The Rack Burns

In recent years, musicians and sound engineers couldn't complain about new technical innovations. But can you imagine that in future, your studio rack not only creates or refines sounds and music, but also produces CDs? In any quantities and printed with the label you want? Sounds crazy? Well, welcome to reality!

The Disc Publisher XR (DP-XR) from manufacturer and developer Primera Technology automatically duplicates and prints up to 50 CDs, DVDs or even Blu-ray Discs per job. Copy stations aren't new, but they are less expensive and a lot faster these days. And compact: The DP-XR can be mounted in any 19" rack.

Applications

Disc production systems like the DP-XR are affordable even for small and medium sized music or video studios and aren't a luxury anymore. For everyone who needs to produce CD series regularly, those devices come in handy, especially for small runs, which are too expensive to let them produce directly at a press shop. The alternative, to burn and print CDs or DVDs one at a time, quickly ends in a time-consuming donkeywork. Time that is better used for creative studio jobs.

In any case, there's plenty of work for duplicating and printing solutions in music, mastering and production studios. It's worth purchasing a disc publisher, not only to produce demo CDs for big music labels, music publishers or DJs, but also to create own music and sampling CDs for sale.

Further to that, you can attract completely new customer groups by becoming a service provider: Local bands, music clubs, kindergartens, schools or simply proud parents who want to support the musical talent of their children could be thankful clients ordering small disc volumes. And the service isn't just limited to music, also videos or other files can be burned and labelled as all common disc formats are supported.

The inside

Primera's Disc Publisher XR presents itself in a rugged metal cabinet. The inside is accessible through a acrylic lockable door and contains a DVD/CD or BD burn drive, a built-in printer and two replaceable bins, one for blank and the other for the final produced media. Discs are transported between the drive, printer and bins through an advanced robot picking up discs precisely and accurate. The exclusive AccuDisc Technology prevents the feeding of two discs into the recordable drive, which would cause a lot of damage.

The outside

The matte black coating adapts well to typical studio environments. The DP-XR becomes a real eye-catcher when you turn on the device: Then the entire interior shines in blue light - a very helpful feature when you have to insert or remove media in a dark environment.

Software

The set-up of the publisher, including software installation, is done within minutes: remove cardboard spacer, start setup program, connect USB cable, done. To connect the disc publisher to a PC or Mac a USB 2.0 port on your computer is required.

If the Disc Publisher XR is connected, it is listed as normal burn drive in your explorer and you can already use it with virtually any burning software. But just as a burner. To use the publisher as automated duplicating and printing system, you need to install a special burning software that is included in the shipment and can control the publisher's robotic.

For Mac environments, CharisMac Engineering's Discribe V6.0 duplication software is included. Primera's PTPublisher duplication software is used for PCs running Windows 2000/XP/Vista. Both software programs offer a similar scope of function. They burn all relevant and common CD, DVD and BD formats, including of course audio CDs or video DVDs.

Operation

It's fun to watch the machine work: New media is constantly, but reliable transported to burner and printer. The publisher doesn't require an additional fan and therefore is very quiet during the burn and print process - a positive benefit especially for music studios.

The device virtually "spits out" defect media or wrong media types through a slot in the front below the lockable door. The ejection slot allows a further operation, the so-called kiosk mode. In kiosk mode, both bins are used for blank media, therefore 50 discs can be burned and printed. This time, finished discs are transported through the slit in an external bin. Less attractive: If the separate bin is not mounted to the publisher the discs just fall to the ground.

Besides that, the hardware handling is quite practical: Thanks to the lockable door the interior is easily accessible and the media bins can easily be filled or discharged. Only, changing the ink cartridges requires a little patience due to the low height of the device. But that's bearable, as the ink cartridges has to be changed comparatively rare.

Conclusion

The whole device reflects Primera's experience in developing and building disc publishing systems. Finally, a solution customized especially to meet the needs of studio environments is available!