Great Place to put all your Music

I personally like Sony, I have had several components over the years, and I have never had a problem with any of them. The trend with the components that I have is that I want to get the latest technology, and the older components don't cut it... so I end up getting a newer one. And not for any malfunction.

Pros
The reason for the 400 Disc Changer is that I have over 300 CDs, and I was continually going to the rack that I store them on, and putting them on my 5 Disc platter player. I found that I had music that I wasn't listening to just because I couldn't be bothered to change out the CDs.

The Sony CDP CX455 takes a bit of time to get it loaded. But once there, the nice thing is you really don't have to touch it. I also created a spreadsheet of all the CD's (Artist & Album), and when I have guests over I just give them the printed list and tell them to select what ever they want to listen to. I'm not subjecting my guests to looking through a huge rack of CD Jewel Cases! Total Bonus on this one.

I also like the MP3 playback, if you have the ID3 tag on the MP3 it'll display the album and song title in the text area (more on the text area in the Cons).


Cons
The CD Text is a bit misleading. Sure you can enter in the text of the CD, with the Keyboard input jack on the front of the unit. However, in +95% of the CDs, the text doesn't exist on the CD, so you get no text. But really, who wants to sit down in front of a CD changer and start keying the Artist and Album, PASS! I can think of better things to do. The ability to connect the CD Changer to a home network and have the CD changer go out to CDDB and grab the album name and Artist shouldn't be that difficult (hint to Sony).

The setting up of Playlists. This is painful. This involves going to every CD that you want on a limited number of Playlists and selecting it... in some cases track by track. Ideally having an Ethernet or Home network connection and then sending the unit a Playlist would be Utopia (another hint to Sony).

The time between CD changes is a bit slow, but nothing that is unbearable.

Ok, before you even think about buying this unit... look at the specs. The box is huge... think about it, you have to put 400 CDs inside it. It has to be huge. The depth is a whoping 21+ inches. Make sure that you MEASURE the space you have for a CD player. This unit is larger than 70's style Amps and Receivers.


Overall
I like the CD changer, and I'm keeping it. The sound quality is excellent. I really like the fact that I took all my CD Jewel cases out of my living room, and put them in storage. I also like the fact that I can listen to any song in my library of CDs at any time. There are a few points that I think could make the unit a "Dream Machine", but at the price point, I think it was great value. For me the thing that makes it work, is that I have a list of all my CDs (1 page), and I can just refer to that. Some people want to put the Jewel Case sleeve into a binder. Its your choice, but the 1 page list works fine for me.