCD text (according to Wiki) added in VFX.
I have to admit that one of my "secret pleasures" in watching your videos is the seemingly innocuous way you forestall the naysayers and the overly critical with your nuanced "if ya don't like it, don't buy it"......................particularly well founded since you are so complete with the pros and cons of each subject. I would hesitate to get into a verbal sparring match with you - and I'm GOOD at it!
Candy Apple Blue. I've been getting into Synthpop/Vaporwave/Synthwave or whatever the overarching genre is called that is new music made to sound like it's from the 80s. I have a Spotify Playlist with like 47 tracks called "Neon Liberty" It's nice to play when I'm driving or having it in the background while I read a sci-fi novel [working on Adrian Tchaikovsky's two trilogies right now] I think the CD wall mount is a fine idea. A little too small of a device to me for something to be put on my wall. Personally, I'd go with something that's $300+ even so long as it is something that's 30.5cm squared or more, an LCD screen that displays album art, too [or a visualizer]. I wouldn't expect it to deliver much sound but having a bluetooth option is welcome.
I'm also disappointed that it didn't just let you slot in the whole jewel case. Though, to be fair, double cases and half-thickness cases exist and might have made it a bit tricky to be truly universal.
This is an interesting device. I imagine it would be even cooler if it had an multi colour epaper display and an internal album art database so it would display the album cover sheet recognising the disc.
That second one is pretty neat. Only 2 things I'd want changed about it: 1/ As you said, slide the whole CD case in there instead of having to constantly remove/replace just the insert, and 2/ A door on the back with a replaceable battery. At only 7 hours playback time, it'll see a lot of charge/discharge cycles and wear out in a few years (if you primarily prefer CDs to MP3 players or streaming, that is), and then you'll have a USB-C charger constantly dangling from it and ruining the aesthetic.
I was even thinking a door with 2 hot swappable batteries, so that while one is charging the other one is used, and it could switch seamlessly during playback, with a color led on each to show when to charge it. Oh well, I'm not an electronics designer, so I guess I won't be making one of these. Would be cool though. I play my CD collection on the regular.
The fact that you have to pull on the cord to start the first device seems like a major flaw. Sooner or later that'll break or otherwise become unusable.
Thanks for the video. Coincidentally, I was in the market for a portable CD player. The old CD-ROM with Audio CD controls which I've used previously broke down completely due to age. I wanted something modern and at least half-decent. The km5 cp1 looked like a good replacement so I bought one from Amazon Japan. Here's a short'ish technical review: The cp1 can read Audio CDs, mixed-mode CDs (eg. old game CDs with CDDA audio) and MP3 CDs. But since the track number display is only 2 digits, MP3 CDs with over 99 files will still play all files but not display the track number past 99. Audio output is either via Bluetooth (SBC and AAC only, no aptX) or the 3.5mm headphone jack. Bluetooth output does have an annoying nuisance in that it has to be re-activated every time you turn the device on. It won't turn on automatically. The device relies heavily on buffering regardless of the type of media - it pre-loads audio data into the buffer in advance and spins down the CD when the buffer is full even when playing regular audio CDs. Anti-skip is implemented by re-trying the read operation multiple times (this can cause dropouts and delays in the audio). This is more like how a computer CD-ROM drive works, than a CD player. Most audio CD players will simply skip past the damaged areas. Anti-skip feature has a glitch when playing MP3s - it sometimes causes crackling noise to be injected into the output. To resolve this, you need restart playback of the currently playing file. When using Bluetooth wireless headset, remote play/pause/skip controls on the headset do work with this player. As for the aesthetics, the device does look nicelty designed, with a lot of emphasis on the photo frame aesthetic. The build quality is decent but looks somewhat cheap for the price.
Unless it only played 45s, but that negates the point as most collectable records these days are LPs. And it'd still be thick to accommodate the needle
That's pretty neat! I like it as an item in a bookcase of CDs, but I'm glad the wall mount is offered. That carrying case looks good too, but I feel that exists so you can surprise someone with playing a CD in a big case! I can sort of see the appeal for the original one, but it almost feels like an idea of "The Future" from the 80's.
Interesting as always... just waiting for an obscenely priced player with an LCD door that automatically recognises the content and displays the album art. Might be the first time i'd buy a Bang & Olufsen product 😉
@@thesteelrodent1796 Shame, but I think if they (or someone) made perhaps a slimline LP sized wall mounted player that displayed the album art it would look pretty neat. A gimmick I know, but possibly asthetically pleasing if done with some thought.
The second one is very interesting, I'm seriously thinking of where I could put one of those to use, but regardless of wherever that might be I'm sure I would probably tire of swapping over the cover art with every CD change, but an arty photograph or something similar would be ideal. Either way, it's given me some ideas about displaying art with a soundtrack.
I kinda like this in concept but what it makes me want to do is mount the art of my favourite albums on the wall together with a QR code, and then use an app to scan whatever code and immediately start playing that album from my library.
I think it's fairly easy to get the first device a little bit more appealing by replacing the USB cable with a pretty one of your choice. Like those braided versions and whatnot. Make it a short one (50 cm or less) and use a small powerbank at the end of it that also doubles as a weight and mimic a more proper pull cord that is essentially the power source.
I think it would be technically cheaper to put a semi transparent oled cover that displays the album art on it :D I noticed there is also a DVD version of the Amazon one, had it been BluRay, I might have bought it :D
Actually, another way to get a the cover art to look like it's fixed on a spinning disc is to use a slightly darkened window and then flash a strobe led at the disc at the same frequency as the disc spins at so every time the disc is lit up it is in the same position and you can just let persistence of vision do the rest.
Yeah man. Like the idea of the 2nd one. BeiBeing able to display your cover art. Nice tunes used. Got Kool g rap on vinyl. And got Pete rock and Cl smooths album on CD and vinyl. ✌🔥
Techmoan is a dyed in the wool B-Boy. He never misses and opportunity to show off his collection from the Golden Age of hip hop. Can't say I blame him.
It reminds me the vertical multi cd players that stores used to have so that you could try the new CD releases with all the discs behind glass lids. Now when I got reminded they existed I kinda want to get one hahaha
I have no idea where you find these things Matt but I think the Japanese player is a really good idea. The front plate where you "load" the cd booklet doesn't look well designed and looks like it could easily break. However great idea. Personally going back more and more to cds...
I just saw someone peeling the plastic off a big TV, but it wasn't in slow motion and there wasn't any 70's porn music...I felt cheated, but laughed. Thanks for adding to my amusement.
the new one is actually pretty cool and I would definitely use it, currently I have to play my CDs through my DVD hooked up to a CRT in my room, it would be so much more convenient to just send the audio off to my BT speaker!!
On the show Nip Tuck, they had a cool vertical CD player in the operating room. It looked really cool for the time, I don't know if anybody has ever mentioned it.
This could also benefit from voice commands from Alexa, Siri or just "Hey Google". Also with as some mentioned a small flat "video display" (giving credit to where it is due) that could show downloaded CD art, scanned art, or just one of those video color which reacts to music. Now a really retro version would be a cassette (begin laughing) player. Same video with a cassette mechanism, Bluetooth, and the classic rew/ff/play buttons. Wow, this could be the start of a great little wall mounted entertainment system.
Not something I'd personally want, but I can appreciate how cool it is and why someone would want one. There's plenty of album art that's worth displaying, and being able to do so whilst also playing the disc back is a nice talking point.
I get the impression that this is for the sort of person who enjoys the ritual of listening to music. It's not about putting on a playlist of some tunes that you're quite fond of. It's going through your shelves, finding that one album you just want to listen to all the way through for the 385th time, carefully removing the disc and loading it into the player. While the first track begins, you peruse the liner notes, even though you know them off by heart. Then finally, you slot the booklet into the display door, sit down, and just listen to the album. All the way through.
Long Live Physical Media! Even if you rip 'em all to your phone or NAS, it's always great to have the original CD with all the art and uncompressed audio, so the worst that can happen in an electronic disaster is you have to rip them all again!
That would also be cool as an MP3 player with a digital display for the album cover. You get a different piece of cover art depending on what your listening to. I'm surprised they haven't done this yet
This is one of those things that's aesthetically cool. But by the time you worry about charging it, pairing it with bluetooth, and clipping the album booklets in and out of the front cover as you change CDs, it all feels like it's way more of a hassle than I would reasonably want to go through when I just want to pop on a CD.
I really like the idea of holding a CD cover in a picture frame. Finally, a reason to use physical media. (Tidal has replaced my library and has done for some time).
there's more reasons than that to use physical media. when it comes to movies, when the constantly offended decided that your movie now needs to be censored it may just disappear from streaming.
@@whitetiana3022 I understand the arguments for physical media (I'm talking music, here) but, for me, having the entire word's music for a small fee every month, overwhelms the debate. If it does get to the point where my favourite artists are censored, then we have bigger issues than CD ownership. I pay extra to Tidal to ensure artists get a reasonable return, and I'm happy with the quality of the streaming.
@@whitetiana3022 even with physical media it can be difficult to find uncensored versions of old movies unless you get hold of an original release. Convoy is one I can think of right now that's a prime example, where most the DVDs you can get now is the American censored version (even though its only "crime" is partial nudity in a couple scenes), and they dont't bother to mention that on the DVDs, so you have no idea which version you're getting
9:40 Also, videogames shipped on CD-ROM which had playable CD audio tracks. Those manuals are considerably thicker than album covers. That said… Xpander by Sasha, from the videogame Wip3out, is always my goto test for CD Players.
If the first model were to be low enough again I'd like to get four of them to run a copy of The Flaming Lips Zaireeka. It would be a fun novelty for a room.
As the majority of consumers have moved away from physical media, I've always wanted something like an LP sized colour E-ink display that could cycle through either what's playing or some of my favourite albums. I have a frame for displaying some of the LPs I do own, but it's such a faff that I rarely do it, and obviously it massively inconveniences you if you do want to play it.
@@Allan_aka_RocKITEman faff = too much effort for very little (if any) reward, doing something basic that is overly/unnecessarily complicated to achieve.
there is one solution: scan all your album covers and use a digital photo frame to display them. Might require some retouching, but it gets around the inconvenience
For me the Japanese one is sooo close. It would have been perfect if you could just slot the whole CD jewel case into the front recess, but I guess it wouldn't have looked as clean, and there would be issues around non-standard CD cases.
That was my first thought! My second thought was that the front of a lot of my jewel cases are scuffed -- I am a bad owner, and thank goodness they protect the booklet art! Still, although it would make it thicker, I wouldn't mind being able to slip the case behind the player. That would solve the problem that when I can find the case of the disk currently in the machine, it's holding the disk that was in previously!
I agree, a design that would allow you to slide the CD sleeve in the front or though the side would make more sense although more complicated than the current design. The fiddly holder makes the whole thing look sleeker but less convenient.
Now we need this for vinyl records, it would be pretty cool to put a sleeve inside a display case, and have it like art. That’s what a lot of people do anyway, just hang the art don’t play the disc.
When I was a teenager, I made a picture frame that would take vinyl album covers via a slot in the side, so I could mount the sleeve on the wall while the album was playing. In reality though, I tended to just use it to put some decent album art on the wall rather than the album that was playing.
Your thoughts on just sliding the CD case entirely was what came to my mind right away as well. Would be FAR easier and make a lot more sense, not only it provides the same effect, but stores the case of the disc being played. Still a quite nice idea, I really like the whole concept of seeing the discs being played, always did.
Thanks for plating that song. I haven't heard it in decades and the last time I did, I didn't get the name off the radio. They reminisce over you, thank you.
