-it has an optical out so sound quality/resolution can be upgraded with a nice dac (which is ultimately my plan to run it into the optical input of the cambridge 840c`s 24bit/384khz upsampling dac when I can afford one)

-CONVIENIENT and wasy to use.

-decent build quality & sound quality. so far totally reliable and it was 10-12 years old when we got it. mechanically sound.

-having recently heard cd players such as the rega jupiter, cambridge 840c and a sim audio moon the sound quality isnt up to par with these. simply it lacks the analog like smoothness and resolution and soundstage of these players. I feel its marketed to the "average joe stereo buff" who doesnt listen too critically.

-somewhat loud and slow changing cds. it often wakes me up when dozing off to music on the couch. not a deal breaker but worth mentioning.

-takes up a fair bit of real estate in your equipment rack.

-I am unable to find any specs on the dac in this cd player in the manual or online so far. (just curoius to see what its got under the hood)

We got this cdp from the girlfriends brother a couple months ago as a hand me down and it has worked quite well so far. I prefer the sound quality of my yamaha carousel by a little bit I`m pretty sure. The highs can be a bit grainy and in your face on certain recordings I feel. I just seem to have slightly more listener fatigue with this unit than with my old yamaha. I am going to try running its optical out into my new yamaha ht amp which has 24bit/192khz dacs and see if that smooths it out and opens the soundstage up a bit.
It is somewhat loud and slow when changing discs. programming the cds kinda sucked but its cool when its done. This machine reads id3 tags or something because it shows song titles on burnt cds and sony label cds. I am a pretty big fan of how you can program it to skip that one or two songs on a given cd that you cant stand. It has never done anything like drop or eat a disc since we have had it. As for putting discs in backwards and stuff I cant imagine why anyone would try this experiment, it sounds kinda ridiculous.
The thing is huge I had to totally rearrange my entertainment stand to make room for this tank but its so nice not having cds stacked randomly getting scratched on my tv stand.
alli in all its a good machine for its price range and can be upgraded with a nice dac

Similar Products Used:

yamaha cdc 645 5 disc carousel and pioneer dv 353 dvd/cd player.

Easy and kwik access to a ton of music

Pain in neck to label discs, stores info by location and not by the CD's subcode.

I bought this player on a whim on eBay. I got it and left it in it's box, unopened for about 6 months. WHen I finaly found the time to go through my collection and whittle it down to 200 choices with which to load this monster, everything worked without a hitch, great sound, a little long while moving from song to song in shufle mode, but hey see how fast you can rifle through 200 cd's. Not too bad considering. Aside from the slight motor noise when moving from disc to disc, I hated the fact that after you go through the hassle of keying in the title of all your cd's you find that it stores the disc information to the CD's physical location (Slot #) and not a file created for the disc itself. My first changer (way back in 1990) was a Sony 5 disc model (one of the first of it's kind) and it kept memo info stored in memory by disc coding so that no matter where the disc sat, the machine knew what it was. It also stored custom program information about each disc too so you could create a special playlist and sequence for each CD. Ahh the good ol' days. Still and all, it's a great machine and I recommend it whole heartedly. Unfortunately I'll have to let mine go soon, I need more room.

I purchased one of these units exactly 1 year ago after doing extensive research. I was initially hesitant due to problems which I previously had with other Sony components, but for the price I could find nothing with features which came close to the Sony. I am quite glad I gave this unit a try.
It has performed quite well for the year in which I have had it. The sound quality (from the RCA outputs) is exceptional for such a bargain priced unit. I however use the digital Toslink output to connect this player to a digital preamp/DAC which generates sound quality which is limited only by your budget for a DAC! It'll blow your socks off.

As for the negatives, there are a few. I often put a new disk in facing the wrong direction and have to go back and turn it around. Not a big deal. As for eating disks, I have had it jam once. This happened after I moved it in the trunk of my car 750 miles while it was loaded with 200 disks. The unit jammed and I had to remove all the disks in order to find a disk which had fallen out of the tray. No disks were damaged and the player has never done this again. I chaulk it up to my own stupidity for moving it while loaded.

Feature wise this CD player has almost everything you could want. It remembers a one line title for each CD and can group CD into 8 groups which you name with a one line name. You can also lock out songs on a disk which you wish not to hear . . . . This is great for those pop albums which only have 1 or 2 good songs on them. Once grouped, you can listen to all albums or just the albums in a certain group; Shuffle or continuous. The negative is that each album can be in only one group and you can only listen to on group at a time. In other words, you cannot listen to rock and jazz but not country. Its either Rock, Jazz or everything.

All in all I love this CD player and have gained a new respect for Sony through this player.

With 3 kids in the house all wanting to listen to various CD's I felt the changer would keep them from touching all the discs. After six months the player has worked great. Even my six year old can work this player. The features are great, and the sound is excellent. I highly recommend this player, although I admit it's a bit noisy when changing disc.
RJS

I found the other reviews very enlightening... thanks. My CX220 was also dropping CDs and upon opening the unit (easier than returning after labeling 200 CDs!) noticed that the CDs were being delivered slightly low to the cone-shaped pickup unit. An adjustment at the back of the Sony corrected this for perfect pickup and no more mishandlings (but the setting is CRITICAL). The unit works reliably now but this is fairly inexcusable. I had exchanged a Technics linear CD changer (60 CDs) for the Sony partly because of a misaligned laser PU which caused occasional skipping on CDs which worked well on other players. Looks line quality control is slipping across the manufacturing board.

Very reliable and functional.

Noisy, time between songs during all disc shuffle mode.

The CX250 is a great machine. I have owned it for about 6 years and have had only one problem. Don't move the unit with the CD's in it. Like in a car or something. Otherwise awesome. No problems in 6 years. It plays burned CD's. The noise and delay between songs during all disc shuffle mode are minor flaws and you get used to it.

Similar Products Used:

none

I dig this CD player. The sound quality is great, as most CD players are. But what makes this unit special is the ability to have a home jukebox, with thousands of your favorite songs a couple touches away. I have never had problems with the transport mechanism, which is quite fast im my opinion. It is little noisy while transporting, but not niosy at all while playing.
I can't even fathom how this machine could "eat" CD's as mentioned below. It hasn't happenned to me in my 6 months of frequent use. If you dig the idea of 200 discs, then go buy it.

I just bought the Sony Cx250 about 8 hours ago. Since then my life has been a living nightmare. To start off I put one cd in the player with the label facing to the right, then shut the door. The player found the disc without a problem but refused to play it. Instead, the player just shuffled and made whining noises. It then put the disc back in the tray, spun the carousel looking for more discs and found none. "Okay, maybe it's just a fluke," I said to myself as I loaded two more discs into the carousel. I shut the door and the carousel quickly began to spin, finding all three discs I had loaded. It refused to play any of them, then refused to aknowledge their presence in the carousel. I then decided to use the jog shuttle to dial up the disc I had located in slot #78. This was a fatal move. I apparently asked the machine to do way more than it was capable of and it flung the disc to the back of the unit. I opened the front panel and retrieved the disc, then stupidly tried again. This time the unit sent all three disc flying through the inside of the unit, and when I opened the door one of the discs was lying face down on the carousel and the other two were lying in unorthodox positions at the back of the unit. I gave up. The CX250 , and the tuner I bought with it, are going straight back to the store. I refuse to accept an exchange for another CX250. This is by far the worst encounter I have ever had with a piece of audio equipment, and I highly recommend against the purchase of this unit.

I purchased the CX250 because I was tired of changing CDs all the time. Another reason was that my 2-year old had discovered the many jewel cases and decided they make good building blocks. Overall I am quite pleased with the performance of the unit. I have noticed that it is somewhat more sensitive to irregularities on certain CDs than my other player. I have a couple of discs that get caught in a loop at the same points in the playback. These same discs play normally on other players. Perhaps this is due to the vertical orientation of the disc during play. At any rate, I have only noticed this on two of the 200 discs, although I doubt that I have played every track on exery disc so there may be others. The unit is necessarily quite large. Allowing for room to make the connections to the rear of the unit, the unit is 21+ inches deep. I had to make a cutout in the back of my rack to accomodate this behemoth. Its also quite noisy when changing discs.

I bought the new 200 disk unit to replace the older 100 disk unit. Although the sound quality is an improvement, the build quality is a disappointment, and the units remote lacks the ability to scan through titles like the older unit did (via a dial on the remote.) At first the unit internally dropped several disks, then spun back and forth destroying a few precious cd's. I called the sony service line and they told me this was impossible and refused to give me any advice on how I might fix it. Instead of shipping it back to them I opened it up and found several screws that contolled the calibration. I was back in business, but I'll never buy another sony again.