I paid $135 (shipping included) for this refurbished on Ebay about 1 year ago which I thought was a pretty good deal until I read everyone else's reviews. I wish I would have known audioreview.com existed then and maybe I could have saved some money by getting it for $77 on UBid. What the hell, hindsight is 20/20. I have not experienced any problems with mine except that sometimes it decides to stop playing around the 8th track of a cd. I simply skip to number 9 with the remote and it usually works fine from then on. I am using a 10 year old JVC amp and Panasonic EQ but this setup sounds great on my Polk RT 16's. Since this product has performed up to par for me I was going to give it a five. But after reading Joan's FL8300 review about HK's crappy customer service I think I shall only give it a three. Screw any company who won't support its customers.

The slick salesguy at CC sold the HK quality angle pretty hard, and I went for it, about three years ago for about $250. I took it home and hooked it up to my Hitachi boom box (circa 1987). What did I know? I thought the sound was pretty fair - but there was the Hitachi factor. My 8300 stopped recognizing silver colored CDs in spot #5. The polite HK people asked for my paperwork (which I had trashed) so I live with it. Just this weekend, I finally got a decent receiver (HK AVR5) with some Bose 3-ways and it's "A whole new world . . ." cue the Aladin soundtrack. :) Great CD sound finally amplified and speakified the way that it should be - makes me happy. Does anyone else care that you can't store the program in memory? Overall this particular unit has been good to me, and I am now appreciating its sound potential.

Looking at the other reviews of this CD player, this review might be a surpirse. I have had no problems with unit what so ever. I bought it about 2 months ago (refurbished) and the draw opens and closes fine. It hasn't skipped yet. The sound quality is very good. Programming is fine, no track 8 to 9 problems, or anything else. I'm very plesed with my purchase. Harman Kardon makes good sounding CD players its very unfortunate that they have been plagued with quality problems. Maybe I'm just one of the lucky ones, but I do recomend this player to anyone.
System:
Onkyo TS-DX575
HK 8300 Disc Changer
Klipsch KSF 8.5's
Klipsch KSF C5
Infinity Surrounds (old S series)

Good sound, quality, and good price. 5 speakers all the way.

I got the 8300 about 3 years ago and I never had any problem with it. As far as I can tell it has been a great purchase for me.

I bought this unit refurbished for $150 and have it hooked up to a Harman/Kardon HK3350 receiver and a pair of Celestion 5 mk II (which I also got for $150 pair as dealer demo's, list was $400). The little system, while not what would be even considered budget high-end, sounds really good considering I paid for it what alot of mini-systems cost. It has a very smooth and moderately detailed sound on this system. I had owned a h/k TL8500 changer and had horrible reliability problems. This FL8300 is already having jamming door problems that others have cited. I've found that if the drawer won't close hitting the disc skip button once and then hitting the close button seems to do the trick. I've only had this one a week so its problems haven't proven incredibly annoying yet.Despite the reliability, I can't get over how nice that little sytem sounds. My current reference system was $5,000 factory direct ($10,000+ if it was through distributors) and nearly all audio gear these days offends me in some way. This little harman system doesn't. I know the receiver can kind sound rather hard and rough so I give the FL8300 and Celestions credit for smoothing it all out. If harman can work out thier reliability problems they would have a great product line, thier stuff does look pretty good and sounds pretty good for the market its intended.

Digital Out; SOUND!

Apparent reliability problems with units purchased as new; drawer location above control buttons; disk skip on remote only works if on track one of a CD

I wanted to post a follow up response to my 5/5/99 post. After buying this unit for my parents at uBid, I picked one up for myself 4 months ago for myself for $70, also at uBid. I'm using it in my bedroom and love it...no problems at all. The drawer location is awkward and the disk skip option is a pain, but once you become familiar with it, it's fine.

The unit purchased for my parents still works like a dream and has had no problems. Mine gets used more than the transport in my HT system and has had no problems as well.

I do suggest getting a refurb unit however, since the posts from "new unit purchasers" seem the most problematic. For under $100-$80, you cannot get better sound. If you are willing to put up with the quirks of this transport, pick it up! For the price that you can get it, the risk is minimal. It certainly sounds better thatn any RCA/Fisher/Cheapo unit, and the Optical Out is a huge plus in a unit of this price.

One of my friends owns the 84540 and has commented that the sound with the 8300 is just as good. With current prices, the value is a 5. The noted "strange features" and "new unit problems"...as well as HK's customer service (which I haven't needed to use, but I trust everyone here) earn it the 4 I gave earlier this year.

When it will track a disc it sounds fine. The housing is easy to open for futile repair attempts.

This unit is unable to track through most discs.

Bought this CD changer on e-bay-- seller described as "in good shape, doesn't like his scratched up discs". I figured, hey, my discs are in reasonable shape, no prob . . .
got it home, hooked it up, and it was able to read NO tracks without skipping (actually the effect is more like whan you hit a portable CD player-- much of the time it will just give up and go on to the next track).
Cracked the case, cleaned the lens, played with the little weight that sits on top of the CD, closed it up, and it has been able to track through virtually pristine discs with no problem, but is abnormally sensitive to dust specs, smudges, stray dandruff molecules-- mostly in the later tracks of a CD. For those that it just can't get through no matter what, I've found that burning a copy on the comp produces a readable disc. Still, I bought this mainly to make great sounding tapes from homemade collection CD's for Spin (spinning.com) classes, so it's basically of no use.
I found out the local authorized repair is only a mile from my house, but that there is a $40 minimum charge and they are reputed to sit on CDs for several months.
Any advice anyone can offer per e-mail that would help me fix this would be greatly appreciated (no response from HK per e-mail).
Thanks!

Similar Products Used:

Always used portables with my home system-- thought it was time for something better :-(

I purchased the FL8300 around Feb 98. I had it about a week when the drawer jammed. I should've taken it as a hint. Instead, I returned it for a new one (via the Circuit City route). That one last over a year until it started to not recognize disks in the tray. Thank god I had bought the ext service policy from Circuit City (which I usually never do but did for this when I returned the first player after a week) - repaired in about a week, the repair slip said "faulty optical sensor".
It sounds great, both using the line level out to my old HK AVR 20 and the digital out to my new HK AVR 65. I have the usual ergonomic complaint about the damned button locations (esp the skip button) - but if you don't already know, you can quickly hit the open/close button twice and that will act as a disk skip.

The quality of HK components has definitely gone downhill. I had the AVR 20 for about 4 years with no problems. Bought the AVR 65 and FL 8300 on that experience. Both, however, seem to be having problems - time for a switch of loyalty, but to who? Denon maybe.

4 for sound/features, 2 for dependability == 3 total.

Picked up a refurbished FL8300 a couple of months ago from onsale.com for $91. This was an absolute STEAL. I have read the preceding comments regarding this product, and I feel that I must have purchased one of the non-lemons out there.
I really like this player. Though the disk selection and skip buttons are below the tray (an ergonomically questionable location, to saythe least), you learn to deal with it in short order. One of the better features is being able to switch out CDs while one is playing. The sound from this player is slightly warm, as with many H/K components. I do not hear the 'tick' between tracks as some others have; this may be their machine vs. mine. My FL8300 is sensitive to stomping on the floor nearby, but that's more a function of where it's located relative to the floor joists (e.g., right above one) rather than any inhererent fault in the player itself. The digital output lends itself well to creating compiled CDs.

Performance: 4 stars. Value: 10 stars!

I got my 8300 for $112 from Ubid. Out of the box it looked great. For the first few days it was eating cds. The trays are very shallow and cds would just fall into the mechanism. I found a way to prevent that and ever since I have been in love with it. Last night we hooked it up to my roommate's new Denon AVR3600 and it blew my mind! It sounded so warm on both jazz and hip-hop. The digital output is great. The sound is perfect. The tray has a tendency to not close all the way (which is a major annoyance) but pushing down on it ever so slightly fixes that. The unit is tempermental, but worth it. I compare it to my girlfriend...