See prev. review

Technical problem

Update to previous review-- it became apparent that there is a loud cracking noise as each CD ends-- immediately when the last song is over. Ubid agreed to take it back, but that's been a hassle so far-- I should get a return sticker by mail.
If I get stuck with this thing you'll hear about it . . .

Similar Products Used:

see prev.

Good sound

I don't find the controls terribly intuitive-- otherwise none noted after a few hours of use-- hope I don't need to update . . .

Purchased 2 8350s on Ubid @ $49 each-- recieved an 8350 which worked for a few hours and stopped recognizing discs completely, and this one (by mistake?) which still works.
Wanted to note that sound from the 8550 is MUCH better than the 83xx's-- less distorted, better definition.
Hopefully Ubid won't be too much of a hassle getting the other deck exchanged.
FYI there is someone organizing a class action suit-- see the reviews of the 8350 for more info.

Similar Products Used:

FL 8300, 8350

sounds good, due to 20 bit-HDCD

customer service-design-quality

What a horrible experience! I bought 2 of these, I needed only one, but I saw a better price and ended up with 2. When I sent 1 back thru Netmarket, they referred me to the distributor when I noticed that I had not received credit for the return! The distributor undoubtely lied when he said he had never seen it! Netmarket told me, tough luck! So I paid 349 for a product I did not keep. Gee thanks Do not do business with them! The 8550 I kept immediately broke, so I brought it in for service. The service tech's told me what a disaster HK was to deal with, boy were they correct! HK was to give a return number to the tech, it took 3 months for HK to make that phone call. Then the tech fixed it, it lasted 1 month. Then I dealt with a customer rep named Tim , who could not return phone calls for months!!!! Finally when I did receive a response (after asking for his supervisor) I was told to send a receipt/credit card purchase receipt. Then I was told that the credit card receipt was no good, they needed a receipt! This had gone on over a year by now, and Mr B said he never told me that a credit card receipt was acceptable!So now I am really upset, I had to deal with his superior, who asked me to send him another copy of the receipt. I sent it 3 times to the fax # provided, they said they never received it despite the fact that they did! Then just as I was getting ready to mail via certified mail, I received a check for the 349 I paid! I did not even have to send the player back, so I threw it away! I have never seen such a blatant disregard for customers! Between Netmarket and HK, I believe that I have hit the bottom of customer service! The cd player sounded great the whole 2 months it worked. But do not buy one, the grief is not worth it!

Similar Products Used:

Philips

Sound quality

Everything else

I got this unit as a warranty replacement for an FL8450 that had problems that the service depot couldn't fix.

When I first hooked it up, I was initially impressed with the sound quality. In fact, I still am. It makes HDCD discs sound live and the rest of my CD's come to life. Unfortunately, as time goes on, the player begins to wear on one, and I am in the process of looking for an inexpensive but good-sounding replacement changer. At least it still reads all my CD's.

My nits to pick with the unit:
1. no remote on/off - not a big deal, but it can't be that difficult if a $200 receiver can do it
2. display is awfully bright - have trouble reading it at distances, as the strong light tends to blur the image
3. When changing discs without a CD playing, the carousel only presents one slot, but with a CD playing presents two. What's up with that? My old FL8450 presented four regardless of whether something was playing or not.
4. Remote kinda sucks
5. No 1-disc random or 1-disc playback modes. The FL8450 lacks this, as well, so it appears to be a gross omission on HK's part
6. Most annoyingly, the changer mechanism and software controlling it is horribly broken. Sometimes it will cycle through all the discs five or even ten times before it stops and attempts to play the disc you selected. Pushing the disc skip button with the carousel open is a risky proposition - instead of simply rotating to the disc you want and stopping, it will rotate the entire carousel an apparently random number of times before it stops at the requested disc. Disc 3 is by far the worst for this. Very weird, have no idea how HK could let something as stupid as this slip through QA testing. This is the primary reason why I am looking for a replacement.

In short, you can probably find something that sounds just as good (or better) with a considerably better user interface design at close to the same cost. Stay away from this one.

Similar Products Used:

HK FL8450, Yamaha CDC-545 (I think)

Really great, "precise" detailed sound. HDCD feature

Simply does not work. Failed after 3 months

Well, used to be "HK addicted", I decided to upgrade my old system (composed
mostly of HK, Rotel and NAD separates produced from 88 to 94), to these new HK
"digital revolution" products. It was more than a stupid idea, for most of my newly-bought
HK separates have already failed:
my relativly new HK 660 amplifier in 2 years, my new FL 8550 cd-changer in 3 months …
my very new HK AVR 300 receiver - in one day !!!. Needless to day that I don't trust HK anymore … No other brand's audio/video product (NAD, Dual, Kenwood, Sony, Rotel) in my possession has failed in the past 20 years …
Well, just in terms of some more positive thinking, the FL8550
sounds great - when it works. With my HK660 amplifier (when it worked) and
Tannoy Definition speakers (still work, of course) it produced exclusively precise,
detailed though a little bit cold sound. It was a real "listening pleasure" but not for many
years (as they write in their booklet ) but just for several days .
It sounded remarkably better than my previous HK 7325 player even with simple CDs.
Yet the 6 years-old HK 7325 still works OK even with PC-written no-name CD-Rs while
this new pile of garbage (I mean new HK build quality) started to skip CDs just after
2 months. In 3 months it did not recognize anymore CD-Rs and some CDs, so
I had to return it for reparation. By this time I learned that most FL 8550 have a similar problems. The HK customer service is a separate story in itself,just horrible.
So I'm still waiting and waiting and waiting when they will fix it. The other disgusting feature of FL 88550, is its cheaply looking noisy tray, and out-of-overall-design display. You just feel it is made to be sold, not to work.

I'm just dreaming, it could be a great move to melt
HK not with JBL, but with some (any) Japanese brand to combine HK's tech. design quality (to my opinion still top in the mid-range) with Japanese addiction to build quality

I give it two stars for value and 1 overall, for such reliability issues are unacceptable for a $450 cd-player
(actually even for a cheapest possible player)

Similar Products Used:

HK 7325 cd-player

see my previous review

does not work, horrible tech service, unfair customer policy

I am getting back to the review I have posted several days ago (faulty FL8550 and reparation problems), because I just learned some more shoking details about what happened to me. HK now officially admits that FL8*s and AVRs *00s produced before 2000 or even later do have INHERENT problems. But I just knew from my dealer that my FL8550 produced between 98 and 99 and bought in april 2000 was ordered directly from Harman within the SAME month ! I guess it may also apply to my HK receiver AVR 300 bought from them couple of weeks ago (produced dec 1999) and failed on the first day. So it just means that HK knowingly sells faulty products. Well, HK is often called a pioneer in various domains. It looks like we are now facing their new pioneering innovation : " out-of factory (customer's) burn-out testing and quality control self-service " also known as Russian roulette. What would an ordinary company (i.e. stupidly sticking to its reputation) do after revelations about inherent problems with their products? Urgently refurbish what is still in their own stock and call out for refurbishing all products with "bad " serial numbers already sent to their distributors?. No, that is for losers, HK does not take such an old-fashioned way (well, they tell that they do but it is just a camouflage for most nervous clients). Instead, HK continues to sell inherently faulty equipment produced in 1999. You would probably say that under some circumstances this may be considered illegal and could provide a solid basis for collective lawsuits against the company (as it recently happened to Phillips for selling inherently faulty PC cd-writer. Yet the old-fashioned Phillips old-fashionably felt ashamed and quickly old-fashionably reimbursed the victims) … No, no I hope that you will not take that in this way and will support technological progress by buying more and more of new faulty HK products.

Guess what is their next innovation under development ? Right, it is "customer's self-tech-service" based on new outstanding HKs "don't-bother-us-and-fix-it-yourself-and-then-go-to-hell" manual, which will replace the old-fashioned warranty obligations. Who will benefit from that ? Of course you, customer: instead of buying .hit for $200 or $600 you will have it just for $100 or for free … of course if buying .hit is really what you want.

Similar Products Used:

see my previous review

Not Much

Much

This CD player uses lower grade versions of the same DACs Linn's CD-12 Sondek uses, the BB PCM1702, albeit half as many of them. What is strange is how crummy the measurements are for the FL 8550. I can only explain it by blaming Harmon Kardon's lousy internal design and layout. Even the brand new HK FL 8370, which uses the new economy class BB PCM1732 single chip Delta-Sigma HDCD DAC, doesn't take full advantage of its DAC capability. I can understand the 1702 being difficult to incorporate (the Linn costs $20,000 to do so), but to add so much noise, distortion, and compression to a single chip design says a lot about HK commitment to quality. This isn't even taking into account the disk recognition problems...

If you want an HDCD player, try the Denon DCM-370. It uses a tried and true, easy to run PCM69 Dual DAC chip, does not compromise its performance, has a better panel layout, and has few reported disk problems. Incidentally, the FL 8370 was designed to compete with the Denon.

A word on the sometimes reported coldness associated with these sanely priced HDCD components: HDCD is paired with 8 times oversampling, which decreases errors and generally increases detail, transparency, and imaging -- exactly what the rest of HDCD tries to do, hint, hint. Anyway, the only way to get rid of the coldness is to either allow users to turn it off when needed (which is not an option here), or to include dithering options. The only players I've seen with dithering options start at $5000. I personally only have a problem with this on a small number of my CD's, and even then, it's usually minor.

Similar Products Used:

Denon DCM-370

PRICE AND SO CALLED CAPABILITIES

NO DISC READING, MESSY SOUND,

Had really very bad experiance with the HK-3550.AFTER 1 month it would not read disc at all.HK service really not its NAME.

Similar Products Used:

ROTEL,PIONEER

Nice styling, good sound, great pricing

Quirky user interface, weak headphone amp

I bought the HK-8550 to replace my trusty old Denon DCD-910
single play unit which started having trouble tracking discs that lesser players had no problem with. The 8550 sounds great, which is what I expected. So did the Denon and in comparing the two side by side I can't say that I hear a difference. That is to say that CDs that sounded great on the Denon sound great on the HK, and discs that sounded bad still do. Any improvements made by the HDCD encoding on the few HDCD discs I own are subtle at best, and the HDCD capability of the 8550 did not enter into my purchasing decision.

My biggest beef with this player is the front panel which is impossible to read in low light conditions and includes too few controls. To select tracks by number you need to use the remote. Programmed play requires two key strokes for each selection and of course also needs the remote. I would prefer not to be so dependent on the remote but in this case that is not an option. On a positive note the remote uses AA batteries which last longer.

I believe that the 8550 has been discontinued and can be found at clearance prices. I picked the 8550 up for $275 on the internet which included 2nd day UPS shipping from the east coast to Alaska. Note that this was a new unit, in a sealed container with full manufacturer warranty.

Overall I am very satisfied with HK-8550.

Similar Products Used:

Denon, Yamaha, Technics

The FL8550 sounds good. It has good resolution; some may find it a little dry. HDCD's sound spectacular through it and I was surprised to find a CD player at this price point with that capability and the dual 20-bit Burr-Browns. It should provide you with many hours of good listening...until it breaks...or won't recognize several of your brand-new CD's...or skips like crazy on a slightly scratched CD that will play without pause on any number of other, even cheaper, players.The ergonomics could also be better. Read the other reviews and you'll hear the same things said over and over. They're not misleading you.
Nice try, Harman Kardon, but I think you're quite a bit left of the bullseye.