Tag : cx450 400, changer, sony cdp, cd mega

Company : Sony List Price : $479.99 Amazon Price : Used Price : Average customer review :

Features

• 400-CD megachanger with onscreen display that puts disc information on your television
• Artist name search for quick and easy access to the CD you want
• Memo scan displays titles by slot position and searches alphabetically
• PC keyboard input for easy text entry
• MegaStorage control for a second CD changer

Amazon.com Product Description

If you’re serious about music and no longer have room for all of your CDs, the Sony CDP-CX450 400-CD Mega Changer may be just the ticket. It holds 400 CDs and also has the ability to connect a second CD changer that can be controlled through the CDP-CX450’s controls and remote. This Mega Control feature can eliminate lag time between tracks with Sony’s No Delay Play and X-Fade Play functions. No Delay Play means that when switching between CD players, the other player starts play without a break in sound as the current player ends play. Take advantage of X-Fade Play to change tracks between players at specified intervals (of 30, 60, or 90 seconds). As one player stops and the other starts play, the sound is mixed seamlessly from one player to the other with a fade out and a fade in.

The CDP-CX450 recognizes CD Text discs as you add them into the player, and will store the CD title and artist name, allowing you to search by artist and CD later. For non-CD-Text discs there is a keyboard entry option, so you can quickly and easily enter disc information via an externally connected keyboard (not included). A video output connects to your TV, so you can search through CD information in text on your television screen (in addition to the backlit LCD display on the changer), making it even easier to find and play your favorite discs.

The Easy Play feature lets you instantly play a disc you just added to the changer with the touch of just one button. Other features include shuffle, repeat, and track programming for up to 32 steps (tracks or discs). You can create custom files using the keyboard input, or create up to eight group files to sort your CD collection into categories, which you can then use to play by genre. A Hit List feature will store up to 32 of your favorite tracks, so you can always listen to your most frequently played tracks easily.

What’s in the Box
CD changer, remote control, 2 AA batteries, 1 audio cable, 1 video cable, user’s manual, and warranty information.

Customer reviews

Nice but significant usability flaws
I have owned and used the CDP-CX450 for a few years now. I recommend it with reservations, because I feel that there are substantial flaws with usability. I chose it over the competing product from Pioneer Elite because the Sony holds 400 discs whereas the Pioneer Elite only holds 301. If I had known then what I know now, I would probably have bought the other one, and if I needed more capacity, I would have bought two of them and linked them together.

You use the jog dial to peruse and select discs. The title and group that you have assigned to the disc are displayed on the player. The TV displays the title and the artist name for ten discs at a time, always in the sequential order in which the discs are physically placed in the player, i.e., you cannot re-order the listing according to disc name or artist name. You can scroll ten discs at a time on the TV display by using the right/left buttons on the navigation pad that is under the remote control’s flip cover. If you engage group mode by pressing one of the group buttons (or by selecting a group via the remote), discs not in that group will be skipped, and on the TV display, the discs not in that group will be “grayed out”. You can divvy up your discs into as many as eight groups, but because you’ll do this according to type of music, you’ll still have many discs in your favorite groups, and these perusal methods just aren’t useful for finding the disc that you want to play.

The remote control gives similar perusal capabilities to those that I have just described, using the “Easy scroll” key of the remote together with the LCD display on the remote. Additionally, you can press the “Name Scan” button on the remote, which will cause the titles of all the discs (or the discs in the group if group mode is engaged) to automatically scroll through the display on the player, in the sequential order in which the discs are physically placed in the player. You can stop that at any point and play that disc, but this is still a slow way to find the disc that you want to play. A much better technique is to press the “Name Search” button on the player directly. This is similar to using “Name Scan” on the remote, except instead of the titles scrolling in the sequential order that the discs are physically placed, they scroll in alphabetical order. Additionally, whereas “Name Scan” on the remote scrolls the titles at a fixed rate, when you use “Name Search” on the player, you control it with the jog dial. This technique works reasonably well as long as you know the know the title of the disc that you want to play, but isn’t useful if you want to peruse the titles by a specific artist.

If you know the title of the disc that you want to play, the remote control provides a more direct way to find that disc. Press the Menu button, and then use the “Easy scroll” key to select “Name search” from the menu. You then use the “Easy scroll” key to scroll through the letters of the alphabet plus the ten digits, and you select one of them by pressing in on that key, and then similarly scroll through the disc titles that have that letter or digit as the first character of the title. This is also a good technique, but still assumes that you know the title of the disc.

For me, the natural way to find the disc that I want to play is to begin by selecting the artist name, and then peruse the titles by that artist. The capability that comes closest is the Artist Mode. From the player, you press the “Artist Mode” button. You use the jog dial to scroll through the list of artist names, and when you find the one you want, you press in on the jog dial. That engages Artist Mode, which changes the behavior of the perusal techniques that use the player’s display (including the “Name Scan” button on the remote), so that titles not by that artist are skipped. This capability is useful, but is hindered by the fact that it is tied in to the Artist Mode. The Artist Mode capability is intended to give you a way to play multiple discs by the same artist, with tracks shuffled if you like. You can use it to facilitate finding and selecting discs by a specific artist, but as soon as you select an artist different from the one currently playing, the disc currently playing stops, and the player commences playing the first disc by the other artist that you select. This is aggravating when you want to peruse titles by a few other artists before making your selection. You may wonder if it is possible to get around that by using Program Play, but the answer is no, because you cannot use either Artist Mode or Group Mode in conjunction with Program Play.

You can also engage Artist Mode from the remote, via the menu and using the Easy Scroll button. It works similarly, i.e., as soon as you select an artist different from the one that you are currently playing, the disc that you are playing stops. But you can’t control the rate at which you scroll through the alphabetical list of artist titles the same as you can with the jog dial. After a while that becomes annoying and you wonder why you cannot select the artist name by first selecting a letter of the alphabet in like fashion as when you use the “Name search” capability of the remote, which is also driven from the menu and uses the file cache that you have downloaded into the remote control. Beyond that, you wonder why there isn’t a similar capability to select an artist name instead of a disc title, and then peruse titles by that artist without stopping the play of the current disc until you press the play button.

There are other nit-picks. The player itself has a second large knob below the jog dial, a little smaller than the jog dial, which you can use to step through tracks. But if you want to fast-forward or fast-reverse within the present track, you have to pick up the remote control. You can also push that knob in, and the fact that the text “PUSH ENTER” is printed below it, causes you to wonder what effect that has. The user manual doesn’t mention it, and I was unable to discover any effect through experimentation.

If you are getting the sense that this player has a lot of perusal capabilities that overlap in functionality and that don’t fit together into a coherent, logical user interface, and that don’t quite manage to give you a good way to peruse titles by a specific artist, then you have the right picture. It is an enigma. For comparison purposes, I downloaded the user manual for the Pioneer Elite player. It has a much simpler remote control, which has a button labeled “Search”. If you press it once, you search by disc title, or if you press it twice in quick succession, you search by artist. Either way, you use the keypad to enter a letter of the alphabet, which is done in a manner typical of entering text from a numerical keypad, and then you use either a pair of keys or the jog dial to scroll. Unfortunately, those instructions do not reveal whether, in the case of artist searching, you select an artist and then scroll through the titles by that artist. But in the unlikely event that you have to scroll through all titles by all artists sharing the same letter for first name, doing that from the jog dial would not be bad, and at least it won’t interrupt the play of the disc that is currently playing, until you press the play button.

indespensable
i do not yet own the cdp-cx450, 400 or 455. nor have i ever had occasion to use one. but i am a long-time owner of 2 cdp-cx300s (i will be upgrading to the 400 disk versions soon), and felt compelled to review sony’s line of ‘mega-storage’ units as a whole.

there have been some very valid complaints about some of the features (or lack thereof) that come with these units. and there have been a lot of positive comments made. i dont really feel the need to reiterate what several people have already said. whether or not you’ll like this product, simply put, is going to hinge on how it is used.

this might not be the unit for you if:
-you want to change or rearrange the cds in it every few weeks
-you have limited space in your stereo cabinet
-you hate having to wait more than a few seconds when listeing on shuffle (the mega-storage features might make getting 2 200-250 disk changers better for some folks than getting 1 400 disk changer)

i havent run into problems with any of these things. i generally leave the same 550-600 disks in mine for 6 months to a year, and listen to them on shuffle, taking advantage of the mega-storage features.

would it be preferable if you didnt have to type in all of the disk information whenever you change anything? yes

are these units more valuable and useful when used in concert with another? absolutely

might it be better if you could fast-forward or rewind through a song (>> or <>| or |<< buttons cant do that, which shows how small a problem it has been over the past several years)

all in all, i’d say that anyone who has A LOT of CDs they like to listen to (and not just 1-2 songs on each… the whole CD) will love these units. but if you cant use the features, or need features that it doesnt come with, obviously it would be a mistake to invest in a Sony Mega CD Changer.

Love it but…
You can only put in 99 artist names - on a 400 disk changer, this is a BIG limitation. Don’t know whether daisy-changing another unit gives you 99 more names or not (hope so). Also, wish it let you input longer file names, and had space for track listings. Otherwise a great unit! But don’t toss those jewel boxes, otherwise you’ll have a hard time knowing what’s playing sometimes.

It is almost all it claims to be
I love this changer. It holds 400 CDs and can be linked to all of Sony’s CDX line to gang multiple changers. A great selection of group and artist features.
In shuffle mode, the change over between tracks seems to take a bit longer than seems right, but if you gang two units Sony claims the crossover can be cut to zero. I’m looking forward to testing that out. The remote is great once everything is programed into the main unit and that’s the only real problem. This baby comes with a keyboard interface and that certainly makes data entry easier than loading 400 cd titles in using the jog wheel. Unfortunately, the keyboard does not entirely replace the front panel controls. In order to enter artist information, group information and change modes, the front panel is still needed. The keyboard is limited to text input only.
A small gripe, but I think Sony could have come up with a way to use the keyboard for all the functions, not just text entry. I hope that by the time I need a second unit they will have addressed this nit-picky item and I’ll have to call this unit perfect.

Toss those jewel cases!
This is a great piece of equipment–rid yourself of those annoying jewel cases forever! The ability to organize discs by title and artist is excellent. The ability to connect multiple players in series means that you’ll always have space for more CDs. Initial set-up is easy–getting all of your disc information input is difficult is hard, but worth it. I agree with the other reviewer that wishes for a track listing feature–but who would spend the days required to type that all in anyway? Incidentally, on discs encoded with CDText (mostly recent titles from the Sony music label), the title and track text listings are read automatically.

My strong recommendation is to go for this more expensive model CDPCX450–as opposed to the CDPCX400. The 400 and 450 are identical except that the 450 comes with a remote control that features an LCD screen on which you can see all of the information about the discs in your player. The 400 comes with a plain vanilla remote control–the added user-friendliness of the 450’s remote control is definitely worth the extra money! In my opinion, the only reason to buy the 400 is if you connect it in series with the 450, or if it is used purely for background music–where the user is not worried specifically about what is playing, rather is interested in playing a wide variety of discs at random.