Well, I have to admit, I’m getting a little sick and tired of the meep meep meep meep of my standard alarm clock. Sure, I can slap it, and a predictable nine minutes later I’ll hear the meep meep meep meep of the same damned thing. . . but I want something different.
Tell me of an alarm clock that plays CDs that I can customize to my morning. Maybe on Mondays and Wednesdays it plays a bugle call of Reville and To the Colors. Fridays, being my kickass days, I’d start with Respighi’s Pines of Rome. Hell, just for those special occasions, I’d wake up with a kickass version of either Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 or Ride of the Valkyries.
In any case, I’m sick, tired, and flat out ignoring the “meeps”. Can you guys recommend a good CD-playing alarm clock that I can program? AM/FM doesn’t matter, and cassettes I just don’t care for.
Hook a poor, tired (and sometimes late) guy up.
Tripler
If you want, I’ll personally burn you a CD with the aforementioned songs on it.
Do you sleep in a room with a personal computer and stereo speakers? You can create a computer-based music alarm with infinitely more versatility than a standalone CD-playing alarm clock. For example, on my GNU/Linux box I have the following crontab entries:
# stop music at 1:45 every night
45 1 * * * /usr/local/bin/mpc stop &> /dev/null
# wakeup alarm at 5:10 every morning
10 5 * * * $HOME/bin/wakeup
where the wakeup script reads as follows:
#!/bin/sh
#
# music alarm using the music player daemon
# (http://www.musicpd.org/)
MPC=/usr/local/bin/mpc
MIXER=/usr/bin/aumix
MIXOPTS="-v 55"
PLS=wakeup`date +%w` # different playlist for each day of the week
$MPC clear &> /dev/null # clear playlist
$MPC load $PLS &> /dev/null # load appropriate playlist
$MIXER $MIXOPTS &> /dev/null # set volume to 55%
$MPC play &> /dev/null # start the music
Among my playlists are compilations labeled wakeup0, wakeup1, … , wakeup6, corresponding to the seven days of the week. When I used to wake up at different times each morning, I just created separate crontab entries for each different wakeup time.
Although this setup will only work on Unices for which the music player daemon is available, I’m sure there is software for other platforms that allows a similarly configurable music alarm.
I thought we weren’t supposed to discuss illegal sharing of copyrighted material on this board.
Who said it was illegal? I’d be paying to download music from a service.
Unfortunately, I don’t sleep in the same room as my office is set up in. And worse yet, I couldn’t code Linux for the life of me (I’m running Win XP) . . .
I can’t believe there’s no such thing as a CD-playing alarm clock. Man, I oughtta invent one. . .
Tripler
Look out! Bored engineer with an idea! Duck!!
We do several at my place of work. They’re mainly import Sharper Image products, so you could check that. Shit, my 10 year old JVC ghetto blaster can be programmed to play CDs or the radio at a set time, down to the track you want, as I believe most modern systems can.
I use the Bose WaveRadio CD for my alarm clock. It has two alarms, an easy to use credit card sized remote with snooze, and has good sound for a small unit. Downside is it’s pricey but I’ve had mine for 5 years and wouldn’t trade it.
Unless you own the copyright on the CDs you offered to copy (e.g., you composed the music yourself or you performed the renditions of the pieces, which are presumably in the public domain), it would probably be illegal to make a copy for Dopers who respond to this thread.
I’m camping out in my office for the first time this week, and believe me, it’s not so fortunate. I don’t make use of the computer music alarm, though, since my audio output transducer is a set of headphones rather than the powerful Klipsch speakers that I left at home so as not to annoy my office-mates with booming music. I wake up either when my back is too uncomfortable from sleeping on the hard (though carpeted) floor, or when an electric timer turns on the table lamp on my desk.
There are indeed such things, but I haven’t used the latest models, so I would be unqualified to give a recommendation. On the other hand, there are plenty of reviews for CD clock radios at Epinions.com. It might take some time to sift through the list to find a model with the features you want, but at least you’ll have the opinion of someone who has actually used it rather than the marketing blather of the manufacturer.
I have a Philips model that looks an awful lot like this. It has dual alarms that can be set to buzzing, radio, or CD, the volume fades in instead of popping on loudly in an instant, and it has a big snooze button. I’m pretty satisfied.
[hijack] biqu, I go through Rhapsody, and they expect you to burn CDs from their files. You don’t download anything, but you queue up the tracks you want and burn them direct from their files. Something like 1.00 per CD, and an additional .70 per track. It’s not a bad deal really, and they’ve got good stuff for us eclectic phonophiles.
[/hijack]
Holy crap MikeG, you totally reminded me of my three-years-ago Christmas what-I-want-from-Santa list! My folks have a Bose WaveRadio, and I absolutely love the thing. But you are right, it is pricey, but sounds ohsogoooooood.
Anyway, I have to thank Ravenman, because I didn’t even think to look at Wal-Mart or Targét (oui, it’s tar-ZHÉE) yet. It didn’t look too expensive, but I don’t think I would mind having a good radio in my bedroom either. Currently, the radio is in my apartment living room. I set it low, bounce it off the semi-gloss painted walls, through a partially opened bedroom door, and l let it lull me to sleep.
But that old POC* is an Aiwa stereo system, and 1) I don’t think it’s got a “wakeup alarm” function on it, and 2) the damned CD player thing broke about two months after I bought it.
Note = POC is a “piece of crap”
Tripler
But that WaveRadio, oh how I want one sooooo badly. . .
I have a Sony clock radio w/CD that I got for about $40. It has two alarms and you can set it to a particular track on the CD. I think it’s called a Dream Machine.
