I have a clock radio with a tape player built in, an artifact born out of my immense desire to awaken in a more pleasant manner than the average alarm clock sound will afford. I'm really bad at getting up. And I can turn off a BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP alarm without even fully becoming conscious.
Sadly, the tape playing part stopped working around 1992 or so - it sort of sounds like it's stretching your tape in unhealthy ways or something. Plus, we all know the inherent disadvantages in tapes - namely, slightly substandard sound, and you have to turn the darn things over. So I've had to resort to the radio, which presents two problems:
* Morning dj's, with their inane chatter, rude prank calls, and penchant for songs you hate that get stuck in your head for the whole day, are almost as bad as a BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP. At least the BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP is frankly, unapologetically annoying.
* Sometimes the atmosphere shifts overnight in such a way as to tune the station just slightly out. Morning DJ's that sound like the teacher in the Peanuts cartoons are even worse.
SO, wouldn't it be great to just download a mix of MP3's to your clock radio? Only your favorite songs, and no chance of getting a song about thong underwear caught in your brain.
Ideally, you could network the alarm clock to the shower radio too. :)
I'm sure if this isn't baked yet, it won't be long. HURRY, scientists! I need this product to become a reality.-- andreamer, Aug 26 2000 Salacious' link http://usa.shortwav.../eton-ego-4000.htmlplease use the link button. [yamahito, Sep 15 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004] USB MP3 Clock http://www.gizmodo....p3-clock-018416.phpJul 28 2004: Subsequently baked by the Japanese (of course). Appears to only hold 50 seconds of one song, however, not a full playlist. [krelnik, Oct 17 2004] They already have alarm clocks with CD players, which addresses your sound-quality issues. (I have one to wake me up to "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go." Just in case you had the mistaken impression that I had taste.)-- bookworm, Aug 26 2000 Well, the problem with that is that you can't create a mix of particularly good morning songs unless you have a CD burner. Which I do happen to have, but even then, you can't just switch songs around like you can with MP3 files on a flash card... One would go through a lot of CD's. But in principle, you're right, the CD alarm clocks are very similar. I've heard of them but never seen one in a store.
I like that song too. SHHHH! I also like "I'm Walkin' On Sunshine!"-- andreamer, Aug 30 2000 However, you'd want that cd player alarm clock radio to play a RANDOM song every morning. If you're like me, you don't want to set your clock every night to the "Wake up track". You'd rather collapse in bed and wake to a pleasant song. The mix of MP3's would make for a especially pleasant morning. Since it would be different every morning for months to come.
Does anyone know of an alarm clock cd player that wakes to random songs? I don't think that one exists.-- jalsak, Oct 09 2000 I myself am terrible about the BEEP BEEP BEEP alarms i use to have two one that gave a five min snooze the other a seven min. i would still manage to get up an hour or so late because i would getup walk across the room and shut them off and go back to bed this whoud happen over and over till they finally broke through my slumber enfough for me to realize i was already late! as for the cd alarm clock that works better, my stereo actually as a clock/alarm built in so i set a cd for random and just <try> to get up when it goes off. onother thing i do from time to time is just set the computer. on my mac i can set the startup time and just put the mp3 player in the startup folder (as well as my emailer/browser) then at my set time the computer starts up plays my random selections of mp3s and gets my weather and my mail. pretty cool ehh?
the down side of a stereo that acts as an alarm clock is that is has a remote, and i dont hve to cross the room to shut it off :)-- wrenchndmachine, Oct 10 2000 i could also set my computers cd player to shuffel on start up but i tend to just use the mp3 player.-- wrenchndmachine, Oct 10 2000 Hey wrenchndmachine, Could you tell me the brand & model of that stereo that wakes you up to a random song? I'd like to look into that...
How about a half-bakery website that allows you to click on someone's name & email that person automatically, not just shows the same name in a bold heading...
Also - How about a half-bakery website that upon logging in, you see all the contributions that you made so that you can see if people have left you comments....-- jalsak, Aug 09 2001 Baked, saw it last week, in hardware, forget where. (I think in one of the legion of junk email I get.)
If you’re willing to do it in software, here's what I do: I have winamp, and an alarm clock plug-in (nearly wrote one myself before I found that plug-in. May still, as the author wants $10 if I use it another nine days.) The plug-in allows for fading in the volume.
Alarm one is Tristan und Isolde (von Karajan conducting). If that doesn't do it, an hour later we have Pink Floyd, The Wall. No random songs, but you can have it play a playlist, and remember to set winamp to shuffle before going to bed. (Going to bed music: Pete Seeger: Songs of Hope and Struggle.)-- protean, Aug 10 2001 Panasonic now makes a TV/DVD combo that has an alarm clock built into it that allows you to wake to your DVD player. The DVD player also plays MP3 encoded disks. I'm not sure if you can set this to "random" or "shuffle" or not, but it pretty much allows you to wake up to MP3s if that's any help...-- jalsak, May 07 2002 I used to set my pc to switch itself on every morning (it's in the bios), then use windoze task manager and command line parameters on Sonique to wake up with a different album every morning.
Of course, this relies on you having a computer in your room. And speakers which don't hum too loudly; that's the main reason I don't bother anymore...-- yamahito, May 07 2002 //Also - How about a half-bakery website that upon logging in, you see all the contributions that you made so that you can see if people have left you comments....//
At the left side, click "Recent". Then at the top of the screen, click "Edit". Then set up the parameters you want for a self-search and at the bottom change the text field that says "Recent" to "self".
This will add a link to the left side of the screen labeled "Self" which shows only posts which are written by, to, or about you.-- supercat, May 07 2002 Looks like someone finally decided to make one of these. Go to <admin - Link moved to link area>-- Salacious, Sep 15 2002 The greatest Mp3 payer (the iPod) has a built in alarm that can be set to play the playlist you want, shuffle library to pick a song or you choose a specific song. You will need some powered speakers or a current clock radio with an audio in - ipod itself has no speakers but otherwise, a brilliant compact package.-- jbelkin, Jul 17 2003 It's only after I own a device that I discover which features would work best for me. As far as clock radios go, the features I would find most advantageous would be:
1) The ability to play CDs. 2) The ability to play MP3 CDs. 3) A port or line-in for an iPod or some other external device. 4) The ability to shut off the player and have it start the CD where I left off (very handy for books on CD and such).
Some here have had good ideas like having the device be able to play random songs from a given CD or other memory device. How about a few Gigs of memory to store MP3s on the device itself?
The most recent one I got purported to have a "feature" to play an iPod/MP3 player via a line-in, which basically means anything that uses headphones can be played through the clock radio's speakers. Whoopee. I don't think it's right to put the name "MP3" on a CD Clock Radio unless it plays MP3s itself, not with an external device. Thoughts?-- Next Action Hero, Jan 09 2007 random, halfbakery