Home > Consumer Reviews > Yamaha CDC-697BL 5-Disc Carousel-Type CD Changer

This unit is almost perfect. Great sound with digital optical cable. (a must if you want great sound) Changer is very quiet and stable. The Disc Exchange is a must have feature. It allows you to remove and insert CD's without interupting the current playing disc. (a very nice feature)
Cons:
1. Display is very small and hard to read from a distance. (also led is amber does not match most current electronics which are blue)
2. If you take the time to program tracks to play it does a nice job, but if you turn off the power or it goes into standby, you loose your program. (a real bummer if you have several favorite discs you want to set up a play list and leave them in the changer. It takes awhile to program and the is no real memory)
Resist the temptation to go to Best Buy and by a Sony unit. This is worth the wait.

After checking the internet and purchasing a model locally, which I returned because the changer was very slow and very noisy, I decided to go up a level in changers. The Yamaha CDC-697BL is a good value, fairly quick changing and acceptable amount of noise during CD change.

Unit would not play when I received. Amazon sent me another one very quickly. Excellent service from Amazon. 2nd unit worked.

As an owner of some Hi-End/Mid-Fi CD players with rave reviews among the Audio community (DENON Universal Deck DVD-2910, ROTEL Reference RCD-1072) I can say that this Yammy doesn't come too shabby. I looked into other 5-disc decks (DENON & Marantz), but in the end this one made the grade.

I was looking for a simple and inexpensive 5-Disc deck for the moments I just load up a bunch of discs and listen casually while doing other things (attending guests at home, parties, reading, etc). Anything but critical listening. I was dumbstruck by the audio performance and sheer quality that this "cheap" deck pulls out of my CDs. The built-in D/A converters are pretty darn good if I had to rely on them, but it gets better if you use it's optical digital output to feed an outboard D/A converter (like the one in my flagship receiver), and makes this deck a helluva transport. And speaking of transport mechanisms, this is where it shines the most, it's silent, fast and solid. Lists for 300$ on Yamaha's site, but for the steal-deal special price of 195$ with free shipping from 6th AVE NY, I have to say I feel guilty of theft... but happy.

Want a great CD player for the price of a run-of-the-mill DVD player? Get this deck. Forget about lame-O MP3/WMA discs, it only plays CDs but it does it RIGHT!

This is a solid unit but I had to discuss a problem with the power cable that I received with the unit. The end of the cable that hooks into the back of the player would not sit flush with the hole it hooks into (FYI if you consult the manual some versions of this unit do not have this). As soon as I plugged it in I thought the cable didn't seem to fit. Then the player would not turn on. I was required to finally hold the power cable with my hand so it would stay flush and keep juice to the machine going. I gave up and went to my basement and got out a similar power cable which worked perfectly. This is a crazy problem and I don't know who is at blame but it sent me for a loop. I docked the review of this unit heavily for such a hassle.

As for the machine it works great and helps me listen to many more cds continuously than a single disc player. It changes discs really fast and keeps the tunes flowing. You can also change discs while one is playing which is nice.