I reluctantly purchased this player in mid '97. Reluctantly because I had a Sony HiFi VCR that broke within a month, then shortly after that my barely 2 year old Sony cassette deck developed a audiable wow and flutter problem. When shopping for a CD changer, I wanted a carrousel model with features to make recording mix tapes easy, a digital output, delete programing, and non-repeating random (shuffle) play. The only other player I could find that fit my requirements was a H/K. When I tried programming them, the Sony was the only one that could keep a running total of elapsed time with multiple discs. The H/K did have a coaxial digital out, which I prefer, but the Sony had more useful features.
The disc change time is annoying, but this player has too much going for it to let that rate as a major problem. It is one of the few players that doesn't put a pause in between consecutive programmed tracks (unless you program it to do so). This is important for songs that fade into each other. The peak search works quickly and is fairly accurate, and the timed recording and timed fades work more logically than other players I've tried. Delete programming is cool. I can't imagine not having it now, not only for deleting songs you don't like, but also for discs that have numerous blank "tracks" like Nine Inch Nails' "Broken" which has 8 songs, but the track sequence is 1-6, then 98,99. The disc naming is a feature I wasn't looking for, but now that I have it, I think it's worth having. As far as CD Text, well, I have in excess of 400 CDs and not one of them has it. Even the post '96 releases on Sony Music I own don't have it (Sony invented CD Text).

As far as its sound, I don't use the internal DACs except on rare occassions when I do a timed fade (usually I do this with my recorder's level control). Compared to my processor's DACs (20-bit Burr-Brown) the sound is both sonically and spatially compressed, but not bad when judged against competing machines.

The Mega-Changer interface is a feature I don't plan on using (you think the disc change time is long on this machine!). I would gladly give it up for a S/Pdif coax out, but then again the differnce between optical and coax is too small to give up some of the great features of this machine. I think this player deserves a 5 on features, but true to (Sony) form, I've had a QC problem. There is a harmonic distortion that occures via both the analog and digital outs. Fortunately it has only occured perhaps 5 or 6 times, and is easily cured. I just have to hit stop and then play and it goes away. But this doesn't bode well for the longevity of this machine. Even so, I still think it is worthy of a 4 rating.

As far as features go, this player has a lot going for it. Rotary track skip knob impressive - why hasn't this been thought of earlier. Jury's out on CD text as I only know 1 CD which has the format (best of George Michael).
It takes FAR too long to change discs which is inexcusable considering this is Sony's top line changer in the consumer electronics class. I timed it and it takes approximately 15 seconds. A friend of mine has a Yamaha CDC-665 which manages to swap disc 1 to disc 5 in less than 7 seconds.

Sound quality is usual sony standard. Bright and lush. There are other multi- players out there that may offer more detail (NAD, Harmon Kardon) but if sound quality is the primary concern, buy a single player instead.

3 stars

This model is impressive in terms of features, but it also had some downfalls that made me eventually return it. I bought it for $229, which is almost too low end of price for me, but the Sony's Elite Series players still haven't caught up to the 215/315/415/515 models in terms of new features. This is the top of the line carousel player in the Sony's consumer line.
It features Sony's latest jog dial track selection, which is great. It also features disc memo and delete-track file memory for up to 172 discs (not enough in my opinion). It has some impressive disc programming capabilities as well. Feature-wise, Sony can be quite impressive, however the following two factors made me think otherwise:

1) This model along with all other Sony carousel CD changers have the extremely limiting and annoying feature of only allowing you to put in one disc at a time. This can be quite irritating when loading the player up for the first time. Quite simply, the tray doesn't open far enough! Other brands allow the tray to open to load 2,3 & 4 discs at a time. To my knowledge, only Sony limits you to 1.

2) The disk change time is appalling. When switching between two discs, this model takes around 12-15 seconds to begin playing the second disc! Even the CE215 performs faster than this! I did some benchmarking on several brands and models and this was the slowest of the lot. One should be able to expect a carousel to be able to switch between discs in under 8 or 9 seconds. Believe me, for a person with a huge CD collection, that extra 5-6 seconds of waiting can really add up.

Overall, a nicely feature-laden model that is undermined by poor performance and lack of usability when loading numerous CDs.

Mike