Summary:
We have both the XC-30M and its successor, the XC-35M. Not much difference, but the newer machine does seem to load a bit faster with a tad more finesse. Upon loading 5 CDs, you can select which disc and which track you want it to play while the drawer is still closing; elapsed time before the sound comes out, including drawer-closing time: 15 seconds. That's going to be too slow for some, but remember, this is a pretty full-featured machine that can be had on sale at Best Buy for $100 even, and unlike the similarly-priced Technics machine on the shelf next to it, the Aiwa comes with a remote.

We also have minidisc, which is one reason to want the optical out (no Toslink cable supplied, however). The Aiwa can of course be programmed across discs (any track from any disc in any order), and if you're making cassettes instead of minidiscs, it will compute the best track arrangement to fit onto whatever length cassette you tell it. It will play the tracks for side 1, politely pause while you flip the cassette, then play the tracks for side 2. Nice.

Can it play discs with horrifying scratches caused by disturbed children playing with Xacto knives? No, but it can handle reasonably defective discs without skipping or groove-locking. Better than the portables we've used, even with their shock buffers on. Not as good as our old single-disc Sharp, though.

If you have bat hearing and can hear the sound of individual electrons tripping over crystalline boundaries in your speaker cables, you probably won't like the sound of the digital-to-analog converter in the Aiwa, because it just doesn't cost enough. People with bat hearing also spend a lot of time in dark, cavelike conditions and will therefore complain about the overeager display, which does do a certain amount of, um, flashing. The rest of us will find the unit's dual 1-bit DACs sound just fine, and our solution to the whackety-whack sounds that disc-changing makes will be to put the machine in a cabinet in our audio furniture and think of ways to spend the money we saved on fun audio toys. In short, a heckuva deal.

Strengths:
most features for money; cheapest CD player of any kind with an optical out

Weaknesses:
noisy, somewhat slow disc change (improved somewhat on XC-35M); display is, well, exhibitionistic

Similar Products Used:
XC-35M, many portables from Panasonic, Sony, Aiwa, GPX

Summary:
eh...
cheapest cd player i could find with an optical out for creating MD mixes.
it works, but the display is annoying as hell: way too many lights plus
way too many lights that blink for no good reason. also, this player makes
a terrible, horrible, un-necessarily loud, unforgivable, in-excusable,
teeth-grating racket when moving on to the next disc.

a horrible changer for those who like to escape from reality with music, because between each disc, you are reminded that you dumped ~$100 on a crappy disc changer only because it had an optical out...

sound-wise: i'm sure it's just as good as all the other low-end players

even the optical out doesn't bring this up to a 2...

Summary:
Fine product for the bucks (it is after all just a CD player -- bits are bits, all else being equal -- spend your money on loudspeakers or CDs). One annoying feature is that the disc button (1-2-3-4 or 5) and play button flash during play (probably some naive designer thought this was ~kewl~). Easy to use. Not too big for a 5-CD unit. Has optical digital out jack. Large remote (two "AA", not included) but easy to use. Decent contruction from the outside. Includes RCA patch cord. Bought from Best Buy -- a fine place to get CD players.

Summary:
Bits may be bits but a DAC converts those bits to analog, and a bad DAC is not a good DAC. This unit has the optical digital out so you could just bypass the onboard DAC. Not to say that this unit has a bad DAC, just that you could use this as a transport (and a transport is a transport).