Interesting uses...

Recently, I've taken up Colonial dancing (yes, yes, you can laugh now... :-)) and the instructors have these rather large boxes which comprise tape-player, mic and aux inputs, controls and a large speaker. It's an all-in-one box - plug in power and go, basically; except for the huge collection of ten and twenty minute tapes that they have to lug around so that if someone asks for Emily's Progress or the Wherligig they have it right there.

Well, you can see where this is heading; especially now that someone's said that the empeg has the ability to mix the aux-in with what's currently playing.

There would only be two things to change. The minor thing would be a couple of extra play controls: play this song once and stop (i.e. you may want to play that song a couple of times) - although this could be managed by putting each song in its own playlist that adds an extra level to the heirarchy.

The major thing is that these units have a speed control. This acts as both a pitch changer, to tune the tape to an external piano or some other instrument; and as a speed control, for when you want to slow a dance down for beginners or speed it up to match different music to a required dance. Since I've seen plug-ins for WinAmp that can adjust speed and pitch independently, this would be even better than having one single control that changes both. It would have to be activated by a special menu command (i.e. and then take over the left and right controls or something), but that wouldn't be a problem.

I'm not really throwing this in as a wish list, but I think it'd be a cool install to do - make a portable box that acts as sub enclosure, amplifier and empeg holder all in one.

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