72 Hours of Continuous Musical Ecstasy
Written: May 13 '01 (Updated May 14 '01)
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Pros: 12 disk capability, track error-recovery system, almost totally skip-free, reasonable price.
Cons: A few mild hiccups.
The Bottom Line: Most of the important features with fairly reliable operation at a reasonable price.
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| eharri3's Full Review: JVC CH-X350 12-Disc CD Changer |
I have not always lived in the twenty-first century. I don't like to admit it to many people, but of course, you're my fellow epinionators, so I feel comfortable sharing these issues with you.
Up until about 6 months ago, I did not own my own computer. Up until about 4 months ago, I had never owned a cell phone. To this very day, I insist on driving a car that allows me to shift my own gears. And... OK, this is the hardest one to share, so promise you won't laugh...up until about 2 years ago, I only bought cassette tapes.
That tape-buying phase in my life didn't last very long at all of course. As soon as I got to college, all I ever saw and heard about were CD's. My ex-girlfriend laughed at my tapes and always used to ask me when I was going to step out of the prehistoric age.(Yeah right, I'm sure they found an old tape-player in cro-magnun man's bachelor pad.)
So finally, I started buying CD's. But I was faced with a problem. It would have been way too costly to buy the CD versions of all my old tapes, and I couldn't just throw away all that beautiful music it had taken so long for me to compile just because I was inntroduced to a new media.
So how could I play both tapes and CD's in my truck?
The solution was, of course, to pick up an aftermarket cassette head unit with built in changer controls plus the changer itself. After an experimental period with one of the cheap rf modulated changers that pipes music into the car's stock head unit using the fm radio frequency, I came to my senses and decided that I wanted my CD's to sound like CD's, not like radio stations. I found the JVC KS-FX 240 cassette head unit and the CH-X350 CD changer at Sears. Both items were soon to be discontinued, so I got them at slight discounts. The changer came to 289$, not including tax.
Installation
Not for the amateur, the installation process, as with that of most changers, is more involved than with the head unit. The easies part is to bolt the mounting brackets to the location where you want the changer and then secure the changer to the brackets. It can be mounted vertically or horizontally.
It's after that that you get to the sticky part. Wiring must be run to the cassette unit and to a power source for the changer to work properly. This part can be tricky if you don't at least have a little experience with installing car audio. It can also be quite hard to hide those wires properly if you don't have the patience to pull up carpeting or perhaps unbolt an interior trim panel or two and then re-attatch it all when you're done. The whole thing took them about an hour at Best Buy. If you have experience with car audio and feel comfortable, give it a try. But if you're just planning to figure it out by reading the directions, it may well be worth 60-70 dollars to pay a professional to do it. In most cases you may even be able to watch so you have a better idea of how to do it for next time.
Ease of use
This thing is loaded with all kinds of cool features that were missing on the crappy Jensen unit I had before it. Most importantly, the 12 disk capability keeps the music coming for dozens of hours at a time. Whereas I used to run out of music by about three quarters of the way through my 2 hour trips from Philly to Baltimore with my 6-disk Jensen unit, I can usually make the trip now with at least a couple of CD's still unheard when I reach my destination. Random and repeat track options are very cool features that allow you to program the changer to either play the same song repeatedly or skip to different ones chosen either from one CD or from any of the 12. The only thing I missed was text labeling, which allows you to record the titles of a number of CD's so that they are displayed on the head unit when you select them. This would keep me from having to scroll through the various disks and play the beginning of each one to get to the CD I'm looking for.
Disk changes are a bit slow. I usually count about 9 seconds, not the six that the product page on epinions advertises. That's still not bad though. I think it's definitely worth the convenience of not having to fumble to change CD's myself while keeping my eyes on the road during long drives, which probably would take even longer. I also wouldn't mind if the eject button were larger and if the sliding door on the front of the changer closed with a more reassuring feel.
One of the things I absolutely love about this thing is that you can mount in anywhere in any direction. With many CD changers, such as my old Jensen unit, mounting them in any way other than perfectly horizontal makes for lots of skips. With this unit, it is almost skip-free whether it's horizontal, vertical, or at an angle. This was especially good for me since I drive a regular cab pickup truck, and the only practical way to mount it was vertically behind the bench seat.
Reliability
It's been almost perfect. In the more than half a year that I've owned the changer, I've had to reset it exactly once for an unkown reason. Other than that, on two seperate occasions, it's been reluctant to eject the cartridge. This may have to do with the fact that the ejection system probably has to work harder to spit it out vertically, or also possibly the fact that on both occasions the cartridge had sat in the changer for a few weeks. Whatever the case may be, currently, and for the most part, operation is trouble-free with just a few small quirks.
Sound quality
I can count the number of times it has skipped in the whole time I've owned it on one hand, literally. That is an especially impressive performance for a changer that rides in a compact pickup truck. In addition to a shock mechanism it has a memory buffer that continuously saves the next few seconds of the CD so that if you hit a bump that interrupts things, it can just play the saved music so that you never hear a gap. The sound is very good, as clear and powerful as whatever CD is playing. It's also very good at playing scratched CD's that my old aiwa single CD boom box could not play without skipping badly. It Plays CDR's without problems but, like many stereos and changers, it will not play CD-rewritables.
Suggested Accessories
I found extra cartridges at Best Buy for about 30 dollars. These allow me to put together 12-CD driving music collections in the house so that, rather than having to take CD's out one at a time when I want to change them, I can just take out one cartridge and slide in another. A CD glove, made of fabric that comes in various shades, is also very useful for those who will be mounting the changer under a seat or somewhere else where camouflage would be useful. I found one that almost perfectly matches the upholstery of my truck, definitely a good thing since it's a regular cab, and the changer had to be mounted vertically behind the 60/40 split bench seat and can be seen when the bench is tilted forward. The glove slides over the changer and allows it to blend with the upholstery almost perfectly.
Overall, this was $289 well spent. The only really bad thing about it is that such a nice head unit and CD changer have me thinking of subs, amps, and various other toys I want to spend my money on.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 289
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Epinions.com ID:
eharri3
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Member: edward harris
Location: Philadelphia, Pa
Reviews written: 198
Trusted by: 83 members
About Me:
Anybody notice all these bugs always pop up right when it's time to distribute earnings?
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