Stan

I understand totally what you need for playing back your backings. I do exactly the same thing and I also needed a player that would play ONE song and then stop - not carry on through the playlist. I am usually busy playing keyboard and when the backing stops I may carry on playing, so have no inclination or indeed have any hands free to stop the next cued song from playing.

Two things work for me and those are a laptop and my ASUS Transformer eePad running Android. Using a normal laptop was a bit bulky but I now have a 10" Acer Netbook and this and Windows Media Player does work quite well. The eePad is 10.1" and can play one song at a time or a continuous playlist. It can also display a pdf leadsheet which is also useful and is compact enough to sit on my music stand.

When I lead worship, I usually use both the netbook and the eePad, the netbook playing backings and the eePad showing leadsheets.

The only problem with computer/cd backing tracks is that they are usually so inflexible - especially for leading praise and worship. If you want to deviate from the playlist or jump into the chorus of another song entirely you can not. That is why if I know there is a chance that my playlist could disintegrate mid session then I will use my Roland E-60 Workstation with its built-in accompaniment.

If I am feeling particularly energetic and know I will have a reasonable set-up time I use a laptop, eePad and the E-60. The laptop will be running Chainer with TruePianos and two or three instances of Nexus for a wash of low level pads controlled by the E-60. Instead of Chainer I can use Steinberg's V-Stack which allows the same layering and stacking of VSTi's but to separate outputs on my Fast Track Ultra 8R. When it all works together it is quite impressive and is stunning enough to make the hairs stand up on my neck!! When I know it sounds good I am able to put some 'extra' into my vocals - then I don't want to stop, I could play all day.

Kevin