Well............ What an anti climax that is..........

Got my new Denon HD2500......
Opened the box (Grinning from Ear to Ear)... Tried to explain to housemate what it was and then gave up as she was obviously not interested!!!! lol

got out the instruction manual to read...... Hmmmm i am reserving comment at the mo.
Installed the Music Manager....
Got out the instruction manual to read again..... (now how do I do this)
Ah yes, get the cable that runs from the Denon to the Pc....

, Hang on........... I haven't been given one.............................................!!!!!!

Can't belive i have spent all that money and not been given a simple cable to attch it to my comp....
i know I have two more pieces of equip on route bought at same time and I hope that it is with one of them, but still, you'd have thought it would be in the box.......... Or am I wrong Gary???

Anyway, whilst I am waiting for that, I have tried to read a bit more of the manual......
And now the crux........... What is operating systmem 2 on XP???... and how the beep do i know if I have it??????? This now mean I need a new computer?


Hmmm Starting to wonder if I should have bothered.....

Anyone else with similar probs?

Splosh

Right click on my computer on the desktop, go to properties, this will tell you the OS, should hopefully say XP SP2

you dont want to go down that route,i'll take it off your hands for a fiver
i'm sure gary will answer your question later

Phew ............. I do have service pack 2.....

Well that makes me feel slightly better...........

But still the main part........................ Grrrrrrr

Splosh

I can't remember if mine came with one or not..

But I had already purchased a couple of external hds and used the lead from that so can't say 100%...

You WILL love it though... Great piece of kit....

Ahhhhh, now you see, I tried something similar tonsk.....

I found a cable to suit, but still nothing.... The Denon didn't even register on my PC.... (to be honest I think that lead is duff anyhow)

splosh

Sorry but o you don't get a USB 2 cable with the HD2500, I'm sure they could buy them in bulk for less than 50p each but I guess they didn't bother...

Service pack 2 is a minimum requirement because of microsoft. no service pack 2 and you get no support help from anyone. all to do with genune advantage and making life hard for the people who run pirate versions of windows..

Make sure you use USB 2 ports and cable a usb 1 is so slow it will take you years to copy now 68 into the denon....

welcome to the hd2500 club, you will love it

I take it your talking about a USB lead to connect the unit to the PC... I would not be supprised if it does not come with one... Most early USB printers did not come with one, but most do now... You would think for the money as you say it would have one in the box but this may have been over looked and will be added down the road when they realise the mistake...

You can get one from places like PC world etc....

Nik

Does anyone know if the music manager software will run on Win '98?

I have a host of other questions about the '2500, but I'll bide my time.

NO I WON'T.

Can the internal 40 gig HDD be easily chanced for a much larger one - 160 gig maybe?

When you have connected the cable to both the computer and the HD2500 you then have to go to the source menu (push the button) then select PC it is the choice furthest right. Once selected your PC/laptop will recognise the HD2500 as a drive.

Do use the Music Manager software to set up your MP3 tracks on the drive, rather than just dragging and dropping them onto the drive.


Yes but you will void the warranty if you do.

Splosh...phew another DN-HD2500 owner, probably the fastest growing club on the planet.

Sorry that you were disappointed with the accessories side of things in the box. There's always a danger with a manufacturer trying to guess the best length of lead that everyone will need - and this goes for audio leads, video leads, and as in this case USB leads... supply a lead too short by even a couple of inches and... it wont reach, and people then dont use it. Supply a lead that's too long, and it'll get tangly and dangly and...people wont use it...

However, as a one-off, (he said, covering himself the dozens neh hundreds of current and future members & DN-HD2500 owners who'll be seeking free leads in the future) if you'd care to PM me your address and the ideal length (upto say 5 metres) of USB A to USB B lead which would go between your Home PC and your new baby, I'll post you a USB lead.

Enjoy.


Oh, almost forgot.... The internal hard drive question... YES, the internal hard drive is designed to be user removable in the event of you wishing to, or needing too swap the internal drive for a spare other Denon drive, since hard drives fail and most people are confident enough to swap them over.

This handy functionality however, does mean that if someone were to swap the original Denon hard drive for a drive with a much larger capacity, then...yes...the new drive should work just fine - BUT the warranty is only valid for the one original spec'd Denon drive. Other drives may have greater storage capacity, but they may also have greater heat output, not be as able to run for sustained periods of time, they may be more suceptable to shocks, knocks and things that go bump in the night...

So, yes, you can physically swap the internal drive, but I would recommend adding the drive externally first, at least until the warranty period is complete.

Had a couple of issues with the unit since purchasing on Monday. Firstly was the upgrade (which Gary helped me with-thanks again!) This wasnt clearly described in the manual I have.

Secondly, I purchased a maxtor 400gb hard drive from maplins which wont work with the unit yet. As the HD2500 uses fat32, the maxtor is set up for NTSC(?) or something and it takes quite a bit of knowhow to change the thing round....so much so that it is above my head and has had to go to someone in the know.

We were (Dale & I) going to use WAV files, but have had several key issues so are going to use MP3 burnt at higher rates. No real problems as we own all the originals to do this with, just time consuming. And boring.

I would just comment that although this is by far the best unit in my opinion, it certainly isnt (or hasn't been in our experience) a simply open the box and away you go type product.

Can't wait to get it going though.....

Sorry to go slightly off topic, just an idea - Gary, Splosh, are you both going to the SEDA Show Night on 20th May?

Kingy, I had the same trouble with the Maxtor drive from Maplins...

Why are you not going to use Wave files? I've gone down the wave route, taking bl:cense:dy ages, but hopefully will be worth it once done...

If you want to buy another external drive, go for the Western Digital from Amazon. 500gig for £98 delivered, already formatted to FAT32...

Windows 98 does not exsist any more... you cant have 98 on a computer as the product and all support were discontinued...

the licence has been revoked (you only buy a licence to use the software you dont own windows) and you realy need to think about a new OS and possibly a new computer to run it on...



Anyone wishing to have there hard drives converted to FAT32 you are welcome to come down to my office and we can convert it for you...

Are you sure about that? The Numark will operate with FAT32 or NTFS, although FAT32 is recommended. I thought the Denon did the same.

Quote marc:
"Windows 98 does not exsist any more... you cant have 98 on a computer as the product and all support were discontinued..."

Online support may have been discontinued, but the updates were recently made available on CD, so not a problem. '98 is alive and kicking as over 15% of worldwide users are still using it, as far as I'm aware - that's a lot of people. There are still a few using '95!

There's NO WAY that I'm going to buy an operating system like XP or Vista, and a new computer to run it on, just to be able to use an HD2500. If Denon haven't made their software Win 9X compatible, then I'm going to have to reconsider whether or not I buy one.

Seems silly to alienate a sizable proportion of potential users, simply because no-one can be bothered to modify a driver to suit.

For formating a drive to FAT or FAT32 format, you can use a formatting program called Buffalo...something I'll post a link to it later, it's free.

Edit: Here's the link - http://www.buffalotech.com/support/getfile...tion_Format.zip

The Numark d2 will read NTFS but apparently won't write to an NTFS drive - writing being for playlists and memopoints (hang on...does it do memopoints)?

Windows version. I've spoken to a DN-HD2500 customer recently who as formerly djing with win98 and is now using Denon Music Manager software - whether he's just the one pc or not, I don't know though.

Its worth remembering that you don't need to run music manager to lad up the DN-HD2500, or an external hard drive with tunes for the 2500. The DN-HD2500 will show up on most pcs as an external mass storage device or external drive.

Gary - that formatting utility seems to be a useful tool, as the old MS-DOS FORMAT has a maximum partition size of somewhere about 70Gb - I forget exactly. I've tried 'reverse engineering' the link to try to find out something about the tool, but didn't succeed - do you know anything about it, such as maximum size of drive it can format?

HD2500 question:
Will the controller handle partitioned drives, or must they be of just the one partition?

Bleeding Puters at work....... They are never working !!!!!

Well, there is obviously much more to be sad and debated about the new Denon product......

I am not going to get too down about it as I know it will be a cracking addition to my gear once I have it going full speed........

Yes Brian, I should be at the SEDA Meeting.. I try to make them all as you should know!!!!!!!
Just don't get me doing a members show yet.... We are in the process of rebuilding now that we have new items of "class" !!!!!!!

People are making good points about the external drives tho, which ones are compatible etc....
Anyone care to reccommed an external drive to use with the 2500? I am off to PC World after work anyhow!!!!!!!!

Gary, you have been so helpful to me already this year, both at Seda Meetings and online that I dont' want to trouble you for accessories... Many thanks for your offer, but I wll cough up the cash and grab one from PC world or somewhere later tonight... Your offer does you credit tho sir..... Long Live the Job!!!!!!

Only one partition - the first one is all it will see as it doesn't realise that one drive can actually be two - not really a problem though

Nah, Kingy just made it up as he had nothing better to say



Well, you know what thought did!


Just to reiterate, the Denon HD2500 will only work with a drive formatted to FAT32!

...and also FAT format as well.

In which case it will also be compatible with 98/95 as FAT is 16 bit architecture!!!

Quote Tony:
Re drive partitions: "the first one is all it will see as it doesn't realise that one drive can actually be two"

Thanks for that - it's just down to how I would format the drive, that's all. I could use FORMAT if I didvided the drive into multiple partitions each of no more than approx 70Gb, but as the 2500 wouldn't (yet) recognise the additional partitions, that's no good. I'll need to mess with Gary's tool...

Regarding the Win9X comatibility issue, it's more a problem with '98 recognising the 2500 as another drive when you plug it in; I would assume XP does this automatically as it is shipped with far more native USB drivers, but '98 would require a driver to be installed (I would suspect). Does such a driver exist?

my new numark......plug and play no probs!!