Smooth transitions from disk to disk, great overall sound, super durable machine. My parents got this for their wedding, in 95, and it has been in use ever since. It has now passed on to me, along with the Denon AVR-800 it is paired with. Runs well, doesn’t get hot, hasn’t quit in almost 25 years. Definitely worth every penny, in my humble (though slightly biased) opinion.

On occasion, the disk changer doesn’t quite read properly, as in the play button doesn’t actually do anything. I’ve found that opening and closing the disk tray once or twice solves this, and it may simply be because it has consistently been used for nearly 25 years.

Listening to Eric Burdon and the Animals on the Denon PCM Audio Technology / CD Auto Changer Model DCN-370 - Sat Feb 3 2013. Plays great!! No problems since day one 13 years ago buying on a auction site called UBID for use in my restoration building. List to 5 CDs and and it is time move around load it again.

i have just hooked this unit back up after sitting for 3 years. i got this in 2005 and i must say the quality of sound is fantastic.
no problem no skips every thing works. smooth disc tray.
this product is over 12 years old!

Looking back through the reveiws I was amazed to see that my original review was posted on Sept 29 2001. This player has not missed a beat in over 5 years. No problems, no skips. It still sounds superb. I have been thinking recently about upgrading but then I listen to the 370 and realise there really is no point. This has proved to be amazing value for money.

Clarity, transparency, openness, engaging sound quality. Good looks.

Veiling or "house sound" over the mids, fairly light and only noticeable when listening critically. May be too much for a discerning audiophile tho.

Pretty darned nice unit for the price -- I heard the slight 'gray veil' over the mids immediately though. This comes across to me as a so-called "house sound" that many mid-fi players exhibit, and is typically the result of less-than-excellent power supplies rather than DACs and such, but I don't know for sure in this case. The unit I bought has many hours on it, so it's not a matter of break-in. I'm not bothered by the house sound of this player at all, as it obviously has many other excellent qualities. Eventually I'll probably plug in an external DAC and use it that way, but for now it makes an excellent addition to my system, replacing a Rotel RCD-855 (which does NOT have the 'gray veil' issue, but sounds considerably flatter, less open and more old fashioned than the Denon... great for classical but a flop with many other genres).

Overall I would recommend this player, but be aware that the carousel is absolutely typical of a low to mid priced 5-disc changer... it's noisy and obviously will be the first thing to go at the end of the unit's life. I really doubt this player will be around in 20 years, while the single disc Rotel RCD-855 might still be playing by then. Anyway, for the price these often go for it's well worth the money.

Customer Service

N/A

Similar Products Used:

Rotel RCD-855, various other models over the years

The low end. My fronts are flat down to 31HZ and this thing does them justice. Great for setting up a system to get flat, deep, unboomy bass response. Get rid of that boom and you'll enjoy your system much more. Music should not be boomy, even dance music. Not even kick drums. I just spent 3 days listening to the best speakers/sources in the world all day long at Alexus Park for CES. Boom is bad. And if you fix it for music, yes, movies will still give boomy explosions. For under $100 used this is a piece of audiophile heavan. At the very least get it for HDCD's and that newest Cranes album Particles & Waves. Lordy.

Quirky transient edge to the sibilant range on some material. Requires the headphone cable to be internally disconnected.

O.k. another update. After more screwing around with my speaker system I can give a more accurate description of the sound this player has...over 6 years later. The best thing about it has to be the bass. The modded 370 has the most linear, unboomy, deep bass I've ever heard from a CD player in my system. That's comparing this to the Pioneer 655A PX (import Elite line), the Harman Kardon AVR7200, Numark Axis 8, and about half a dozen portables, including two from Sony and Radioshack that I consider to be high-end. The bass on the 370's analog outputs is extraordinary. DEEP. It's amazingly linear, from the quietest to the loudest...none get compressed together. The midrange has a very slight grayish veil from the HDCD PMD-1 decoder/filter chip and the highs can have a slight edge to the sibilant range. You also need to have this unit isolated. Stick it on rubber balls, a down pillow, on the other side of a wall with a hole through it for the cables...something to get rid of vibration. If it's between your front mains this isolation factor is more important. This is odd because tests have shown its jitter tolerance to be extremely high. And as I've said before, with well recorded HDCD's this is a great sounding unit for orchestral recordings, particularly from Silva. It will never sound as liquid, open, glowy, or transparent in the mids as some other players (except with HDCD), and its rhythm is fairly analytical, but this is a special CD player. If you can get a sound system set to gorgeous quality with this finicky player, I can guarantee you will get every other source in your collection to sound more like it was intended.

Sound quality. It's glorious. The remote works well from extreme angles. Quiet carousel.

Goofy sensor design using leaf switches makes the unit unreliable. I only give this 5 stars because I was able to fix it. Would be nice to have volume control on the unit too. Remote volume should have more adjustment range and unit should remember it's volume setting. It's a large unit, barely fits in my cabinet.

I had just finished rebuilding my power amp and then noticed that my Yamaha CD changer sucked badly. I wanted better sound. This Denon definately brings it. The difference was startling. Overall the frequency response is so much smoother. I always thought my boomy bass was caused by my cheap subwoofer. Not so. It was the Yamaha and it's so called "Natural Sound". What a laugh. But the best part about the Denon is it's lack of destortion no matter how complex and loud the music gets. This thing sounds like a high end turntable minus the clicks and pops. I bought this on ebay as a new refurb. On the second day it developed a problem. When I turned it on it made a horrible grinding noise. I opened it up and could not find any problem so I put it back and it worked but then it started skipping disks. So I opened it again and noticed it uses leaf switches for sensors. I cleaned all three switches and it has worked flawlessly since. I also did the headphone mod.

Similar Products Used:

Yamaha CDC-645

Accurate sound

Tray makes "groaning" sound when opening and closing

I've had this changer for about 4-5 years now and figured it was time for an upgrade. I borrowed a Cambridge Audio 640C demo (good rating from Stereophile) and tried it out for the weekend. Whether it was rock or jazz, via headphones or speakers, I could not find any discernable difference. I even enlisted the help of two friends and they couldn't tell the difference either. What a great deck!

Similar Products Used:

Denon DCD-1400, Carver, Philips

Sound, price-to-performance ratio

For the price, who can complain?

After listening to this unit for a little over a month now, I had to join the fray to express an opinion on this oft-maligned gem. First, I bought mine factory-refurbished from an authorized Denon dealer. A hundred bucks is a pretty good deal for a like-new machine, even if it craps out after a year. But, so far the thing has performed admirably. I gave it some hard break-in assignments using a lot of jazz stuff, and after about 100 hours I noticed some dissipation of "digitalitis". Yes, I run it thru a dac, and no, I haven't done a with/without dac comparison. But after years of low-grade Sony products running thru the same dac, after the break-in I noticed a marked improvement on the dynamic range of all my CD's. The 370 offers reasonable levels of punchy bass, and provides good clarity up through the high end. Then, I tried my first HDCD, a Garcia/Grissman product, and had to check my living room to see if Jerry and Dave were sitting in there jamming. There did appear to be a little tinny-ness on the very high end, but I'm not ready to say that's a 370 effect (having just put in new speakers). On the down side, I'll admit the carousel is noisy, and when using the random mode, it sounds like each transition it makes might be it's last. Heck, even just loading CD's can make you a little skeptical that the thing will ever operate once you press "Close". But I think this is an affliction that touches most players in this price range. And I can't complain about the speed of the transport when playing in random. It may not sound smooth, but it's much faster than comparably priced Sonys. I can't comment on the functionality of the remote. With the remote from my old Denon pre-amp (from the days when Denon really knew how to build electronics) I can control most of the 370's functions from across the room. All in all, I'm impressed with the sound from this player. In the final analysis, that's what it's all about. Complaints about build quality, transport noise, remote functionality, etc., just don't seem valid with a unit in this price range. For those who want to live without those minor nuisances in a multi-disc player, drop an extra couple hundred (or even thousand) bucks and get a Parasound, Arcam, Cambridge Audio, etc., changer. I'm going to, but for the time this unit suits me just fine.

Similar Products Used:

Sony

Smooth. Neutral. Extended. Dynamic. Organic. It loves Silva Recordings.

Loss of that inner light due to PMD-100 HDCD filter. Clunky tray. I've had problems with the rear outputs, but you just wiggle them to fix it. This is due to poor circuit board isolation.

O.k. Yes I've put a lot of reviews on here, but I think it's all important information. If audioreview had an edit feature I wouldn't have to. Well, I just upgraded my system from Bose Acoustimass to NHT & Harman Kardon. The Denon is definitely better sounding than the Pioneer DV-655A PX, the Harman 7200 receiver, or my Numark Axis 8's. That congested quality may have simply been the Bose. With the Bose in my bedroom, 6 inches from the ceiling, they sound the best they ever have with the Denon. They were probably designed to work like that. The Denon is extended in both directions and quite neutral and smooth on my NHT ST4's. The Pioneer rolls off (rounds) the most extreme highs very slightly on CD's, and the Harman's HDCD DAC's are not as smooth, though they have lots of inner light. The Denon, however, still has a very slight gray scrim, though it's now closer to a very light tan scrim over the sound. This is probably a signiture sound of the PMD-100 HDCD chip, which if replaced with a Burr Brown filter would probably go away. So, you're losing a bit of that inner light in transparency and black-blacks, but it still is amazing in frequency extension and smoothness. A filter modded 370 might actually be a reference quality player. Right now, it's the nicest sounding CD player I own. That guy that said there was something wrong with it (aside from the headphone connection quirk) was completely wrong. There is no significant "distortion" going on, unless he had a broken one. I want to find a player with this sound, but that inner light totally intact and maybe a little more finesse to the highs. If I could do that, it'd be some kind of miracle. Someone with an electronics background should get one off ebay and try and swap the filter for the matching Burr Brown one.