umgoblue525's Full Review: Sony CDX-565MXRF 10-Disc CD Changer
After several long months of frustration and several exchanged units and discussions with various people at Sony, its time for my review of the Sony CDX-565MXRF CD Changer. If you want the short summary: DON'T BUY THIS PRODUCT IF YOU WANT TO PLAY MP3 FILES!
I bought this device when it first came out, in fact had to wait on a backorder list for it to become available, and after 3 months it finally arrived. I was very excited to have a 10-disc cd changer that could play regular music cds and mp3 files on normal cds or cd-r or cd-rw discs. Features like display of ID3 tags, 20-second skip buffer, quick disc change, etc, and the little blue display thing looked very cool. Although I would have preferred to have one that was integrated with my car stereo, unfortunately there aren't many choices that fit my car, so I went with this radio frequency connected unit. So this was just perfect, everything I wanted!
First off, let me say that I am a Sony freak, almost everything electronic I have is a Sony and I've never had much disappointment….until now! My first experience was that although it played on your stereo through some off-used radio channel, unfortunately it still required you to take your car's dashboard apart because it doesn't work unless you actually plug in the cable from the cd changer into the antenna input on the back of your stereo. Ok, not fun, but do-able. Then I had it all hooked up and powered it on. Instantly the blue display looked very cool and the font on it looked good too. But I quickly realized that it only displays like 8 characters even as big as it is, so the ID3 tag feature only displays very little if you have files such as: "01-Red Hot Chili Peppers - Other Side" all you will see is "01-Red Ho". But it has a scroll mode, cool, but it only scrolls once when the song starts, not continuosly, blink and you'll miss it. And you may wonder why I have the "01" in the title, that’s because this thing seems to only sort songs on the disc alphabetically on the first few characters, so if you have a bunch of songs starting with artist name, like "Coldplay - " then they will basically play in random order because they all start with the same characters, so I found that putting numbers in front solves the play order problem.
Next you will realize that it has 2 controls, the blue cool looking one with the display, and an infrared (line-of-sight) remote. Unfortunately all you can do with the wired control (the one that you'll stick to the dashboard), is: on/off, track /-, cd /-. There is no way to change the display modes, or select random, or many of the other useful features that unfortunately require the little infrared remote. And since that requires line-of-sight to aim at the blue wired-control, you can't mount that on the dash, will have to have it loose and probably lose it some day. And the blue display looked cool at first during the day, but drive around at night and you might think twice, its so bright, all the other drivers see you as "the blue man" as it lights up your face! But all of these are not the main problems I have with this unit, here comes the good part!
Basically, it doesn't play mp3 files, and has no anti-skip buffer. The buffer might work on normal music cds, I never tried that, but if trying to listen to mp3 files and you hit the brakes, the thing stops instantly and doesn't restart for 10 to 20 seconds, no buffer at all. But even that I could live with, it’s the mp3 ability that I can't live without, and that's the main reason I bought this product.
I still don't quite know what the problem is. It recognizes an mp3 cd probably 80% of the time. And if it realizes that its mp3 then I would say that you'll be lucky to listen for 30 seconds without it playing choppy music ("bloop"), kind of like skipping or something. And probably one out of 20 songs will result in "Error" on the display and it either skips to the next song, next disc or shuts off the unit! At first I thought something was wrong with my files or disc, except that it was one that worked fine on a personal computer. Then I searched for a tool on the net that checked your files for corruption, framing and resync errors in the mp3 file itself, and made sure all files were fine. I'm a software developer by the way so I do know about computers.
Through the next few weeks I burned dozens of cds, different brands, different speeds, different settings, different files, even used 2 different cd writers on different machines. Eventually I went out and bought a Sony personal cd player that plays mp3 files, and EVERY disc that I tried worked. So I was convinced that something was wrong with my device and called Sony, they arrainged for me to send it back at my expense for repair. That made me mad in itself, it was a brand new unit, I didn't like the idea of them ripping it open and replacing parts and sending it back, but I had no choice.
I sent it back and waited 5 weeks for it to return. I was excited, tore my dashboard apart and connected it all up again, something I would get much better at with time. But no improvement, same thing, I couldn't believe it, tried many discs. I had even sent them 2 sample cds and they sent them back with a note saying the discs were scratched and that was the cause of all the problems. I was quite mad and called Sony again, they looked up the repair and told me that the unit they sent back was a brand-new unit, they didn't actually repair mine, at least I was happy about that, I wish I'd wrote down the serial numbers to compare and be sure. Anyway, I arrainged for yet another return and after the usual wait it ended in the same result. I was quite frustrated, so took a break and at least listened to some normal cds on the thing for a few months. Then one day I did find that CD-RW discs worked (95% of the time), amazing, I couldn't believe it, maybe I would put up with that as a solution, although I have tons of other cds already recorded, I guess I'll have to re-record them onto CD-RW discs.
Then one day I searched again on the net for other users experience with this product, and finally found one on epinions.com, and basically his story was quite similar, tried many brands of cds, cd-writers, etc, then one day he discovered that for him if he wrote the discs at 4x speed they worked fine, anything more resulted in "choppy" music. Even though this defies logic as I didn't think the speed that data was transferred onto the cd should matter, should be the same data? But maybe burning slower makes more defined pits in the cd, so who knows? Then I realized that CD-RW discs automatically only record at 4x speed, and those are the only ones that work on mine, yeah, that’s it!! So I recorded a normal cd at 4x speed and tried it, no luck, although suspicously it had less of these skips. So I thought hey, why not 2x speed, as slow as you can record even if it takes an hour. But then I tested it and same result. I tried another 6 cds with various speed options, none worked.
Then indirectly I got in touch with someone at Sony who knows about this product specifically, he said they don't have any issues (supposedly) with it, unless you record multi-session cds with the data session not first, or you don't "close" the session on the cd, or basically several types of recording options. But trust me, I only write single session cds, always close, nothing fancy. I have even tried all of those options in my testing, even tried less files, moved things into folders, smaller songs, everything I could think of but never could get it to work. I have wasted so many cds! And again, every cd I made worked fine in 3 computers and 2 personal walkman like cd players, never a single problem with any of them!
Oh and in all the use of this product, which probably was ejecting the disc magazine like 30 times, not too unreasonable, the eject button sticks quite often, so basically you push it in and it spits it back out, like entering a wrinkled dollar into a candy machine. And sometimes it goes in and you're driving down the road and hit a bump and it thinks the eject button was pushed and the magazine ejects, thus you have to pull over and go to the trunk and fight to get the thing back in. What a pain, what a terrible design.
So I called Sony one last time and insisted to speak to a manager, wanted my money back for false advertising, since it doesn't play mp3 files and doesn’t have a skip buffer, besides the fact that its pretty much a piece of junk! She said all they could do is arrainge for another repair, this time they will pay for the shipping, and she asked to write up my experience and request my money back, which I will now do and hope that either they have fixed the design flaw and I'll finally get a working unit, or my money back. If not, I will sell it on Ebay as a regular cd changer only and recoup some of my costs. Maybe I will never buy new technology from Sony again, wait a few years until they fix the initial bugs.
So, if that’s all you want it for is normal music cds, and don't mind the 2 controls and abbrieviated display, and the 20-seconds to change to the next disc, and other issues, then go for it, but if you want to play mp3 files, forget it! I am very disappointed with Sony on this one…
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