schless

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Value Rating
 4 of 5

Used product for
More than 1 year

Price Paid:  $100.00 from midwest stereo wichi

Summary:
Got this unit to mate with my Kenwood VR-4080
It has netnamer, a marvelous Idea with a somewhat poor implementation.
It is connected to a XP media edition PC next to rest of stereo equipment.
it works extremely well with the VR-4080 and has been filled with disks for years now.
I recently got a used (for $10) kenwood 200 disk changer with no netnamer, what a pain in the arse! Although it takes netnamer quite awhile to load and name all the disk - it is dramatically easier and more convieient than writing all that in a note pad.

Strengths:
Netnamer sets up album titles and track names
good sound quality
reasonable (not super fast) loading
relibiable
works very well with Kenwood VR & sovereign
(SL16 control CD from home theatre and SL16 text is sent to the RF remote control from CD through Home theatre)

Weaknesses:
Like they say software is clunky
Kenwood web site no longer has Netnamer available online for download (sucks)

Similar Products Used:
JVC 12 disk

Price Paid:  $165.00 from Good Guys

Summary:
I was in search of CD-changer/Juke box with a ethernet connectivity(may be it''s too early for the audio appliances to feature this :-)) and I ended up buying this exclusively for the feature of RS232 support and picked it up at the local good guys on the clearance. Disc management is great and the system remembers CD-text upto 210 discs even if CDs don''t feature CD-Text. Hooked up the changer to my receiver thru Digital optical cable and the sound is great.

Strengths:
PC connectivity and CD management ability to recognise previously playes CDs on any slot.

Weaknesses:
Kluge S/W, lack of storing user programs, limitation of max of 32 tracks for program play. Display limited to 15 Characters. Atleast 2-line(20Character) would have been lot better. The S/W is OK and there is tremendous scope for improvement.

Similar Products Used:
Onkyo 6-CD changer DX-C730

Price Paid:  $180.00 from Whit by HIFI Centre

Summary:
I hooked this multidisc changer up to my system via optical output and the music sounds great. I am of the opinion that most of the cd reader technology available for the $300 cdn price range is of the same quality. With a 2 year warranty on this unit I am quite happy with it.

Although my cd collection is small, I now have a goal to purchase over 150 new cd's.

Sound is good, play is simple and it fits in my cabinet. The Sony unit was to high.

Strengths:
PC LINK, height, warranty

Weaknesses:
none thus far

Similar Products Used:
Sony 5 disc CD changer

Summary:
I have reviewed this great product previously.About a year has gone by and I have had no problems with this unit. I recently discovered that the netnamer feature is being dropped from this model so I went out and bought a second machine.Knowing full well these units cannot be daisy chined does anyone know how to set up 2 independant playlists with the software provided? If you plugin the second unit the first playlistis shown until you down load titles again which is very time consuming, operating it independantly is no problem but I want to use my computer to run them both. Thanx

Strengths:
Ease of programming music selections

Weaknesses:
Cannot be daisy chained

Price Paid:  $279.00 from Good Guys

Summary:
I have just gotten this prodcut and so far looks really great. I am just writing this review prematurely to alert all as to the PClink (Netnamer) software connection. This process looks really great, but a word of caution:

If the cable is not long enough make sure you get the right cable. It has been posted on this site earlier, that it is a "Null modem" cable or sometime referred to as "PC interconnect" cable. Female DB9 on both ends is a good indicator. If this is not long enough then use a straight pass thru cable as the second cable in the line. However, the most important thing when trying to make connection is to turn on the Kenwood and let all of the disk seeking proceed BEFORE you opene the software, other wise you get a "connect detect" message which can be very aggravating when you are trying to debug your connection.

Other than that the only proble is the software is kind of a cluge. I have NEVER had a Windows program REQUIRE that I use "small font" display setting before the software would appear correctly. A very poor showing for Kenwood, but the software works pretty good and I admire the attempt by Kenwood. Sure beats typing in all the info (allthough not too much of a problem I guess with the remote keyboard)

Strengths:
Ease of set up, PClink (called NetNamer)

Weaknesses:
Manual is not great and it needs a "Mode" switch on the fron panal as this button controls a lot of the features

Similar Products Used:
none really, just old Onkyo 6 pcak CD changer