Sony CDP-CX455 400-Disc CD Changer
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- Inputs: Analog Audio x 1
- Device Type: Changer
- Playable File Formats: MP3
- Number of Discs: 400
- Outputs: Analog Audio x 1 Digital Audio Optical x 1 Headphone Jack Analog Audio (Variable) x 1
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Stunningly inadequate
Pros
Holds 400 discs
Cons
Doesn't alphabetize, Can't label songs, search by name or turn on Mega Control from remote
Recommended it?
No
The Bottom Line:
This product is a 400 disc version of a 5-disc CD changer, rather than the CD-collection organizing database, container and player it really should be.
I bought this unit assuming that its software would be at least as sophisticated as my two-year old mobile phone. It's not.
The entire point of this product should be to give someone with a large CD collection a way to organize it, and to free the user from any longer having to bother with jewel cases or disc inserts. It does hold 400 CDs, but otherwise fails that mission completely.
Here's why:
1. You can label each disc with artist and title. You can plug in a PC keyboard to do this. It annoyingly defaults to caps lock on EACH NEW ENTRY. And you are limited to 20 characters for the title. Worse, the readout on the front of the unit can ONLY SHOW 13 characters at a time. And unlike its predecessor, this unit has no video output circuit to display any of this information on a TV set. This forces you to abbreviate. It also doesn't let you see, say 10 or 15 CD titles at a time for page-up/page-down scrolling, which would be mighty useful in a product intended to help you manage 400 CDs.
2. The unit will not let you manually label names of songs. It does read and show song names on discs that were factory encoded with CD Text. But only 5 percent of my CDs have CD Text, as I've been collecting them for 10 years, which is WHY I own 400 of them. This means you have to keep all your CD leaflets handy in a gigantic binder or maintain a shelf full of jewel cases or memorize the playlists of all 400 of your discs. These are exactly the jobs that I bought this device to take off my hands.
3. Once you've inserted all your discs, the unit slavishly displays them in the slot order in which you inserted them. Even my mobile phone automatically alphebetizes my contact list for me, knowing that the order in which I entered them is random and that electronics are supposed to organize things for their users. The Sony unit should also provide search options for "most played" disc. There IS a crude name search, but you have to use the front panel controls to perform it. THAT'S RIGHT, you can't sit on your couch and dial up a certain disc by name. The unit expects you to scroll through 400 discs from the remote to find it, or stand up and walk to the front panel of the unit. When you get there, you can search only by the first letter of the title, so you are still in for some disc-by-disc scrolling if you have 35 discs that start with, say, "M." I bought this unit NOT TO HAVE TO FLIP THROUGH MY DISCS ONE BY ONE. I should be able to type a partial title in from the remote, a-la mobile phone (2 key has ABC, press once for A, twice for B, etc, or, hey, they could put a full-alpha keypad on there) and it should throw up the closest match on the display. When I see the one I want, I hit enter. But it doesn't.
3. Cluttered remote control. Buttons have two or three labels; operation is not at all intuitive.
Here's how Sony engineers should overhaul this product: Give it a video display circuit so that I can plug it into my television. Then write a nice little software routine like the one my cable box has that lets me scroll through the TV schedule grid and select the program I want. In this case, scrolling through the list of available discs with all the songs on them, I could use page up and down keys and/or arrow keys to select the next song or disc to play. I could jump to a certain disc by entering title. Or I could use it to program a playlist of the next 30 songs, for a TRUE in-home jukebox. Preferably, the next unit should be Internet enabled like the compaq ipaq music center. Then, it would be able to scan through all the discs you inserted and search an online database for the title, artist and list of track names, automatically attaching them for you. And solving all my problems above.
This one's going back to Best Buy. Save your money. The technology is nowhere close to ready yet.
The entire point of this product should be to give someone with a large CD collection a way to organize it, and to free the user from any longer having to bother with jewel cases or disc inserts. It does hold 400 CDs, but otherwise fails that mission completely.
Here's why:
1. You can label each disc with artist and title. You can plug in a PC keyboard to do this. It annoyingly defaults to caps lock on EACH NEW ENTRY. And you are limited to 20 characters for the title. Worse, the readout on the front of the unit can ONLY SHOW 13 characters at a time. And unlike its predecessor, this unit has no video output circuit to display any of this information on a TV set. This forces you to abbreviate. It also doesn't let you see, say 10 or 15 CD titles at a time for page-up/page-down scrolling, which would be mighty useful in a product intended to help you manage 400 CDs.
2. The unit will not let you manually label names of songs. It does read and show song names on discs that were factory encoded with CD Text. But only 5 percent of my CDs have CD Text, as I've been collecting them for 10 years, which is WHY I own 400 of them. This means you have to keep all your CD leaflets handy in a gigantic binder or maintain a shelf full of jewel cases or memorize the playlists of all 400 of your discs. These are exactly the jobs that I bought this device to take off my hands.
3. Once you've inserted all your discs, the unit slavishly displays them in the slot order in which you inserted them. Even my mobile phone automatically alphebetizes my contact list for me, knowing that the order in which I entered them is random and that electronics are supposed to organize things for their users. The Sony unit should also provide search options for "most played" disc. There IS a crude name search, but you have to use the front panel controls to perform it. THAT'S RIGHT, you can't sit on your couch and dial up a certain disc by name. The unit expects you to scroll through 400 discs from the remote to find it, or stand up and walk to the front panel of the unit. When you get there, you can search only by the first letter of the title, so you are still in for some disc-by-disc scrolling if you have 35 discs that start with, say, "M." I bought this unit NOT TO HAVE TO FLIP THROUGH MY DISCS ONE BY ONE. I should be able to type a partial title in from the remote, a-la mobile phone (2 key has ABC, press once for A, twice for B, etc, or, hey, they could put a full-alpha keypad on there) and it should throw up the closest match on the display. When I see the one I want, I hit enter. But it doesn't.
3. Cluttered remote control. Buttons have two or three labels; operation is not at all intuitive.
Here's how Sony engineers should overhaul this product: Give it a video display circuit so that I can plug it into my television. Then write a nice little software routine like the one my cable box has that lets me scroll through the TV schedule grid and select the program I want. In this case, scrolling through the list of available discs with all the songs on them, I could use page up and down keys and/or arrow keys to select the next song or disc to play. I could jump to a certain disc by entering title. Or I could use it to program a playlist of the next 30 songs, for a TRUE in-home jukebox. Preferably, the next unit should be Internet enabled like the compaq ipaq music center. Then, it would be able to scan through all the discs you inserted and search an online database for the title, artist and list of track names, automatically attaching them for you. And solving all my problems above.
This one's going back to Best Buy. Save your money. The technology is nowhere close to ready yet.
