Good general concept, but unit does not operate correctly.

Firmware problem

I have now receieved 5 units, all of which have exhibited the same problems:

* While in “ALL DISC SHUFFLE PLAY”, the unit defaults to CD slot 1 once every 15-25 tracks played.

* If the CD is removed from slot 1, the unit will continue to attempt to read slot 1, and become locked in a “shuffle loop”. (This occurs even though you cannot manually select disk 1 since the unit correctly reads that there is “no disk”.)

* The default to slot 1 also occurs in Artist or Group play mode, even if disk 1 is not included in the Artist or Group, but this seems to only occur for large Group or Artist groupings. (I actually use the Artist file for genre categorization – blues, rock, reggae, etc.)

* Also, while in “ALL DISK SHUFFLE PLAY” using all disks (no Group or Artist mode), the unit will not shuffle to disks numbered higher than 339.

These problems are not immediately apparent to new users as most will place a CD in slot 1, and must notice that Disk 1 is hit an inordinate number of times during shuffle play. Likewise, it may take a while to notice that Disks 339+ are not being hit, given that even 339 disks would give a pretty thorough shuffle play. Many users may not immediately load 339+ disks.

I thought maybe I had a bad production run, but now with five untis with the same problems, this is obviously a design problem.

I’d appreciate any feedback from other others regarding whether you have had these problems or you have not.

Please email: Kirkstites@home.com

Editor: You have removed my prior post regarding this problem. If you have a concern with my criticism of this Sony product, please e-mail me at the above address.

Does anybody know if you can use a different manufacture CD changer as the second linked changer? I want to buy this but I have a Kenwood 200 disc changer and want to know if it will work as the second changer. Sony says no, but I think they just want you to buy their product. Please advise.... THANKS!!!!!!

Great for listening to your music collection at will. Shuffle allows for endless enjoyment of your music, and if you allow different family members to choose the music you load, the jukebox is a real crowd-pleaser. Very nice display shows the name of the CD playing, and allows you to search for a CD. Very attractive unit, and the blue glow from inside gives it a real party feel.

None.

Excellent Unit. This mega-changer will give you countless hours of enjoyment of your music collection that you just would not have otherwise had. Come home from work, select SHUFFLE on the jukebox, plop into your favorite chair, and your music collection is played for you, most likely playing songs from CDs you haven't listened to for years. (There's something almost magical about a machine picking your music for you--it always seems to pick music you may not have picked yourself, but you end up enjoying, usually saying something like, "Gee, I'd forgotten how much I like that song....."

I recommend this machine to anyone serious about listening to music, even if you do not yet have 400 CDs. You can always invite friends over and ask them to bring their favorite CDs, insert 'em into the jukebox, and let the party begin!

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer 6 CD player, Pioneer CD recorder.

Capacity, Title Search, Capacity, Artist Grouping, Capacity

Physical size or unit, CD Information stored with slot instead of by the disc id, design flaws when chaining multiple units.

Having a fairly large CD collection (about 675), I was ecstatic to see that Sony was releasing 400 CD changers. I immediately purchased a CDP-CX450 from Supreme Video and began loading my CDs. A couple days later I purchased a CDP-CX400 to chain to the 450, and this is where I found some flaws in Sony's design.

1) No Optical Input on either unit- If you choose to daisy chain 2 units together, you can only do so via an analog connection. This means that you can not use the optical digital output on the 1st unit, or you will not hear anything from the second unit. This is confirmed in the user's manual.

2) Artist Association is per unit - If you have CDs from the same artist in both changers, you must enter that artist into the artist list of each changer and associate the CD with the artist in it's own changer.

3) Artist Play does not work across changers - Because the system does not associate a title with an artist across the two units, using the artist play will only play the titles for that artist in the 1st unit. In addition, when downloading the titles from the 2nd unit to the 1st, only the CD titles are downloaded, not the artists. This means that once the information is downloaded to the remote, you can not see any artist information on the titles in the second changer. (It is possible that this would be different if I had 2 CX450s, but according to the book, if you are using 2 of them, then you have to turn off 2-way remote capability on the second changer, so I doubt it.)

As a single changer, this is a fantastic unit and a fantasic buy. The only negatives as a single unit would have to be time to change from one CD to the next. Most of this time is unloading the CD and loading the next one into the play position, not the actual rotation of the carousel. The only other negative is the size of the unit. At 21 inches deep, this unit will not fit into most standard audio cabinets/racks.

As for using it with a second unit, I have already listed my negatives. On the positive side, I can finally box up my 675 jewel cases, and have complete access to my collection without loading and unloading discs. The crossfade and no-delay play features are also available once you add a second changer. With these, you can stop worrying about the load time, because loading will take place while the other changer is playing.

Overall, I would highly recommend either of these units, but would say that the 450 is a better buy if you are only purchasing 1 unit due to the 2-way remote.

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N/A

capacity, addtl features

firmware problem!

I'll follow this quick entry with a full review, but wanted to point out (as Blayne did in a previous entry) that Sony sent this unit to market with a serious firmware problem.

In full disc shuffle, the player gets confused and defaults to disc 1 every 7-15 songs. This is irrespective of group selection, etc. I don't consider this a minor problem. My intent is to shuffle among 800 discs (with my two players joined together), and I don't really want to listen to one disc every seven times rather than 1/400 times. If you remove the disc, the unit locks up all together. If you "delete" all but one track, it still plays that single track (even though no songs should be repeated until all tracks have been played).

It's amazing this product wasn't tested more thoroughly before being sent out. I have a call in to Sony and they assure me an engineer will call back within 24 hours, so I will update. Hopefully, there will be a simple firmware upgrade - I don't want to re-enter several hours of disc title input.

The unit has some great new features including Artist entry (which I actually use as genre grouping), and the cross-fade with two units is terrific; but guys, can't we get the basic freaking software checked out before we mass produce?

Ratings will go to 5/4 if they get a handle on their programming; as is, it defeats the purpose for purchase in the first place.

capacity, 2-way LCD remote control, keyboard input

overall unit size, some programming glitches, disc load time

I purchased this unit about a week ago and have fully loaded it with 400 discs. I have come across a few problems, but overall am very happy with the unit. Here is what I have found so far:

The keyboard input works pretty well (there's no way I was going to enter 400 titles and almost 200 artist names using the jog dial input). I used a new HP keyboard that supposedly only draws 75 mA. The keyboard entry did get touchy at times as others have indicated (caps/lower case confusion, missing/dbl entry of characters, etc), but this was only a minor nuisance. Careful deliberate typing generally worked well. A hint on entering Artist names - if your disks are stored alphabetically by artist, begin by entering the artists for the disks at the end of your collection. You need to scroll through the artist name entries alphabetically (to link them to each disc), so if you have already entered the A's, B's and C's, you'll need to do a lot of scrolling to get to artist names that begin with X Y or Z. If you work backwards it will reduce scrolling.

However, be sure to enter all of your artist names that begin with the same letter in ALPHABETIC ORDER. The sort is only by first letter, so if you store "NC" then "NA" then "NB" they will come up in that same order under the N's.

There appears to be a programming glitch with shuffling. If you don't have a disc in slot 1 and you are in shuffle mode, the player will hang when it tries to play disc 1 (which it should not do if there is no disc there). And when there is a disc in slot 1, it seems to want to play it about every 4th or 5th selection. This occurred in all disc shuffle - I didn't notice it in group shuffle play.

The title name scrolling is kind of neat when the unit isn't playing, though it would be nice if it scrolled a little slower - you can't read anything past the first 13 characters since they blow by so fast. I would also like to see the individual disc name scrolling continue instead of scrolling one time and then stopping. It should be able to be turned on or off and left in that mode.

For some reason, Sony appears to have stopped including the booklets to store jewel case inserts and liner notes. If anyone knows where to purchase something like this, please let me know. Or if you have the booklets from the 300 CD models and don't need them, contact me so I can purchase yours. (review@blayne.com)

Otherwise, I am very happy with this unit. The load time is long, but switching from disc to disc doesn't seem too bad. I am looking forward to adding another 200/300/400 changer to the unit in the future. Feel free to write me if you have any questions or resolutions to any problems I turned up.

Similar Products Used:

Sony 5 disc carousels

TV screen display of Titles, 2 way remote, Ease with which Titles and Artists are entered. The 'hit list' and delete bank for also good features.

No ability to enter track data for all CDs.
Takes too long to change discs
Remembers disc info by slot number instead of by unique CD number

Overall I love this player. It has 3 ways to view titles and disc info-on the TV, on the 2 way remote and the display on the unit.
I was able to quickly assign Title/Artist info to my 200+ CD collection.
The search capabilities are great. By disc name, artist name or grouping.
The 2 way remote has been panned by many but I find it functional and a nice extra.
Sony should consider having the player remember CD info by the unique CD number encoded on the disc instead of by slot number. They should also allow the entry of track info for all CDs instead of just the 'hit list' of 32 tracks.
The TV display and 2 way remote make the CX450 a little pricey compared to the CX400 but I considered them worth it

Similar Products Used:

Nakamichi 200 CD changer

400 Capacity, Artist name input, 2 way remote.

Memory loss on some discs

I couldn't wait to get this product and All I can say is for the most part I'm very happy with it. After having the sony dvd/cd player this is a much better unit. You can put in the artist name and title name which you could not do on the other sony player.

Delay time between discs is a little long but you have to expect it when there are 400 cds. This unit is actually less noisy when swaping discs than the other unit I owned.

Follow the advice the other reviewer gave and enter artist names Z-A it will save you alot of time.

Anbody with a large collection of cds can not go wrong with this machine. I am very glad I have it seperate now cd player and a dvd player. Makes life alot easier.

Similar Products Used:

Sony 200 Dvd/Cd Player.

Capacity, Display Modes, Remote

Keyboard input is flaky

I agree with most of the previous reviews. I just received mine yesterday from Crutchfield, and it appears to me that Sony may have gotten a handle on the firmware problems. Mine does not have the disc 1 lockup / shuffle problem.

The keyboard input is flaky though. I'm using a Logitech cordless keyboard that works fine with my Sony Minidisc JB-930, but it has the aforementioned problems when hooked up to this machine... it can get locked into upper case mode, I get multiple characters from one key hit, etc., but again if I type slowly and deliberately it seems to be much better.

It's silly that disc exchanging is so slow, I find that irritating.

Oh well, it holds my whole collection with room to spare, and is much quieter than my old unit.

The TV display thing is kind of lame... the information doesn't all fit onscreen horizontally, and I see no way to scroll the TV display. Not a particularly useful feature for me.

Similar Products Used:

200 disc Sony

the concept

The concept of introducing all data concerning a cd is a bit obsolete, and a direct link through internet with the cddb would be wellcome. Th database limitats of the system are a bit frustrating

I bought this changer a bit more than 1 month ago, and overall, I am pleased with the facilty it creates: no more cd's all over the place.

But to find them back easily once you have introduced some 200 of them is another story. Yhe on-screen display doesn't help, because you do not see all data simultaneously. And because you are not able to introduce individual data for tracks (except with cd-text), searching an individual track is a cumbersome task (e.g. one specific Bach cantate).
As a result, I had to type a list of all my CD's + content.
Not really user-friendly

Another problem (specific to my device?) is that the left analog channel got corrupted after a while: hissing and exploding, so I was forced to use the digital connection.

Overall, the machine matches its specifications, but Sony could improve it a lot.

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none