Later this year I am looking to upgrade from My Numark CDN88 disc players to the Denon HD2500 but I am stuck in how to arrange music on a hard drive I have brought to make the move smoother.

as I am starting to transfer my music now to a 400 gb Hard Drive

But some of my CD's I have made into a comp CD as in I have many CD Singles that I have brought over the years & put them onto one Disc to save space in my disc cases so would it be best to transfer the files over & add the track details i.e. name each song title, Artist E.C.T or add them to an Itunes library & then rename the files that the Itunes database cannot find.

If i do this will via itunes will the HD players recognise them or if it best just to add files to HD & Name them in file properties any help advise apprisated

Also just another quick thing I use some software called mixed in key which gives you the key to a track I.E E7 is there a place you can store this information in the denon HD for each track so that I can search for all tracks that have the same key

Another question I use Mixed in key to get the key information for tracks i.e C7 is there a way to input this info against each track in the denon HD2500 to perform a search i.e all tracks that are in the key of C7

The good news is that you dont need to worry about folders. The Denon DN-HD2500 does have a good folder search system, but it's got a far better, "less waste" method.



When you've got all your tunes tagged (ID3 tags for Artist Name, Song Title, Year, Genre, Track number, album name etc) on your external hard drive, simply choose the "Create Full Database" option. This is create (surprise surprise) a full database of all your tracks on your harddrive. Its thanks to this database that the Denon DN-HD2500 is able to perform absolutely "instant" search results on both 1-step and 2-step searches (1-step is where you ask for all results that match one criteria eg: All songs by Elvis..... whereas 2-step search is where you ask to see only the tracks which meet BOTH of two criteria eg: Songs by Elvis, but only those who's BPM is around 140 BPM, or....all the tracks of a "Trance" genre, but only from 1994.



The creation of the database only has to be done once, but can take around 10 minutes to complete...so dont start it off 2 minutes before the show starts...



There's no provision for Key information in the searchable tags, however, you could add them to the end of the song titles, in brackets perhaps, then use the Denons String Search feature to look for titles with (E7) or (C7) etc, in them.... using 2-step search to give you the search ability to search for "House" tracks with (E7) in the title... etc.



A couple of quick notes on the hard drive that you're using, before you start transfering.



1) Make sure that it has its own external power supply that plugs straight into the wall - don't use a drive which tries to power itself from a USB Port. A USB port only gives out 500milliamps and the bigger capacity drives need 600-750milliamps to perform satisfactorily.



2) The drive must be formated to FAT32 format. If the drive is bought formatted to NTFS, you can use the FORMAT option in the Utility Menu on the front panel of the DN-HD2500 to format the drive to FAT32 - best do this first, before any data transfer takes place, as of course, formating a drive deletes all the data.



Enjoy.

How does the Denon handle (say) 5,000 untagged tracks placed on the root of the drive?
Is this a possibility with this machine, and if so, how difficult would it be to search through them?

Although I'll not be going 'digital' in the forseeable future, I still retain an interest in this bit of kit.

How does the Denon handle them? Very well of course ! Apart from Sophie Ellis-Bexter...



If you throw a file, or indeed upto 50,000 files (per drive...and it'll handle 4 + the internal)...with no tags, you can choose the option to "Create Temporary Database" - This takes a few minutes when you create it, and it looks at the filename of each track and works out the artist name and songtitle from that, using the hyphen "-" as the break between artist name and song title.



You can then search your music files by Artist, or song title.



So... a file called "The Wurzels-Ive got a brand new combine harvester" would be searchable by artist or song title.



The only problem that I've had with this is when the artist name is hyphenated in the filename - in which case you'd have an Artist called "Sophie Ellis" singing that well-known ditty "Bexter-murder on the dancefloor". not too bad, I surpose, and easily fixed by changing the hyphen in the artist name to an asterix or something similar...in fact anything other than a hyphen - and theres not too many hyphenated names around.

why FAT 32?

NTFS may be faster...
- smaller RAM footprint as avoids large FAT held in RAM
- indexed design more efficient for many files per directory
- small file data embedded in dir level, avoids seek to data chain
- above factors make fragmentation less onerous than for FATxx
- 4k cluster size matches processor's natural paging size
...or slower...
- extra overhead of security checks, compression, encryption
- small clusters may fragment data cluster chains

NTFS may be safer...
- transaction rollback cleanly undoes interrupted operations
- file-level permissions can protect data against malware etc.
- automatically "fixes" failing clusters on the fly (controversial)
...or more at risk...
- no interactive file system checker (a la Scandisk) for NTFS
- no maintenance OS for NTFS
- malware can drill right through NTFS protection, e.g. Witty
- transaction rollback does not preserve user data
- transaction rollback does not help other causes of corruption
- more limited range of maintenance tools
- automatically "fixes" failing clusters on the fly (controversial)

NTFS may be more space-efficient...
- smaller cluster size than FAT32 above 8G
- may include data of small files within the directory level
- NTFS's bitmap structure is smaller than FAT32's dual FAT
- sparse files and compression can reduce data space usage
...or less so...
- NTFS has large MFT structure
- larger per-file directory metadata space

I would use NTFS where:

* Users have professional-grade IT admin, including backup
* Applications require files over 4G in size
* Hard drive exceeds the 137G barrier

Because HDC's don't read NTFS formatted drives

Exactly. FAT32 is fine. Does what it needs to do for audio files, and is more cost effective for the end user too. The "permissions" for FAT32 to write information to a storage device (eg: A disc drive) are effectively public domain (free of charge to incorporate on a product).



The DN-HD2500 needs to be able to write to disc drives for when users wish to store their Memo Points about their tracks - eg: Cue Point, Hot Start Points, Seamless Loop points and so on, so that these points can all be recalled/loaded back from the drive, with the track next time you load the track (optional). The DN-HD2500, and the DN-S5500 will handle up to four external drives of upto 1TB (1000 gb) each in FAT32 format, with upto 50,000 tracks and 1000 playlists per drive.

Gary, isn't there a limit of 1000 tracks per folder, therefore actually you would have to break the root folder into 5 or more folders ?

The reality is that you will tag your mp3's properly as it makes it so much easier in the long run. Not just for the HD2500, but for ipods etc. I always make sure I have 3 tags filled in properly. Artist, Title and Genre. That way I can find anything quickly.

My reference to the tagging was simply the vast amount of work editing those tags. I could initiate the conversion of a million tracks to mp3 (OK, maybe not) with two clicks, but editing the tags? No...

In any case, I would probably use wav format. Taggable, but not using the software at my disposal.

FAT32 and the large cluster size is far more efficient at the larger file sizes seen in music data...

There aren't any "number of files per folder" limits for Temporary Database, although well done to you for remembering about the 1000 per individual folder quantity when loading into/via Music Manager.



The only limit as such, when creating a temporary database would be the massive 50,000 files max, per drive.

Hi Gary,

I don't remember hearing that 1TB was the limit on external disc size. Are you sure of this?

As I'm ripping waves, I was planning on using a single 1.5 or 2TB drive so that I don't have to remember which track are on which drive, or have to search each drive separately.

I think (don't quote me though) the max available physical disc size at the moment is 1TB for 3.5inch discs, and some external units offering more than 1TB are actually dual-disc external units in RAID0 configuration (cheaper to manufacture too). Thing is though it doubles the chance of something going wrong.

I'd personally stick to 1TB external disc units...

Does the Denon cope with FLAC file formats? That's one worthwhile alternative to WAV...

David

ok just seen everyones advise back to the drawing board as i the harddrive was in NTFS rather then Fat32 so i need to change that another question I have copied ITunes to the external hard drive & open this to copy tracks to but it seems to be saving tracks to the laptop not the hard drive as when I plug hard drive into another computer it does not display the tracks???? ahhhhh I have tried plugging the harddrive into my pc & another laptop any help ideas?

Well I'm using a 1TB at the moment, but it's now full, so I am waiting for larger single drives to come out.

Is 1TB a technical format limit? ie will larger than 1TB single drives have to use a new format?

Every couple of years I've seen drive capacities double, so I'm hoping that it's only a matter of time before we see single 1.5TB or larger drives.

No. I would have prefered to use FLAC as I had spent a couple of years ripping to it in preperation. But Denon doesn't support FLAC - only mp3 and WAV. So I had to uncompress my FAC collection to WAV.

Help cannot format my drive which is NTFS to FAT32
FAT32 is an old format why does Denon not allow NTFS as this is the format Windows is trying to get everyone to switch over to?? The drop down only has an option for NTFS tried to change this via computer management & command prompt no sucess

I'm certainly not a computer expert, but here's what I believe is the case:

NTFS is a Microsoft format. Any manufaturer also has to pay Microsoft if they want to use it.

FAT32 is a universal format reconised by both Windows and Apple Mac's and virtually every other product that uses a hard drive.

The reason will be that there is lots of code for handling FAT, and so Device manufactures don't have to do much work to use this system.
I can take my removable HDD and plug it into my Linux system and read/write files. Even my new Windows Smartphone is using FAT, and so I can transfer files from most computers.


NTFS in much more modern than FAT32, and has more advantages for Windows (better security being one), however, its a proprietary format (no pun..), with any public domain code to read/write, being through reverse engineering - excelent work, but not something you'd want to base a commercial bit of hardware on.

This isn't a Denon problem - if you where using Linux/Mac and these HDC would only work on NTFS, you'd be really stuck!
FAT32 is fine. Moving to NTFS would severely restrict use to Windows only users, and raise the cost of any products.

Does the Denon HD controllers have a Format option, or does it have to be done outside the box? (ie from a PC)

Jason

Re: Can't format as FAT32

You might have to delete partition first and then re-create it again in order to format it. FAT32 supports drives up to 2TB (source: MS).


Other option is to get the Denon to format the disc for you..

David

Yes, the Denon players will format a hard drive to FAT32.

It's 1TB limit thus far. I've not heard of any test, successful or not, with anyone using a larger drive, however, I would suspect that if you hooked up a 2TB drive, the DN-HD2500 would "see" the first 1TB and not the remainder. To echo another members comment above, the odd one or two 2 TB drives which I've seen so far, have been 2 x 1TB drives, or 2 x 750GB drives in single external enclosure using some sort of proprietry disk array system or a bog-standard RAID interface inside. I've not known of any of these array devices used for DJing so far.



One thing which may be of interest to you Robbie, about you having to remember which tracks are on which drive etc. The new Hotlist feature, on V1300 firmware and above allows to to add tracks from any of your drives individual searches as normal. You do not need to swap source drives manually during playback from the Hotlist. So, your hotlist could comprise of tracks from the internal HDD, External drive 4, 3, 2 and 1 and you could play all/any of them without having to swap Source.

So is it only that Denon haven't tested a larger than 1TB drive, or is the DN-HS5500 designed to only go up to 1TB?

Thanks, I didn't realise that the Hotlist worked across all drives (as I am currently only playing at home with a single 1TB drive). I only tried using the Hotlist for the first time a few days ago, but can't seem to get it to work properly (I've posted on the Denon forum).

Ymm I saw.your query there, and you've got a reply/suggestion there too. re: d-sync

Thanks Gary, I've just had a look over there:

I'd decribe it more as a question. But I won't be able to try non D-sync answer until next weekend as I'm currently sat in a travel lodge.