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Review 2 of 4
Price Paid:
$40.00
from my friend Summary:
At first glance:
I bought this CD changer from a friend of mine for about 40 bucks, he didn't need a changer at the time and he just didn't like the bulky thing, so he sold it to me at a dirt price. I am not a fan of big mega-changers because of the general size and slow loading, but I bought it just to say I have it. I took it home and the first thing that struck me about this CD changer was the size, it was so deep that it almost couldn't fit into my 18-inch deep cabinet, even with the back open! The Kenwood CD-423M 200-disc mega changer came with a remote, a cheap RCA cord, and a control cord for compatible receivers that allows the CD changer and the receiver to function as one unit. The front panel consists the usual controls for a CD player, a small jog dial for scrolling through 200 CDs, and the door pops down by gently pushing on the door itself. The back of this changer was simple, consisting a set of RCA audio output, a set of control in and out, and a optical digital output.
Listening:
The Kenwood CD changer had a dual 1-bit D/A converters for audio, so basically this CD player sounded just like any other CD players or changers in the normal consumer-capable price range. I switched between analog and digital connection and I couldn't hear any difference in sound quality, although digital had a lower hum and noise floor than analog(possibly picked up by the analog cord, but I use AR's twisted pair interconnect which is quite good). Now the reason why I didn't really stress about sound quality was that most people buy a mega-changer like this one was for the convenience and easy storage, so let's move on to that.
Using the product:
As I had stated before, this CD changer has a few little and medium design flaws. First it is the slow disc loading, every time I turn on the unit it cycles through all the slots to see if there is a CD in it or not, so that takes about a minute. Forget about random disc play, the pause between discs will be long enough to stop a party, unless everyone is intoxicated enough to not to care. Second is the noise, this CD changer makes a lot of noise while cycling through CDs, and I can very well hear the loading and unloading of a disc, this can be a real annoyance or a good simple "disc in tray" notice, depending on what you like. Third is the disc naming, the function is only on the remote so if you lose it, you will have to buy one from Kenwood if you want to use this function again. Forth is the small disc jog dial, if I want to say, go from disc 100 to disc 200, I will have to twist the small knob many times to get there. I could just use the remote instead, but they should of just make the dial larger which is not so hard. The last and the biggest flaw is the way a CD has to be loaded into the slot, I used to own a Fisher 60-disc changer that has a nice mechanism that push the disc out of the disc tray and into a front slot, so unloading a disc is a breeze, and the slot also serves as a guide for the disc to go into the appropriate slot easy and fast. The Kenwood has no such function so I have to manually put the CD into the disc tray, which is closely packed, and I can easily unload more than one disc by accident, since I have to use my finger(or nails) to pick out the CD. Maybe such a mechanism on a big changer will make the unit even larger, but it sure will be nice to have one! I haven't experience any undesirable operation from this unit, such as jamming and CDs go out of its slot, but you never know.
Conclusion:
The Kenwood CD-423M is a nice mega-changer, although it has a few design flaws that makes operating this unit more complicated, to me at least. Strengths:
200-disc capacity, typical sound quality for a CD player. Weaknesses:
Very big, slow at changing discs, design flaws here and there. Similar Products Used:
Pioneer DV-333, Pioneer single disc player, Fisher 60 disc changer, Sony PS2, Xbox.
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