theCD player without beeping beep?!

August 16, 2005 11:46 AM

Does anybody make a portable, personal CD player that doesn't have the annoying beep every time you skip a song or push a button?

I've been using my girlfriend's and hers has the dreaded beep, so I just bought a Sony Walkman Portable CD player, hoping it would not have that feature. Unfortunately, it does. In my car with the cassette adaptor, the beep is very near deafening. I am a musician and also use it on gigs for playing music during breaks. The beep is annoying as hell when it comes through the PA!

Please, any recommendations for a silent operation portable CD player?

posted by wsg to technology (8 answers total)

Not sure what happened to my title there. It's supposed to say "CD player without the beeping beep?!" Accidental click and drag, I guess.
posted by wsg at 11:48 AM on August 16, 2005

I never had one that HAD a beep, but I haven't owned a Discman for years.

My Sony MD player beeped but there was an option to turn it off. Are you sure your Sony Discman doesn't?
posted by selfnoise at 12:01 PM on August 16, 2005

I'm 99% sure the iRiver SlimX models have a menu in which you can turn off the beep.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 12:04 PM on August 16, 2005

I have a first-generation Sony MP3 Discman that beeps. It even beeps constantly while paused! What the hell? In the manual it said that the beeping can be turned off by making sure that the 'Stop' button is pressed down while inserting the batteries. Lo and behold, it works, but you have to do it every time you change batteries. Since it has built-in battery charging, I just use some high-capacity rechargable NiMhs so I don't have to take them out.
posted by zsazsa at 12:08 PM on August 16, 2005

In my Sony diskman, the secret hidden deep within the instructions was to hold the "Stop" button while you put the battery in.

This seems like the silliest UI goof in the world (to stop the beeping that nobody wants, perform some arcane procedure every so often,) but it worked.
posted by nicething at 12:16 PM on August 16, 2005

what nicething said, I have one of the Sony CD/MP3 thingies, and you have to hold down "stop" each frickin' time you insert new batteries.
The design is pretty, though.
posted by signal at 12:35 PM on August 16, 2005

I found it. Thanks. It is indeed deep in an options menu. Nevermind.
posted by wsg at 12:59 PM on August 16, 2005

Yep, I too have a sony CD player that requires you to hold down the stop button while inserting batteries if you don't want that @#$@&% beep. This is just further proof that sony really doesn't get it when it comes to UI design. I have noticed this many times in their products. If an Apple engineer made a prototype product with such a ridiculous feature I think he'd be fired.
posted by Rhomboid at 8:09 PM on August 16, 2005