Whilst its common nowadays for some things to perform barely how they were described in the sales blurb, now and again, you buy something and find that theres features included, which no-one bothered mentioning in the adverts, on the box, or even in the salesroom/disco shop.

So heres a couple of "bonus" features from my gear.


NJD 8000 lighting controller. This is a 4 channel analogue lighting controller with 4 faders to control the lighting levels eg: You can dim each channel, so that Yellows dont seem brighter than reds etc. However....heres the bonus....turn the speed control all the way down, and flick the controller to standby....then whack all the faders up to maximum.... over the next 30 seconds all the channels will g r a d u a l l y fade up to maximum....great feature...I can trigger this 15 seconds before the end of the last track and bathe the room in full illumination gradually...


Denon DN-D9000 dual CD-Deck (and DN-S5000). Nowhere pre-sale does it tell you that the unit with remember 6 disc's worth of Playlists. So, you can pick'n'choose your favourite tracks, in a good order. and STORE them....so, next time you insert that disc and hit PROGRAM, it'll ask you if you want the same playlist that you stored last time (be that a day, a week, or months earlier)...great for background music (just play the ballards, and medium tempo, non-dance tracks from the latest compilation album...etc), great for Christmas background music too, get rid of Track 16, cause no-one likes Kate Bush: December will be magic again, or Gaudette...and you dont want that Slade track to play just yet either...


But, what little known bonus features are there on your gear?

Ah but can you find a track in under 4 seconds, or a track that is 115BPM, or a track that is over 145BPM, or under 99BPM, all within seconds, or even a Number one from the 1980s that has a BPM of between 80 and 120 ?. This is where a laptop software comes into play.




BTW I have never used any of the options above

I once had a CD Player, I won't mention the name but I'm sure you can guess , where the bonus feature was actually getting it to play cd's

Most CD players have the undocumented Cup hold feature.

for those that have not seen it, just push eject