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From that point it wouldn't work at all, the door wouldn't open, and the carousel tray wouldn't spin. The grouping, text display, search, and other functions are great. I then took the player to a repair shop. It worked great for about 12 months, then one day jammed up while loading a CD from the carousel into the drive slot.
Two months and over $150.00 later it's working like new again.This machine is basically a dinosaur anyway. I received mine as a Christmas gift.
After a while these long gaps get on your nerves. My 300 CDs were held hostage inside.
I had to take the cover off and manually remove all of my CDs. On the plus side: The sound quality is excellent.
The big minus is this machine's fragility. It's really cool having 300 CDs at your fingertips.
On the minus side: Random shuffle play is a little frustrating, because it takes a good 10-15 seconds to unload a disc, choose another, load the new disc, choose a track, and start playing. (.).
I've had most of my CDs in this unit since I bought it in the late 1990's, and none of my CDs have become scratched. I chucked all my jewel cases and got my shelf space back. I've read in other reviews of newer models that people have had problems with the unit scratching their CDs. I used a cheapo keyboard to enter some new CDs and had no problems except an occasional CAPS LOCK toggle). It also makes it easy to print out differently organized directories. Also, be very careful in moving it around -- all my cds fell over inside the unit during my move. Bad news: I had problems typing the cd information in -- I had to type super-slow or the "MegaStorage" wouldn't register the chars.
(Update: I think the difficulty in entering information with a keyboard was due to the Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard. I got one of these about 2 years ago. Recommeded -- keep a computer listing of all your cds with title, artist, group, and slot number just in case. I love the random play and being able to ban disliked tracks. It survived a move and spending 8 months in storage (by the way, it remembered all the disc information that I had typed in). And could the remote control have any more buttons.
It has been repaired once or twice and is in need again. All those years of music, randomly playing a tune from here and there. I also suggest going to the Sony website to find out more about the specs. As one reviewer above said, you hear tunes you forgot you had. I can't say enough.
There is a link to Sony on this page. It was a great player, but doesn't even play in the random mode. After researching online and in person, I stayed within my budget and purchased the Sony CDP CX300. I have about 260 CD's of many types of music. No.but I don't think that one is available yet.and if it was, It would be at a steep price. Is it a perfect player with every option I want. I paid $289 for mine and feel I got quite a piece of equipment for the price.
I highly recommend this player. It will certainly change the way you listen to your collection. I love doing that. I have had the same CD player (Denon, single disc)since 1988. All CDs are now loaded and labeled in the player, arranged in groups and ready to program or play in random/shuffle mode. It was time for new equipment. I love this machine.
Have fun and happy tunage.
Unfortunatly, this leads to somewhat lower quality than the digital input, but if you plan on being able to view the titles of CD's, you need to allow for this. My receiver (Sony STR-DB930) automatically switches to the CD RCA input when it get's the 'play' signal from the CD changer. You'll end up listening to music you had long forgotten about, without any repetition, and with less wear and tear on the discs themselves. I've gotten around it by connecting both the optical digital input and RCA jacks. It feels sturdy and solid, and looks like it ought to last a while. You can assign each CD to a group, and name that group. (just like the remote that comes with the more expensive CX-350)The unit isn't as tall as I expected, maybe twice the height of a normal CD player, though it is very deep (~18").
You also use these knobs to enter in titles for CD's if not using a keyboard, which works relatively well if you're just adding one CD at a time. However, it's easy to move discs to different groups, so if you want to arrange a group of CD's for a dinner party or whatnot, you can do so in a couple minutes.The remote is plain but functional, it appears that it will control 3 of these units daisy chained together. I just press play and go about my business these days, and the player chugs along feeding me good tunes. (I need a lot more CD's to make this worthwhile however) One caveat for those planning on using this player with an A1 compatible receiver as I am. In the end I decided to go with the Sony CX-300 as it's a great bargain, and since it was a Sony like my receiver (STR DB-930) I could use my receiver's remote to view the disc titles.
I would highly recommend one of the newer jukebox players like the CX300. Like all the other jukeboxes I've seen, the CX-300 allows CD's to belong to only one group, which is somewhat annoying. Once I get the player going on the music I want (and once you get it going you don't need to touch it for hours at a time) I switch the input on my receiver to the optical cable for the best sound. This is an inconvenience, and I'm not sure why Sony designed things this way, but it's a relatively minor one for the gadget factor of being able to see the CD titles on my remote. You can then have the player shuffle all the discs in that group seperately, or just play through them all. I needed a CD changer, and was deliberating between a 5 disc changer and one of the newer 300 disc changers.
For example, I have a group containing all my Sting and Police albums. Loading CD's and entering their titles (as others have said, CD-Text does not seem widely adopted at all, so don't count on this to save you time) was painless, provided you hook up your PC keyboard to do so. I loaded about 60 CD's in 20 minutes without any problems.The controls on the player are nice, it uses two main knobs to control what disc and track is playing. that's how it should be.
My one complaint--don't be fooled by the "CD Text" feature which claims to automatically enter data from 'equipped' discs. But that's a small complaint.
In fact, only about 5 of my 275+ CDs are so equipped. Be prepared to type those titles in yourself.
This is an excellent addition to my stereo system. As the other reviewer said, this unit does NOT come with the remote with LCD display.
Despite being a large unit, this 300 CD changer has saved me SO much space--I have said goodbye to jewel boxes forever. I love the grouping and 'hit list' features that allow you to arrange your discs in easily accessible and discernable categories.
It is the Sony CDP-CX-350 that does, for $ more.
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