Displaying CD-Text is a good idea, but the implementation is lacking.
Written: Aug 17 '01
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Pros: Nice display, no problems with sound quality.
Cons: Flip-down face, inefficient use of space and buttons, lackluster CD-Text implementation.
The Bottom Line: Promising features but poor implementation makes this unit hard to recommend.
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| trimaniax's Full Review: Sony CDX-C680 CD Changer |
My first review here, let's see how it goes.
When I was looking for a CD player for the car, I chose the CDX-C680 because mainly I was looking for a cheap receiver that was able to display CD-Text. This unit fit that need, but for reasons I will explain the CD-Text feature proved itself to be less than useful.
In order for the unit to display CD-Text the CD you are playing has to be encoded with CD-Text information, obviously. Unfortunately, very few pre-recorded CD's include that information. So in order for the CD-Text feature to be useful, you have to be lucky and own quite a few CD-Text encoded CD's or be able to produce your own CD-R's with the CD-Text included (or hook up a minidisc changer which I did not do). Well, since I produce quite a few compilation CD's on my home computer I figured I would be fine. Not so however. For some reason the unit would not read CD-R's created on my Plextor 8x20 CD recorder. No amount of fiddling with settings would solve that. Later on I eventually purchased a TDK VeloCD 16x cd recorder, and fortunately the CDX-C680 has had no problems with the CD-R's created with the TDK unit. SO finally I was able to create my compilation CD's and play them in my car unit and display CD-Text. However I still was not satisfied.
Once you are lucky enough to play a CD with CD-Text information encoded other problems present themselves with this unit. For one, the display is limited to about 8 or 9 characters for the track titles which is awfully short. This wouldn't be a problem if the unit continuously scrolled the track titles, but it doesn't. It does have an Auto Scroll feature, but this only scrolls the song title once at the beginning of the track. This would also be a big problem if you create compilation CD's and like to name your titles using the Artist - Song Title convention. More than likely you will be staring at an incomplete artist name throughout the duration of the track.
Another problem is that the CD-Text information takes up the space that the track number and elapsed time takes up on the display. So, if you are looking at CD-Text information you can't see at a glance what track number you are on or the elapsed time of the track. This is a shame since the unit has a place for displaying a clock in the top left corner separate for the track information display. It would have been nice if that clock information could have been replaced by the track number and elapsed time while the unit is displaying CD-Text (especially since the clock seems to lose time at a pretty fast pace, about 7 minutes every month in my experience).
There are still a couple of other problems I have with the unit. The CDX-C680 has a great number of station presets, 10 as a matter of fact. However these buttons are not used while a CD is playing it would have been nice if the station preset buttons provided immediate access to CD tracks, i.e. press button 5 to go directly to track 5. The unit even includes a shift button so you could possibly have access to 20 tracks instantly, however that is not the case. Also, the unit contains a "lever-like" control for skipping to the next track which I don't seem to like as much as a regular button. The unit also doesn't have a Scan feature which is useful when you want to be able to "radio surf" without having your hands on the unit. I'm also not a big fan of the flip-down face for inserting CD's. It gives more room to display information, but makes things more difficult for the task of removing and inserting a CD (especially at night).
Well, I hate to dwell on the negative but as you may have noticed I'm not a big fan of this unit. The fact is though that despite the problems I mentioned above the unit performs fine as far as sound goes. I haven't had any complaints in that area. Also, the unit handles radio reception adequately.
All in all, this is an OK unit, not great. I'm sure there are much better units out there for the same, if not less, price. The search for an easy to use car CD player continues.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 299.00
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trimaniax
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