disc capacity, good sound.

When running through the disc skip mode, the player sometime forgets which way it is supposed to be going and shuffles back and forth, making it impossible to scan for a disc! VERY AGGRAVATING!

Sounds good. Assuming you can get it to play the CD you want to hear. This unit is not all bad though. It seems to have a lot of nice features. The fact that your CD's can be stored IN the player (dust free) and free from potential scratches is worth quite a bit.

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All kinds of CD players, DVD etc.

Capacity, sound quality.

Limited grouping, limited display, Keyboard input.

I basically like the unit with the following exceptions:

- Limited grouping ability. CDs can only belong to a single group. It would be nice to allow them to belong to multiple groups, or alternatively, shuffle-play accross multiple groups.

- 13 Characters is not enough space to store the CD info

- The keyboard input was flakey, but usuable. Key bounce and capitalization errors are common.

Features and sound quality unchallenged at this price (about $260 delivered)

limited display, "Group" feature (see below)

Basically a very good buy. It gives you essentially what it promises: handy access to a 300 CD collection for what a 5 disc changer cost a year ago, with no drop in sound quality. That's pretty great.

In most respects the design has been well thought out. I like the way the player ignores slots that don't have discs loaded. Also welcome is the easy play feature, which uses slot 1 for one-button loading and playing of a new disc. The shuffle mode remembers which songs have already been played even when you stop or turn off the player, which I always wished my 5 disc changer did.

As has been mentioned in other reviews, the display limits your disc labels to 13 characters-- not much, but in practice I've had no trouble coming up with easily ID-able labels that fit. What I miss more is the 'music calendar' display from Sony's other players, which shows you how many tracks there are on the current CD and which one is playing now. The time remaining and time fade features common to non-juke box players also would've been nice.

Quibbles aside, my only real design complaint is with the "Group" feature, particularly with the shuffle mode. CDs can be assigned to one of 8 groups according to category, artist, or whatever you want. The problem is that the player will shuffle either your entire collection or just one group, but not more than one. If, like me, you have classical CDs and don't want symphony movements popping up in shuffle play, you have to put every non-classical CD in one group and shuffle just that group. Too bad. Ideally, you could have groups for rock, rap, jazz, ambient, etc. and shuffle any combination of them. With this player, once CDs are in separate groups they can't be shuffled together unless you shuffle the entire player-- classical and all.

Nevertheless, I'm quite satisfied overall, and would recommend it unreservedly, especially for the price.

Low Cost- great value for price, integration with Sony 2-way remote

Obvious basic features missing.

Just got it, seems well built but has some really dumb limitations that seem to make no sense.
Beefs:
1. No way to overwrite CD-Text - this would have been easy to design-in at no cost.

2. Touted as "Mega Controller". OK but you have to take two steps back in quality and hook up the RCA's because there is no way to pass Optical through the box. Saves a few bucks but dumb nevertheless.

3. Horrible manual. They should hire better tech writers.

4. Only one group per disk & no multi-group shuffle discussed at length by others. Memory is not free but it is still hard to rationalize any real saving by not including such features.

5. Except for the Program mode you cannot remotely select the "Next" CD(when the currently playing CD finishes). Although the Jog dial, which allows you to select the next CD, is the largest control on the box, it has no corresponding feature on the remote!! Anything you select on the remote will happen now.
With 300 CD's and the nice title books, who would NOT want to cue-up the next disk via remote?
Piss-poor engineering with a zero cost saving on this one.

As an Engineer, I understand the need to balance features against cost - and it's true that this is a VERY low margin product, but these features are no-brainers!


Anyway, 3 stars for a good platform with stupid limitations.

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None

Price, capacity, keyboard input, digital out

13-character CD titles, 1 group per disc, non-intuitive advanced controls

Features: It has nearly everything I'd want, but it's not perfect. The keyboard input is erratic, but works reasonably well if you type slowly. Jog dial naming is viable for a few CDs at a time. Track naming would be nice, but that's a rare feature. 13 characters is usually enough for most CD titles, but I'd like more for classical music. I'd also like to be able to make discs a member of more than one group (i.e. group for artist, group for genre).

Connectivity: Lack of digital input might be an issue if you have more than 300 CDs you want fast access to, but I don't, so it's not for me. Lack of coaxial digital out does not bother me either. The Sony Control A1 connectivity is great with my Sony STR-DB930 receiver, I can select a disc by scrolling through an alphabetical list of titles on my LCD remote.

Performance: I don't have anything to compare it to, and I haven't tried the analog outputs, but I have no audio quality complaints while using the optical digital out. The unit has worked flawlessly for a couple of months now.

Look & Feel: Sleek black (unlike those ugly silver Kenwoods, bleah) finish is nice. Lit active group selection buttons are useful. The white dot matrix text diplay is of adequate size and easy to read, but the designations for shuffle/continuous can only be read from a few inches away (I end up changing it back and forth to see what it's set for). The unit feels a little light overall, but it does have a lot of empty space for all those CDs.

Value: Best feature set in this price range.

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None

price; capacity; keyboard port; digital output

no digital input; plastic construction; limited text window.

I don't need to keep over 300 discs so I probably won't worry about how to daisy chain. And now I don't have the constant headache with not finding discs, so we'll actually listen more often. For the cars, we'll burn copies of a few favorites. Disc access is a little slow but I'm satisfied. What others call a "bright" sound I think is true reproduction; I'll let my equipment modulate the sound to my liking. Sony's solution to keeping track of which disc is in which slot (plastic sleeves for CD liners) is not satisfactory. With their wherewithall they could provide a web site repository for downloading my disc info to an Access database which I could print out in a variety of ways.

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After trying one other brand, have used nothing but Sony carousels over the years.

cd capacity , text

number of spaces in text for non sony cd's

had it for a week now . $279 at best buy .
i love this cd player . just replaced my
pioneer 101 disc cd player with the sony .
i have the sony str-de925 reciever with the
lcd remote . the text from the cd player
shows through my remote . i haven't tried
the keyboard entry for text yet but i will
since my fingers are sore from programing
the first 170 cd's

I've had this unit about a week now. Play thru Yamaha and Klipsch Chorus II's. Playback sound quality is outstanding. Sounds better every day, maybe because I haven't used the Choruses for a long time? I wanted a jukebox. Works as advertised, no malfunctions or surprises. Allows you to banish tracks you hate forever even in shuffle play (random) mode. 300 disc capacity is great. Plan to get another unit(possibly a CDP-CX333ES) for master slave setup for 600 disc capacity, when you do this you get "no delay" play between tracks, fade optional. Very flexible (grouping-programming) capabilities. 13 character text. Not cheesy or plasticy at all, typical non ES Sony. Paid $260 thru camerworld.com, what a bargain. No dissapointments at all. Hurry and get one before they're gone! A joy to own. A jukebox 5 plus!

I was impressed with the quality of sound from this unit for the price. It is clear and detailed without sounding electronic. Perhaps a bit bright, but very accurate from all other standpoints.

I am really unimpressed with this unit from the usability and features standpoint. If what you are looking for is a DJ-level CD changer, this is clearly the winner. Otherwise, it's not a great option.

Pros-
HUGE capacity
optical outs
clear interface
good remote
jog dials on faceplate are excellent
Sound quality is very good

Cons-
CD holder mechanism is awful! CDs flop from side to side in carrier
CD text is too limited- no track naming and only 10 chars for each disc title
Construction seems adequate, but overall plasticky feel
Can't open the magazine during playback- this is really inconvieninent

Basically, I didn't have a good feeling about this one. I bought it today and it's going back tomorrow. The text feature is a joke. 10 charaters per disk and no track naming? Give me a break.

Sony needs to address these issues before their non-DJ customers will really like this unit.

I bought 2 of these a month ago at $ 249.00 each through a local dealer and am really pleased. I had a Sony CDP-CX240, and this CDP-CX300 is much smoother and quieter when changing CD's.
I rate it a 5.