Netnamer sets up album titles and track names
good sound quality
reasonable (not super fast) loading
relibiable
works very well with Kenwood VR & sovereign
(SL16 control CD from home theatre and SL16 text is sent to the RF remote control from CD through Home theatre)

Like they say software is clunky
Kenwood web site no longer has Netnamer available online for download (sucks)

Got this unit to mate with my Kenwood VR-4080
It has netnamer, a marvelous Idea with a somewhat poor implementation.
It is connected to a XP media edition PC next to rest of stereo equipment.
it works extremely well with the VR-4080 and has been filled with disks for years now.
I recently got a used (for $10) kenwood 200 disk changer with no netnamer, what a pain in the arse! Although it takes netnamer quite awhile to load and name all the disk - it is dramatically easier and more convieient than writing all that in a note pad.

Customer Service

not needed
web site no longer has the netnamer software

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JVC 12 disk

PC connectivity and CD management ability to recognise previously playes CDs on any slot.

Kluge S/W, lack of storing user programs, limitation of max of 32 tracks for program play. Display limited to 15 Characters. Atleast 2-line(20Character) would have been lot better. The S/W is OK and there is tremendous scope for improvement.

I was in search of CD-changer/Juke box with a ethernet connectivity(may be it''s too early for the audio appliances to feature this :-)) and I ended up buying this exclusively for the feature of RS232 support and picked it up at the local good guys on the clearance. Disc management is great and the system remembers CD-text upto 210 discs even if CDs don''t feature CD-Text. Hooked up the changer to my receiver thru Digital optical cable and the sound is great.

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Onkyo 6-CD changer DX-C730

CDDB disc info downloading! small size for a mega changer. excellent features

difficult to set up and get PC link software working correctly.

I was really pleased with the changer once it was set up correctly. The digital optical output sounds incredible! For people looking into this unit because of its PC link features, it is definitely worth it. Very useful to be able to control it from the computer and also saves great amounts of time not typing in disc info. NOTE: the cable needed to connect to your computer is a DB9 NULL MODEM CABLE. There discription is a little cryptic in the manual and can leave you confused. That is the type of cable you need though. Great Product. Good job Kenwood!

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older SONY mega changer

Ease of programming music selections

Cannot be daisy chained

I have reviewed this great product previously.About a year has gone by and I have had no problems with this unit. I recently discovered that the netnamer feature is being dropped from this model so I went out and bought a second machine.Knowing full well these units cannot be daisy chined does anyone know how to set up 2 independant playlists with the software provided? If you plugin the second unit the first playlistis shown until you down load titles again which is very time consuming, operating it independantly is no problem but I want to use my computer to run them both. Thanx

PC LINK, height, warranty

none thus far

I hooked this multidisc changer up to my system via optical output and the music sounds great. I am of the opinion that most of the cd reader technology available for the $300 cdn price range is of the same quality. With a 2 year warranty on this unit I am quite happy with it.

Although my cd collection is small, I now have a goal to purchase over 150 new cd's.

Sound is good, play is simple and it fits in my cabinet. The Sony unit was to high.

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Sony 5 disc CD changer

Ease of set up, PClink (called NetNamer)

Manual is not great and it needs a "Mode" switch on the fron panal as this button controls a lot of the features

I have just gotten this prodcut and so far looks really great. I am just writing this review prematurely to alert all as to the PClink (Netnamer) software connection. This process looks really great, but a word of caution:

If the cable is not long enough make sure you get the right cable. It has been posted on this site earlier, that it is a "Null modem" cable or sometime referred to as "PC interconnect" cable. Female DB9 on both ends is a good indicator. If this is not long enough then use a straight pass thru cable as the second cable in the line. However, the most important thing when trying to make connection is to turn on the Kenwood and let all of the disk seeking proceed BEFORE you opene the software, other wise you get a "connect detect" message which can be very aggravating when you are trying to debug your connection.

Other than that the only proble is the software is kind of a cluge. I have NEVER had a Windows program REQUIRE that I use "small font" display setting before the software would appear correctly. A very poor showing for Kenwood, but the software works pretty good and I admire the attempt by Kenwood. Sure beats typing in all the info (allthough not too much of a problem I guess with the remote keyboard)

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none really, just old Onkyo 6 pcak CD changer

internet download of cd text

unbelievable p___ poor software from kenwood

I bought this because of the download feature for cd title and track titles. My first machine was defective as the carousel was out of wack and was very noisy and I feared for some of the rare cds I have. Kenwood Canada was very helpful and advised returning the machine for a replacement and I have not had any problems with the second unit. It took me 6 weeks to get this machine up and running and if it had not been for the help of Kenwood USA sending me new software I probably would have thrown the player out the window. That being said now that everything is loaded I am glad that I chose this unit as there is no way I would want to type 200 cd titles and all the track titles. It is absolutely fantastic to sit at my computer in the next room and have full control of the unit. I too can't believe that other manufacturers are not following Kenwoods lead. Watch for Kenwoods new dvd/dvda/cd/cdr/cdrw/mp3/wma/ and it holds 400 discs!!! I can't wait to buy that sucker,with mp3 compession that unit will hold approximately 3200 cds worth of music. The cd425m only gets 4 stara due to the aggravation it caused me. I only hope that Kenwood has upgraded their software so it no longer gets unglued by the Music Match program.

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Sony changers

The strengths of this CD player are in its flawless operation, random access speed, and CD search by character. There are plenty of categories to assign music to so that sort by type can be very specific.

The weaknesses of this CD player are the software interface. I hope that Kenwood will update the software so that it is not so buggy. Also the other weakness is the quirky nature of the wireless keyboard not knowing the difference between uppercase and lowercase when the caps keys is pressed. Finally, Kenwood's email support is slow and not helpful. They reply with an 800 number to call that is chronically busy.

I owned and Sony CD changer that held 50 CD's and found it not enough for my library. I started looking at Sony's. I was interested in their 400 CD Megachanger until I started reading the specs. You could enter artist or title by hand, no song data. I really wanted a changer that I did not have to input all data by hand, especially in this age of the Internet with CDDB.com. Therefore, I narrowed my search for a CD changer that had a direct link through Internet with the CDDB. I came up with the Kenwood CD-425M.

I ordered the CD-425M from Vanns.com. My first experience with them and it was pleasing. I received the CD-425M and set it up after reading the manual. I was happy with the optical digital output and ran it to my digital receiver. I loaded it up with 190 disks and started playing. Change speed in random mode was quick and relatively quite for a changer. There are 27 categories for music to be programmed under and random by catagory was excellent, no problems. The 8 user files were also great letting me set up custom groups of music favorites for me and my wife. The CD-425M came with a remote, extremely small and no back lighting a bit of a disappointment for a top line Kenwood changer, RS 232 cable to hook the CD-425M to my computer, and IR keyboard. The IR keyboard works quirky. Although it allows me to type in edits from the comfort of my couch and runs every command on the remote the shift key works out of phase. The default is all caps and I have to hold down the shift key to get small letters. This does not always work. On the letters A and B, it defaults to lowercase and I cannot get to uppercase with the shift key. I have to type the A twice or three times and then it mysteriously shifts to lowercase on its own and I then have to backspace deleting all the letters and the A or B will ten write in uppercase.

I couldn't wait to get this hooked up to my PC and download the title and song data. I went to Kenwood's Internet site and clicked away to download the software I needed to run the program. After entering and registering everything Kenwood requested, 15 minutes worth, the Kenwood website spit me out. I went at it repeatedly and after and hour gave up. Frustration set in and I sent an email to their support team. I tried again a couple days later got a message that their website was being upgraded and I would have to wait a few days. A few days came and passed. I finally was allowed to register my product. I made it all the way through and again I yet another problem. This time I the website informed me that my serial number was a duplicate and I should contact Kenwood. They gave their email address and I contacted them. I again never heard from Kenwood. Determined to get the software for the feature I wanted most I went back to their website and tried again. I still got the same duplicate s/n problem. So I bumped up my s/n by one digit and the gates opened. I was able to make contact a couple weeks later with Kenwood support and get the numbers fixed. I downloaded the software, installed it and hooked up my PC to the CD-425M. I followed the directions and clicked on the read all disks button. The changer started turning taking disks in and spitting the out. It read through the first 15 before it downloaded any song data. It bombed three times to a runtime error. I knew that disks worked with CDDB since I play them in my PC. I went into the program, instead of using the read all disks command, I used the read single disk command, and it worked. For the rest of my 195 disks, I loaded the info one at a time. It took about an hour and a half, but was far better than entering all that info by hand. I had to manually enter data for six disks not registered with CDDB.

Despite the hassle with Kenwood WebPages, slow email support, and quirky keyboard, I am very happy with the CD-425M. It operates flawlessly. I have put it through it's paces and it is as advertised. I would highly recommend it to anyone thinking of purchasing a changer with an Internet interface. I just can't figure out why Sony and the other big boys have not figured out how to do the same.

If not for the keyboard problem, I would have rated this a five across the board.

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Sony CD Changers

Loaded with features, full keyboard remote, PC Link to internet CDDB, clean appearance

Second remote pretty generic, disk detection sloppy on CD-R's.

I purchased this unit based on one feature alone, the PC Link technology. No way am I inputting 200 CD's worth of text. For what CD's I had that were CD text (purchased and home burns) the unit worked great. All of the others were no problem to input. The unit connects to your PC via 9 pin serial cable, load the software downloaded from Kenwood's sight, load up a disk and the unit searches the CDDB on the net and downloads the title info right into the player. I loaded the whole player and had all the text inputted in just a few hours after unpacking it.

The unit comes with 2 remotes, one a simple standard remote, the other a full keyboard similar in size to that on a laptop PC. Text can be easily inputted or modified via the keyboard rather than using the standard remote like a phone pad. I honestly haven't used it much since the PC Link is such a pleasure to use, but having 2 remotes (technically 3 since the player can be controlled from your PC as well) is handy, there is always one near by.

More or less common features on mega changers include various random play modes, user definable groups, basic groups based on music style, etc... again all configurable from a PC. Build quality is decent enough, the transport itself is very quiet but like most changers the carousel is a bit noisy when switching disks. Analog RCA and digital (optical) connections are on the back of the unit with basic player functions and jog dial are on the front. My only beef with this unit is that some CD's (mostly home burns) don't detect every time when the unit is powered on. This may be a result of using a few cheap CD-R's. Other than that the unit is quite deep which meant it would not fit in my cabinet, but it does just fine sitting on the end of a desk. For a mass market player sound quality is quite good using either analog or digital connections, even better than playing the same CD's through a Pioneer DVD player. The manual says it can play DTS CD's as well but I haven't had the chance to try this out yet.

Overall I couldn't ask for more from a mega changer. At this price, it's features blow away any of the other models from Pioneer, Sony, Technics, and Yamaha. I just wonder why Kenwood has been the only one to come up with an idea like PC Link technology, it seems like the logical thing to do when managing 200+ CD's. It sure has made life much easier, and as I said to start off, this feature sealed the deal for me. Some might think of it as a cool toy, but just try inputting 200 CD's worth of text with a 10 key remote, and you'll quickly wish you had bought the CD-425M.

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