I used to have a radio show and we had pitch controllable
Denon cd players. They also had instant start down to frame
resoulution (1/72 of a second?) which is a godsend for mixing.
Plus, you could set a point in a song and flip back to it like
it was a song break (really nice for playing a bit of a piece
over and over again, but not quite as nice as automatic loops
would have been).
Basically, having these features on the cd player made it
usable for mixing. It wasn't as nice as the turntables because
you didn't have the hands on advantage. But, for someone like
me who couldn't do much with the hands on advantage :) the auto
start feature was really nice and the pitch control let me line
up ambient grooves if not jungle!
[fletcher]