Escient and SACD searches (1 Viewer)

[Dennis_Co]

Hi, I just joined the forum (new guy), and also just bought and Escient Fireball DVDM-100. I've connected two Sony ES777 changers to it. So far, everything is FANTASTIC except... for 1 thing.

Escient can't seem to locate any (no artist, no title, no cover, nuttin..) information on any of my SACDs. I've tried individual searches - no luck. I've put in normal stereo CDs and they work fine. These aren't obscure CDs either; they're mainstream things like James Taylor,etc.

Anyone else have this problem? Any suggestions? If all else fails, I'll call Escient in the morning, but like all gadget freaks, I'd love to solve this tonite.

Someone please tell me the answer is NOT to key it all in myself. I've had enough of that with the standard ES777 before I bought the Escient.

Thanks.
Dennis

 

[Dennis_Co]

Ok, for those who are interested and want an answer to the question i posted; I spoke with customer service at Escient this am.

Seems to be a problem with the Sony ES777 changer not returning the table of contents for SACDs. Thus, no info. According to the tech person (and I am going to confirm this tonite), if one goes into the 777 and configures it to think that it has only stereo CDs, no SACDs, and IF you have hybrid SACDs, then this will fool the player and the Escient will be able to search CDDB for the content info. Perhaps this is why Sony didn't put the song display on the front of the ES777. anyway, i'm not totally convinced of the explanation or the solution, but i'm going to try to confirm the reconfig solution tonite.

Of course, that means i have to disconnect the ES777 from the Escient so that the ES777 menu button works again.

Why doesn't technology "just work"?

More later.
dc

 

[Dennis_Co]

Ok, I give up; I can't get it to work. I am more convinced now though that the SACDs have a TOC that's all zeros. At the very least, they're being interpreted as zeros. I tried putting the changer in stereo mode... seems like I did because suddenly I was only playing through 2 speakers. Did a search of CDDB after that and still came up empty w/info.

So, I'll place another call in the am to Escient and see if I can get answers.

I guess no one else here has dealt with this before?

dc

 

[Dennis_Co]

An update for anyone that's interested in Escient stuff.
1) the problem i have w/the SACDs not being recognized is apparently something I'm gonna have to live with. Escient tells me if i can put my ES777 in a mode where it thinks its playing stereo cds and not SACDs (assuming hybrid cd), then it will get the play list. The underlying problem is that they say that SACDs are not currently indexe by CDDB. A damned shame, i tell ya. Oh well, there aren't that many of them but it would have been nice...

2) i have since become enthused enough to go buy the Escient E40 also. All stereo CDs are in a Sony 455 carousel connected to the E40 and it recognized everyone one of the 384 cds i loaded. Gotta love it.

3) I just bought a touch panel for the E40 (15" touch screen). way cool. Escient sells one but they are very pricey, so I got the word from their tech support team that Elo monitors work fine and I bought one of those for less than 1/2 the price of the Escient screen. It just rocks.

4) with my enthusiasm for (3), now I have to decide whether to plunk down the cash for a 2nd screen (for the DVDM-100.. haven't decided yet.

5) I did find a nasty bug in the E40 software which I reported (and they have committed to fix). If you create a play list (mix of songs) and try to burn a CD, you will burn a cd, but it will choose the wrongs songs. This is basically a bug in their indexing whereby they use the destination position number on the new playlist to look up the song off the source CD, rather than using the position number of the original song. thus it grabs all the wrong songs. But they'll fix it and i can live with that for a few months while I await the update.

All in all, a great experience now w/my Escient stuff.

dc