Harman FL8380 5-Disc CD Changer

Surround, surround, surround. Dolby Digital, DTS, DVD-A, SACD, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, Matrix, yadda-yadda. Right? Maybe. Multi-channel audio formats, more of them every day, it seems, are the talk of the audio community these days, and home theatre enthusiasts, affectionately known among two-channel die-hards as vidiots, continue to insist that the days of the dedicated CD player are numbered. The only problem is, the CD players and the people who make, buy and use them haven't noticed. The number of models on the market does not seem to have diminished significantly in recent years, and any audio manufacturer worth his salt still feels compelled to introduce new models regularly.

The basic CD player has not changed much in recent memory. Obsessive audiophiles continue to maintain that nothing but a single-disc design, preferably top-loading, will do since every extra moving part introduces vibrations and affects the purity of the signal. At the other extreme, some people have begun to embrace the giant jukebox-style players that store two, three or even four hundred discs, and the concomitant simplification of life that getting rid of the jewel cases supposedly brings. For most listeners, however, the good old five-disc carousel changer remains the mainstay, and for good reason - it offers a perfect blend of convenience (six hours of uninterrupted music for a party or being able to listen to a hodge-podge of tunes from a few disks without continuously having to get up from one's chair) and tactile experience. For those who choose not to partake of the ancient rituals of vinyl collecting, taking a CD out of its jewel case, putting it in the player and watching the tray slide in with an ever so slightly sci-fi-like air is the closest they will come to the experience of playing a record, or, to put it more simply, loathe as we may be to admit it, most of us like packaging. Five-disc carousel it is, then. The question is, which one?

Personally, I am of the school of thought that any CD player under US $1000 will sound identical to every other, except perhaps to a professional recording engineer, and since there are no changers I am aware of that cost over $1000 (not to mention the fact that paying over $1000 for a CD player would be considered sheer insanity by most people), the point is moot. Sure, a relative high-ender like the ADCOM GCD-700 might have a slight edge over others in terms of detail and transparency that is actually audible by virtue of an extremely high-quality analog section, but at $699, do we really care? So, for those of us looking to spend a couple of hundred bucks on a CD player, what remains is features.

The basic features we have come to expect are to be had in just about any player these days: programmability, random play, ability to change disks while one is playing, remote control (although some entry-level models still omit them for price-cutting reasons). Beyond that, however, there are differences. One of my personal favorites is direct track access - hit a button labeled "5," and track 5 gets cued up and starts playing. Almost every player has this on the remote, but preciously few include it on the front panel of the player itself. Turning once again to the sub-species of homo sapiens afflicted with audiophilia nervosa, we might be induced to look at digital outputs. If you like to copy your CDs to CD-Rs, MiniDisc or DAT, or have your digital-to-analog conversion handled by an outboard converter, there are two interfaced available - coaxial (looks like a regular audio RCA jack) and optical (a square jack usually covered with a small plug). Coax, which is ubiquitous on DVD players but relatively rare on CD players, is reported to produce a higher-quality transfer. I have not had the opportunity to compare the two directly, but allow me to do the unthinkable for a moment and accept the claim.

Finally, we come to an even more rare bird - HDCD. HDCD (High Definition Compatible Digital or High Definition Compact Disc, depending on who you ask) is the voodoo of digital encoding and an audiophile darling. Developed by a company called Pacific Microsonics, the HDCD process, applied at the time the recording is mastered, claims to squeeze additional resolution into a standard, 16-bit, 44.1-kHz PCM data stream. Do not ask me how. To a plain-vanilla CD player, the data looks just like regular CD data, and it is happy to play it. A player suitably equipped with an HDCD decoding chip, however, extracts the extra information from the data stream, supposedly producing better sound at the end of the pipeline. The number of HDCD-encoded recordings is growing slowly but steadily - releases currently available are listed on www.hdcd.com. Inexpensive (under US $500) changers equipped with HDCD are exceedingly rare.

So, assuming we want all these features, the pickings have all of a sudden become very slim. Two models, to be exact - Denon DCM-370 and harman/kardon FL8380. Both retail for US $299, but the HK is more readily available at a discount, typically $249, making it the obvious initial choice. I should point out here that I am being imprecise - neither player includes direct track access on the front panel, only on the remote, but apparently even with the abundance of choices on the market, one cannot have it all in a single machine.

harman/kardon is known primarily for the attractive and upscale industrial design of its components. Somewhat like Nakamichi but at a more affordable price, it tries to imbue its products with a certain amount of outward refinement over the plain-jane black faces of its competitors. The FL8380 is no exception. Its "face" is divided horizontally into two halves. The top is covered with what looks like dark tinted "glass" (actually transparent plastic) with the display hidden behind it. When the unit is powered off, one sees nothing. The bottom half is convex matte plastic, sporting the power button and the headphone jack on the bottom left. Between the two is the disk tray colored champagne gold, straight along the top edge but gently curving along the bottom. A small array of buttons that depress with reassuring solidity is located on the top right. When powered up, the display lights up in soothing blue, and the buttons are backlit in green, including the power button - a nice touch. When in stand-by mode (plugged in but not switched on), the power button's surround turns amber - another nice touch. The appearance of the player is definitely classy in every respect, even somewhat exotic, especially in the dark. It definitely stands out from the crowd, which can be a mixed blessing. If you have "matching" HK components (one of which - a receiver - I am planning to review on a separate occasion) or other components of equal stature, at least appearance-wise, you will have a beautiful system likely to inspire admiring comments from your guests. Otherwise, the CD player is likely to overwhelm the rest of your components and draw too much attention to itself. A small consideration, I know, but if they all sound the same, why not get one that looks good in your specific situation?

The operation of the FL8380 is straightforward and not much different from the bulk of the changers out there. The display shows all the required information - disc, track, table of contents (something I sorely miss in budget DVD players when playing CDs) and playing mode (random, programmed, etc.) - and gives you a choice of time formats (track elapsed, track remaining, disc elapsed, disc remaining). The programming, accomplished from the remote, is about what one would expect - two button presses per track. The random mode is likewise effective, playing two randomly selected tracks from each loaded disk before going on to the next disc. It is non-repeating - the player stops when it runs out of tracks to choose. I observed only one disconcerting trait from the FL8380: upon power-up, it diligently attempts to cue up every loaded disc, and it will not stop until either it finds a disc or realizes that the tray is completely empty. This process cannot be stopped, so if you wish to hear disc 5 and slots 1-4 are empty, you are in for some serious grinding of the mechanism. The mechanism is reasonably quiet, but by no means silent. The remote, on the other hand, is perhaps the most intelligently designed I have ever come across. Large but comfortable, it features big round buttons that are nicely spaced, reminding me more of a good office telephone than a remote. Everything is laid out logically and I could find every feature instantly.

The sound? wait a minute. Didn't we say all inexpensive CD players sound the same? Well, yes, we did, but I did want to try out HDCD to see if I could hear the improvements claimed for the format. The two HDCD-encoded discs in my collection - Alex de Grassi's "Water Garden" and George Winston's "Plains" sounded good, but I cannot say that they sounded better with a straight face. At first, I thought they did. I thought I heard more space around de Grassi's guitar and that it was slightly more forward, more present than on my Pioneer single-disc DVD player, but after repeated listening back and forth on the two players, I realized that I thought so only because I wanted to. There was no audible difference. It is worth pointing out here that the output voltage of the HK is slightly higher than that of my Pioneer, resulting in the same music being louder at the same volume setting, and within limits of sanity and all other things being equal, louder is usually perceived as better by the human ear.

The HK FL8380 is very capable player on its own, but it truly shines when paired with one of HK's receivers. If only the receivers' performance measured up, but that is something I shall have to report on in a separate review. Watch this space. In the meantime, I do recommend the HK FL8380, although not entirely without reservations. If you can hear the improvement in HDCD and/or need a coax digital output - by all means go for it. It is the least expensive option out there. Otherwise, it is still a fine player, but unless you must have the look and feel of HK, the same performance can be had for less money. Onkyo DX-C380, for example squeezes six discs into a standard chassis for a street price of about $170, and with its aluminum front panel (unique in its price range) it exudes its own brand of refinement.

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Associated Equipment:
Loudspeakers: B&W DM 602 S2 bookshelf speakers
Digital Source: Pioneer DV-343 single-disc DVD player
Analog Source: Music Hall MMF-2.1 turntable with stock tonearm and Goldring Elan MM cartridge
Amplification: Yamaha RX-596 stereo receiver
Other: Monster Cable cables, Sanus speaker stands