Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners OT: CD Mega Changers

With the Axioms to blame, my CD collection is growing. I've just recently started to look at the possibility of getting a CD Mega Changer. A quick search of the forum didn't yield alot of specific details, but there are apparently a fair number of members who have & use these things. It would be great if we could assemble some input, by specific make & model of plusses and minuses.

This is question is really specific to CD Mega Changers. Not really interested in PC based alternatives or DVD Mega Changers.

What about Mac-based solutions?

Hi Ray!

I just talked a bit about my megachanger in this thread. Also, Mark had some input on this as well, here. I'm not sure if this is the type of info you're looking for, but I hope it helps a bit! I thought about going towards more of a hard drive type storage device, like a high storage mp3 player. However, I don't care for the sound quality of them...especially the most popular ipod. I'm looking for other options as well.

I got to tell you though, when ripped with a encoder like LAME at 256bits/sec, and then having the PCM decoded with good DACs like those found on good receivers and pre/pros, the MP3s sound fantastic.

Nothing wrong with my Sony 300 disc changer. I can't imagine going back to all those jewel cases and disc changes.
A DVD megachanger would be nice too, with all the baby videos I'm currently watching.
I wouldn't hesitate to do either, Ray.

BigWill and SonicFox,

What are the good and bad points of the equipment relative to performance. Things like (and anything else you can provide):
- Audio quality
-Reliability of the equipment
-Any jamming occurrences
-Ease of use
-Entering all of the data
-Things that don't work well or aren't available

Any other "stuff" you want to add based on your experiences.

Do you both have the Sony CDP-CX355?

I've got the Sony CDP-RX400 daisy chained with the 200 disc (can't think of the serial code). In short, I love it. No complaints as far as soudn quality, jamming, loading, etc.

However, I have yet to explore its full functionality. As with many things in life, I don't use more than a couple of the features on the Mega Changers. I haven't entered the names yet, so teh on-screen display is worthless. But when I do enter it, I imagine that it will make finding a certain disc invaluable.

Right now, I just push play on random/all and let it go. I have heard songs in the last month that I hadn't heard in years. I remembered why I loved that song, or I remember why I haven't listened to that song in years. I use the daisy chain to avoid the delay in between songs on random/all. Otherwise, it takes about 10-15 seconds to load, depending on where the carousel comes from/goes to in between songs.

A few pointers - make sure that you balance the discs on the carousel. This will avoid a carousel that is too heavy on one side. If this happens, you migth get jams. Keeping the discs spread evenly throughout ensures that the carousel doesn't get thrown out of balance.

Another pointer - make sure you leave plenty of room in between artists or in the alphabet (if you're loading them in any order) so that you can add to it later.

Recently, I loaded in the 10 or so Christmas discs that I have. I labelled them as a group, and press random/all within the group. These days, its nice to come home, turn the Christmas tree on, hit Group 1 on random, and have 10 hours of random christmas music to listen to while cooking dinner, relaxing, doing whatever.

Bottom line - highly recommend it. But make sure that you're up for the time investment that it will take to enter the names of teh discs, etc.

This whole isue came up after reading the initial posts by Sonicfox and Mark. They are what started me thinking. Addtionally, I just got a very nice custom built piece of furniture to store my CD/DVDs (which I mentioned in another post). Putting the two things together, it occured to me that a megachanger would serve two purposes 1) organize my CDs and eliminate the aggravation of handling the CD cases and 2) free up lotsa room for the DVDs in the furniture.

I started with the post here and also did some research on the net today. Seems like the general consensus from Sony CDP-CX355 users, including the faithful here is that the devices are something to have one of for some good reasons, with the understanding of the limitations they have. A much smaller number of folks just complained and a very few had some real problems that didn't seem to repeat throughout my research.

So I'm sitting here digesting all of this at home, looking at the my 10 day old 19" Sony LCD monitor and - AN EPIPHANY!!! When I registered the monitor, I also signed up at "My Sony", a heavy duty "we luv ya customers" marketing site where you can earn points to use in buying Sony merchandise, that is also discounted to about what the lowest internet prices are. Also includes free shipping. So I wander in. Hey, I never signed up for my "Welcome Gift". One of the choices is a 15% discount for my first order of Sony electronics.

My wife wanders over and we find an under the counter clock radio to replace the dead one we have hanging in the kitchen and guess what - there is the CDP-CX355 megachanger. I am going to order both and the 355 will come in right at $140 - a really good price. Also saving about $28 on the radio. Funnny how this all came together.

My decision was really based on the recommendations here in combination with the price. My thanks to all of you for the input.

Ray:

Adrien really hit all the important points.

The frustrations I expressed in the other post are real to me, but I'd have to say that I primarily feel them because I've gotten a taste of how great changers can be. I really would NOT want to go back to using anything less, although I'm the type to have music on while I'm working…if I actually sat and really listened to a disc, I wouldn't mind the single disc player and the handling involved. I want more than eight groups simply because I've seen how good groups can be. I do wish that you could, for instance, have the option to play all "BUT" particular groups. This way, I could shuffle all discs BUT the Christmas group. And, if more than eight groups are offered, I could also direct it to NOT play Classical, or my nature "relaxation" sound effects discs for instance.

I also think daisy-chaining is the way to go, but I'm not sure who else offers this besides Sony. (I've had mine for 3~4 years and so really haven't seen what's out there recently). Again, I don't know who else offers it, but my Sony's take a keyboard input on the front panel- very helpful. Mine don't have the on-screen display, and sometimes I wish they did.

Really, as Adrien mentioned, the coolest thing is to do a shuffle play of "all" or just within a certain group, and hear tracks from discs that haven't been in your disc tray for years! I'm sure many of us have CDs of stuff we like, but don't often make the "A" list when we choose a disc. I think it's a little like having the new Axioms…you rediscover your collection!

OK - the order is placed!! More stuff under the Christmas tree ( and on the Visa bill ).

Hey - a question. In my travels today, I saw something about burning your CDs in an application (iTunes, Nero, Windows Media Player, etc) such that it goes out to the net databases and pulls down the CD info. Then burning the disc gives you CD-Tect CDs and precludes the need to do data entry. How close am I in understanding this?

Ray, I think you will enjoy it. I just hope you don't get one that skips and ruins discs! If you read the reviews at Amazon.com, it seems that these are the most common problems, but I've NEVER come across this (except once a cdr skipped).

Now, if you're like me, you'll need to find a way to store all your sleeves for the cds once you get them in the changer. I refuse to get rid of them...even the back cover. Anyway, I've filed mine in a box with a number corresponding to the slot they're in on the changer.

Ray,

I've heard you can do that as well, but do you really want to copy and re-burn with cd-text every single CD you own? Sounds to be as much, if not more of a pain in the rumpus as manually entering in the information.

I actually prefer having my cd's and dvd's out where I can see them. My wife wants me to get rid of them, but I just can't do it. Sounds as though I'm in the minority.

I think I would have a hard time tossing my jewel cases, but I wouldn't mind having a megachanger. The idea has a little less appeal since the advent of the iPod, but still...

I love my mega-changer. I've got the Sony CX455 and have had no problems with it at all. To get around having to manually enter cd information, and then re-enter it if I move the cds around in the changer. (And avoid the problem of it potentially scratching a disk.) I only put burned cds in the thing. When I burn them, I enable "cd-text" and then the player automatically recognizes the cd title, artist, and track names.

Mary - I did see a few mentions of jamming (not a lot), but also several suggestions that assuring that you have a level surface and several commments (including one here) about loading both sides for balance would eliminate most jamming issues.

Pete - you are correct about the work of burning all of my CDs. However, I only need to do it once, the discs will be pristing (take a look at ringmir's comments above), "cd-text" will be there and I can also protect or use my original CDs in my cars if desired. Again, several comments I saw indicate the Mega is finicky about scratches/smudges, so this might be good preventative medicine.

The burning process also gives me an opportunity to do something I've wanted to do for quite a while AND solve some of the "8 Group" restricition issues. I'll pick off favorite songs as I go and make some mixes that I can put in as one Group.

Andy - what software with "cd-text" are you using to do your burning? Did you try any other software that I should avoid?

My two cents....I have a Sony 400 CD MegaChanger (model?) and I couldn't be happier. Years ago, I had dumped the cases for some of those black binder organizers, but never really like the 'out of sight, out of mind' aspect. So, I ran across an open box deal at BB that was a steal, so I jumped on it. I have since inventoried all of my CDs into a spreadsheet that I keep around for reference. That way, I just scan through the list and see what peeks my interest.

The wife loves the ease of use. I will admit that every once and a while it seems to lock up or get confused, but that's rare and it's resolved by simpe power-cycling. I always chalked that up to the price you pay for an open-box deal.

BTW, I have also ripped all my CDs to my HTPC. However, this changer allows me to go to the source in the main room where my Axioms reside.

The whole cd-text thing is more dependent on the burner than the software I've found. Generally, all newer burners support it. What I do is rip the cd to .wav files using music match, since doing so is lossless. When I rip the .wav files, music match automatically connects to imdb.com and downloads the track names, artist name, etc and saves the tracks with the correct names. Then I use Nero to burn the cd, with the "Use cd-text" box checked. You have to enter the artist and album name when you burn the disk, but the track titles all get written as whatever the file was named. You can configure music match to write the file names using a variety of different styles, I generally go for "track number - song title"

(ie: 1 - Track1.wav)

Provided you've burned the cd like that, when you put it into the changer it will load the info and display it on the screen. If you move cd's around, the old info will remain until you actually load the disk. For instance, if you swap disks 1 and 2, the changer will not realize you've done so until you actually play those disks. So the display will still tell you that disk 1 is the old disk 1, but as soon as you hit play and it reloads that disk's info, it will realize it is now disk 2. This is a slight pain, but significantly easier than re-entering all the information again. All in all I have no complaints about the cd changer except one, which is an unreasonable complaint. You can't move it when it's full. The disks will fall out of their holders if you tilt it significantly and make a big jumbled mess that may interfere with the door opening mechanism. You can move it around on an equipment rack or something, provided you're careful to move it slowly and keep it level, but moving it any significant distance without emptying it first is a risky prospect. The only time mine ever jammed was after I had carelessly moved it into a different room. The jam did scratch up one disk, but not badly enough to make it skip. And I was able to fix it relatively easily (stuck my hand in the player with the door open and felt around for the offending cds.)

I looked into burning all of my discs. I figured that burning 500 or so discs was going to be a real hassle. I wish that I had the time, because I definitely see the long term investment...extra set of discs, just in case yoru player decides to go carnivorous and est your beloved cds, and no future worries re: disc names, etc.

Maybe one day, when I retire and have some time. (circa 40 years)

I had the benefit of purchasing the changer long before my collection reached that size. It's quite reasonable to burn a cd each time you buy one and stick the burn into the changer. I couldn't imagine burning 500 cds at once... Although, I could do two or three a day for a while and eventually fill it up.

That's pretty much where I am - I've got 75-80 CDs. Although the collection will grow, I'm more interested in the convenience, storage and organization factor right now

Oh, well that makes a huge difference. A few nights of beer and CD burning is all it would take to get your collection fully loaded into a mege-changer.

I also have a Sony mega changer (model CX-400) I really like it and don’t think I could ever to back to messing around with jewel cases again! However my computer is hooked into my HT setup and I have all of my CD’s in itunes, so I tend to just listen to my music though itunes these days as it is just quicker and easier, the drawback being the sound quality is not as good.

With bonus typos!

Ahem, typo.

I wasn't making note of any typos you may or may not have had, I was just implying that with several beers... oh, never mind.

The good news here is that 1) the thing is a Christmas present, so I can't use it for awhile and 2) because of #1, I can tackle the CDs at my own pace. I've got iTunes set up on my MAC and my PC, so I can do this at 2X speed.

Man, I wish I'd thought of that when I was ripping my CDs. I tried doing it in both drives in the Mac at one time, but that didn't work so well...

Well, I think I can declare victory. Opened the Sony CDP-CX355 CD MegaChanger on Christmas morning, loaded it and we were off to the races.

Knowing it was coming, I did some pre-work for a couple of weeks prior to Christmas:

1) CDs. I had read that this unit can be finicky and won't play the first track if the disc is a little beat up. The unit will also allow you to skip the first track.

I decided that I wanted to have the CDs available for use in the cars, or as single plays in my DVD player. So to have the CDs available for use and to avoid the "first track" issue, rather than just dump all of my CDs in the Sony, I made brand new copies of each one. Once I pulled the tracks into TOAST (on my Mac), I also pulled over the shortest track on the CD (again) as a duplicate and put it in the #1track position. Took no time at all. Following some good advice I got in this thread (Thanks Andy), I made sure the tray was balanced as I loaded the discs. Once loaded, it took very little time to "skip" the first track on each CD.

The task of burning the CDs was a bit time-consuming, but in adition to the "first track" issue avoidance mentioned above, the process also allowed me to have CDText for each CD, rather than have to enter all of the information using a keyboard.

2) Remote. I set up the MX-700 using a handful of files I got from Remote Central, including discrete codes for On and Off. Made all of my macros and the remote operated the Sony right out of the box. I went back later to tweak, and it's perfect.

So far, I've opted to use a simple 4 column spreadsheet by slot # to keep track of the CDs, but I'll eventually work my way into some kind of a database.

All in all, everything came out very well. Great (and inexpensive) storage solution and I'm already very pleased about eliminating the jewel cases. Thanks for the input you offered and info you provided via PMs.

Ripping cd's..ha.. sounds like quite a lot of damage but I'll just assume it means to (copy).

59 bottles of beer on the wall 59 bottles of beer....take one down pass it around 58 bottles of beer on the wall....

OOOp's sorry...thought I was still in the beer thread.