Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony CDPCX455 400 Disc MegaStorage CD Changer

I am a professional musician and have an extensive CD collection. In spring 2001 I purchased the older Sony CDP-CX 400 and it has worked beautifully ever since. I love it. NO problem. My CD collection grew and I decided to purchase another 400 CD changer in late fall of 2003. By then, Sony had "upgraded" to the CDP-CX455. I bought it and "piggy-backed" it with my older CDP-CX 400.

I am as unhappy with the newer model as I am happy with the older! The older model allows you to classify your CD's using 3 different criteria: CD name, artist name and by up to 8 different groups. It's very flexible. But the newer model only lets you classify the music by CD title and artist.

But, ok, I guess I can live with that. What is FAR WORSE is that I have had to have the unit either repaired or replaced 3 times for the same recurring problem, which is that the artist file info for individual CD's will change arbitrarily or disappear altogether. As I type this, I am preparing to search for the documentation of the 1st 2 repair/exchange jobs on the unit to fax to Sony. After that, I'll be boxing it up YET AGAIN to send to Sony ONE MORE TIME...all within 13 months from the time I purchased it.

There are other companies making "CD Jukeboxes"...do yourself a favor and check them out.

If you really like to have all your music & cds handy, this is a great tool. In order to have control of what's stored, you must have control & order.
This is what I did. I did a list with all the cds, so I know where each one goes. I separated the cds into category, ex 1-99 rock, 100-249 trance, 250-299 latin, 300-349 jazz, 350-400 rap & hip hop. This is how I have it now, and it works fine.
Let's talk about the features. One of the downsides, is that the screen is not big enough! Also, no ffw or rewind buttons on the player - you must use the remote control for this.
I like the feature of the mp3s, they play nicely, but you can't really ffw or rewind mp3 tracks very well, it's duable, but not as easy as regular cds.
I like the fact that you can arrange cds into groups and artists, that's very cool. I haven't used programming or shuffle very much, so I'm not familiar with those.
It's got a digital output in the back, as well as the regular RCA outputs.
I like it. I wish it had a ffw and rew button on the player itself, I wish the loading time were less but it's not too long.
You must have control & have order before loading the cds, if not you'll have a hard time finding your music. I do recommend labeling the cds with a keyboard - very nice touch, but screen again, not able to display many characters.
It works very good so far.

I've never had any problems with this model scratching discs. Some of the fuctions don't operate the way you wish they would, but these are minor setbacks.
The highlight of these players is the "no delay random" function. Connect two players together hit a couple of buttons and you are set for days.....weeks of non-stop music. Sometimes it will play the same song twice in a matter of a couple hours, but this is rare.
It is true that to pick one song you may have to wait about 15 seconds for the disc to start playing, but it's worth it to have 400 cd's in one player.
I've had similar sony players over the last 10 years, with no problems at all. If you're worried about the player ruining your discs; buy one, put one disc in it and let it play for a while. You can always send it back if it gives you problems.
This player is worth the risks the other reviews speak of.

I read previous reviews, and am a bit puzzled by the negative ones. We've owned one for three years, and its performance has been flawless. I did have to resort to setting up a Microsoft Access database to keep track of the CD collection, but that's not difficult. It takes some work to organize and maintain any type of filing system; CD changers are no different. Not one of our CD's has been damaged, BTW.

We're planning to buy a second one.

jw

It had gotten to the point where I rarely (if ever) even bothered playing my CD's any more. Don't get me wrong, I love music, I love it a lot, but when hanging around the house it was decidedly easier just to switch on one of the music channels on my Dish Network system, kick back and listen to their selection of tunes through my surround sound system than it was to get up and down to load and unload my CD's one at a time from their jewel cases and into my five-CD changer. I got tired of getting up and down, tired of taking them in and out of their jewel cases and tired of un-shelving and re-shelving same. I was tired of having piles of loose CD's stacked all over the place gathering dust while waiting to be put away, tired of the rows and rows of jewel cases taking up valuable wall space and, well, basically just tired of the whole thing. I'd priced home CD jukeboxes when they first came out a number of years ago and decided then to wait until the prices came down and the storage capability went up. Seems my waiting has paid off. In spades! After some Internet research (and in SPITE of some rather negative reviews I found there) I decided to take a shot and make my move on the Sony 300 disc changer. Once at the store I decided that for the extra few bucks they were charging, I'd go with the Sony CDP-CX455 400 disc CD Changer/Player instead. I've got to tell you, I simply could not be happier!

I have 250 plus CD's, some of them dating back to when CD's first came out. All of them, even the old, old, old ones that spent years sliding around on the floor, getting dropped behind the couch or piled one atop the other for weeks at a time, play flawlessly. ALL of them. Initially organizing things and then loading up the unit took more than a few hours to do but in the grand scheme of things, it was more than worth it. I'll never have to touch my CD's again! Like, not EVER! Prior to loading, I alphabetized my entire collection and numbered them accordingly, leaving sufficient numbering room between letters to accommodate future expansion of my collection. Corresponding gaps were left in the units CD slots so when I buy new ones I can just slip them right in without moving any others or missing a beat. I gave each CD a good cleaning (BOTH sides) prior to loading them in, which no doubt accounted for a good portion of the time spent during the loading process, but highly recommended nonetheless. Think of it this way. Do it this one last time and you'll never have to clean
them again. Not EVER!

Once the unit was loaded, I was up and running, enjoying music, MY music once again, in minutes. If you've read some other online reviews, (not here, by the way) you've read people complaining that they couldn't monitor the unit through their TV, that they couldn't go online and download lists of songs and titles and that it was hard to enter titles and song names and hard to program playlists and the caps lock stayed on and Mommy, Billy won't stop looking at me make him stop it and blah, blah, blah-bitty, blah, blah. Hey people, this unit also won't wash your clothes, walk your dog, cook your dinner or send a man or woman to the moon but hey, that's not the freakin' point here, is it?! Read the box! Read the instruction book! They never SAID you could monitor it through your TV or download album and song titles into it from the Internet or from Sputnik XXVII or from atomic radio beams shooting through the ethos from Planet Exlaxx in the Myylar Constellation. It is what it is, it is a CD jukebox for the home, reasonably priced, and it does what it does, it stores and plays your CD collection. Flawlessly! You wanna program yours to play only every other Wayne Newton or Liberace song in your collection the title of which begins with the letter "Q"? That's your business, (you sorry little trooper, you) I mean go ahead and knock yourself out, but c'mon, lighten up! Sheesh! Don't go getting cheap on us, here. You've spent less than three hundred dollars for a unit that stores 400 CD's for totally hands-free play, a unit which stores and plays them flawlessly and you're whining and moaning because it won't program this or that or wax your car or pay your bills online without ever having to pay postage ever again. Am I gonna program mine? Nope. No way. No need. I'll either hit random play on one (or all) disc(s) and I'll pop me a cold one, kick back and enjoy. If I want to find one particular album title to play, am I gonna type in all the titles with a keyboard? Nope. Not a chance. Instead, I bought two 200 plus storage capability CD wallets, (each one way smaller and way lighter than say, a phone book when full) I took all of the liner notes and song lists out of the jewel cases and numbered them up and loaded them into the wallet pages in alphabetical order with gaps between the letters just like I did with the CD's themselves. As I buy new ones, I'll just slip them into the blanks, no harm, no foul. It's kinda like when you play tunes on a juke box in a club. You leaf through the artists, most times not knowing what you wanna play until you see it. If you DO know exactly what song you want, that's easy too. If I want to play, say, "Liberace Live at Senior City" (I won't, but let's say that I will) I'll open up the book, quickly flip to the "L's", note the corresponding number, punch it in on the remote and then listen to my songs without ever leaving my chair or putting down my beer. THAT'S the point here. No more jewel cases. No more slipping and sliding on a CD-covered floor, no more getting up and down (and up and down and up and down) and no more cleaning or re-shelving my CD collection. I've already given the CD racks away. I've already trash-canned the jewel cases. Free at last, free at last, my CD collection is free at last! Thank you, Sony. From the bottom of my song-filled heart, thank you.

Is there a down side? Sure maybe, one, if that, but it's one I can live with and one that you can live with too. This is a large unit. It's tall and it's wide and most of all it's deep. Big-time deep. Did it fit in my Audio/Video rack? Yep. It was a close call but it made it in and the glass door still closes without me getting out the Sawzall. If it didn't fit, would
I still have bought it anyway? You bet I would have. Con mucho gusto I would have. I would have bought it and then I would have either modified the old rack to make it fit or I just would have bought an entirely new rack that it would fit in and I would have smiled as I spent the money on the thing. Do yourself a favor, Boys and Girls. A BIG favor. Buy yourself one of these things TODAY. I assure you, you will not be disappointed!