mr fork writes jim whitehead writes for toddlers pressing play must cause the music to start immediately within half a second for the toddler to get the causality and not press the button multiple times or some sound indicating that the music will start real soon now a tonal countdown would be nice what would the ideal toddler cd player be like it would immediately start playing a cd after it was loaded it d be an mpNUMBER player with solid state storage instant on hmm seems like every cd player should include the capability to rip encode and cache the last few cds inserted playback would then never need to face seek delays after the initial ripping the only use of the laser pickup would be recognizing which cd is inserted which might be doable faster than a seek and start at first track operation you could also take the cd out while it is playing hmm if the cd is still in the cache maybe you don t even have to insert it or choose it from a step through ui instead you just wave it at an electronic eye of some sort and the player recognizes it from the silkscreening kids would like that play this they d say facing the cd at the player and the player would start immediately gordon 