You Have Nothing to Lose but Your Jewel Boxes
Written: Apr 08 '02
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Pros: Capacity, sound, Slink control bus.
Cons: Size, clumsy interface.
The Bottom Line: I recommend this changer to anyone looking for a convienent way to store a moderately large CD collection.
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| jmsully's Full Review: Sony CDP-CX400 400-Disc CD Changer |
Before buying a pair of these players I owned a pair of Pioneer PD-F19's. I was running out of space in the Pioneers and needed to get more storage, which meant that I needed to get the largest capacity changers I could. Thus my purchase of a pair of these units.
Basic Features
These changers provide all of the basic functions you would expect from a megachanger: disc and artist titling, disc grouping, shuffle play for a single disc, all discs, all discs in a group and all discs assigned to an artist. It also allows you to store a hit list of up to 32 of your favorite tracks.
The player provides both digital and analog outputs, although only an optical digital out is provided. If you wish to use digital connections, your receiver must have a spare optical input. This isn't as much of a problem as it seems since the DAC's in the CDP-CX400 are of very good quality and provide excellent sound.
Since loading and performing data entry on so many discs can be a real chore using the front panel controls or the remote, the CDP-CX400 provides a PS/2 style keyboard connector on the front panel so that you can use a standard computer keyboard to type in disc and artist information. Even with this feature doing data entry on so many discs is a real time consuming chore.
Sony also provides an interesting feature called a delete bank. This allows you to mark the tracks on an album that you absolutely detest and never, ever want to hear. Each time you play a CD with a delete bank, these tracks will be skipped.
Unfortunately all of these features can be somewhat difficult to access because of the clumsy interface forced on the player by jog dials, the number of buttons which can fit on the front panel and the number of buttons which can be fit on a reasonably sized remote. This makes the operation of the changer very "modal", meaning that a lot of button pushing and jog dial spinning is necessary to accomplish searchs or to create a program. In particular looking for a specific disc is time consuming. To overcome this I've placed all of my CD covers in Case Logic folios and labeled them with the slot number. Just flip though the folios, locate the disc you want and punch in the number. This makes browsing much easier. As an aside, Sony used to supply folios with their changers, but no longer do.
Daisy Chained Operation
In daisy chained mode the Sony changers are definitely superior to the Pioneer changers. I found that the Pioneer changers, when daisy chained, had too many limitations to allow seamless operation of the pair as a single changer. The Sony changers allow the disc information from the slave changer to be downloaded to the master. This allows for shuffle play to occur between the two changers, with one cuing up the next disc while a disc is playing in the other changer. This allows for crossfading in between songs (just like a radio station) or what Sony calls "no delay play". Very nice for parties and what not.
Other Considerations, or Size Matters
When considering the purchase of one of these units you must consider the depth of your rack. The CDP-CX400 is a couple of inches deeper than other megachangers. I was aware of this when I purchased the units and had already ordered a deeper rack to accomodate them. In order to accomodate these changers a rack needs to be at least 22 inches deep. Other than that I find that the general appearance of the CDP-CX400 to be quite attractive, with soft blue displays which are reasonably easy to read from 8 feet away.
Construction quality appears to be good, although "tank like" is not a phrase which comes to mind. The remote is a little wimpy feeling and has lots and lots of similarly sized and shaped keys, which is not the best design. I would strongly recommend getting a better remote, perhaps one of Sony's own touchscreen designs if you are going to be a heavy user of the remote.
The Final Solution
There is a product which anyone purchasing one of these changers should know about. The Slink-e from Nirvis Systems (www.nirvis.com) eliminates all of the complaints about the user interface, data entry, poor search and grouping capabilities, etc, etc.
The Slink-e is a microcontroller which allows you interface most models of Sony jukebox changers to your computer via an RS-232 connection. The Slink-e receives commands from your computer and communicates with the changer(s) via the Sony Slink connection on the back of the changer. When combined with the associated CDJ software you get the following capabilities:
* Automatic identification of discs.
* Automatic download of artist/title/track info from CDDB
* Download of available cover art from the internet
* Ability to easily create and save playlists and programs.
* Downloading of title and artist information to changer.
* Control of up to 12 changers.
* Powerful database search capabilities for locating discs.
* Ability to group discs and tracks by assigning keywords.
* Ability to assign preferences on a +20 to -20 scale for up to four attributes.
The capabilities of CDJ allow you to truly get control over a large collection of CD's. Personally I think it is a must have.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 299
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Epinions.com ID:
jmsully
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Member: John Sully
Location: Santa Cruz, CA
Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 1 member
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