holds 301 discs no more jewel cases. best sound I have heard from a mega changer. 10 groups and 50 favorites is better than Sony's 8 groups and 35 favorites.

Power button cuts off the power to the memory circuits...DUH! Remote is kind of puny. This thing is BIG you may have to buy a new cabinet or stand.

Bought mine from www.reference-av.com, good service, great price $349.

I have it hooked up to my NAD 740 receiver, PSB 2B speakers and a Pioneer PDR-w739. I have a second set of outdoor Bose speakers to the pool.

BAD NEWS FIRST:
1. First of all if you buy this you better find a good place to put it is 17.1 inches deep, 18.1 inches wide and 7.6 inches tall. I had to buy a new rack.

2. The engineers must have been asleep when they designed the power button. If you use the button on the unit to turn off the power the memory goes bye-bye. You have to use the remote to power the unit off. That stinks! I am considering returning it. I called the pioneer people and they have no intentions on changing it and they say the new Elite PDf-27 does the same thing. I placed a sticker on the unit button that says NO!! to deter anyone from pushing it.

3. Some times the keyboard locks up and I have to unplug it and plug it back in.

THE GOOD STUFF
1. This has the best sound of all the mega changers I have heard. The sound is almost as good as the Pioneer PD 65. The sound is better than the Sony es 400 disc changer I listened to.

2. Since it is pioneer not sony it works great with my CD recorder. The syncro function is cool. But if you are a minidisk guy buy the sony.

3. Memories are awesome 10 groups and 50 favorites versus the sony 8 groups and 35 favorites.

This thing makes my pool parties and cookouts great.

The only reason I give it the 4 overall is because of the memory problem.

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Have had Technices single disk player, Pioneer 6 disc changer and Sony 10 disc changer.

Excellent sound. Good looks.

Memory loss!

I purchased this unit in November 1999. I have been very pleased with the sound performance. The player began having memory loss problems after about two months. HAS ANYONE ELSE HAD MEMORY PROBLEMS WITH THE PD-F19? It "forgets" the "best" tracks and will not remember the custom titles for some (but not all) of the custom groups. It has not lost the disc or artist titles, but it has "forgotten" which groups they go in several times. I understand that the lower priced Pioneer 301 disc changer has had many memory problems. I believe that the Elite has the same "memory circuits" as the lower priced model. My PD-F19 is in the repair shop now. I'll write a follow-up review when I get it back.

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JVC CD player / Pioneer CD recorder / Toshiba DVD player

300 disc convenience, quiet, digital coax output!

Loses its memory! poor ergonomics on the remote

Overall this is a good unit, but the volatile kotex memory really pisses me off. Other than this, it has been a reliable unit with no problems for the past 20 months. The internal DAC's are pretty good for the dough, but now with a better outboard, I by-pass them.

At the time this Elite was the only 300+1 unit on the market except for the standard Pioneer unit (and maybe some kilo-buck units).

If Pioneer cures its Alzheimers ailment, I'll upgrade to the Elite DVD/CD changer. In the meantime, I just use an Excel spread sheet for artist/title selection (which works pretty good).

If it wasn't for the memory issue, I'd give it 5/5.

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Sony 200 disc unit

Style,Performance,Quality

Remote!

After doing excessive reading(reviews) and listening to similar priced units,I settled on the Elite 300 disc player.I was very pleasesd with my choice.Looks,style,and ease of operation were first rate for a model in this range.Many audiophiles might not want to dismiss the sound quality of this unit to quickly,as some have done in other reviews at this sight. I know for a fact, the DAC,s used in this unit are of high quality audiophile grade standards,and not the el-cheapos used in other large capacity changers. You dont need to use an outboard DAC to get great sound! I have this hooked up using the analog outputs,(otherwise you bypass the DACS in the Elite)I wonder how many people Know this? Hooked up to my Marantz and bypassing any DACS in the Marantz,I was impressed with the smooth,transparent sound stage,and beautiful accurate tonal quality.The Legato Link Conversion in the Elite model adds a warmth and engaging musical experience which gives music a percieved 24bit characteristic.In comparrison,my Toshiba offers HDCD using a Pacific Microsincs Chip,yet,I feel the Pioneers sound is better. Granted,the speakers,and amp you use will also effect the sound. However,overall I was greatly pleased with the audiophile-grade sound in this reasonablly priced model.Another triumph in the Elite Line!

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Marantz Sr-96THX Receiver,Toshiba DVD,CD Transport,Pioneer Elite CD-07D Tape Deck,Eosone Tower Speakers,PolkFX surronds.

Holds lots of discs
Smooth and relatively quick disc changes
Good looks

Remote is small and poorly labeled
Firmware is not well thought out

When my aged, 10 year old, Sony changer began to act up I realized that I would need to get a new player. As I gazed over my fairly large 500 disc collection I realized that I really only listened to the most recent dozen or so discs which I had purchased. This seemed like a perfect excuse to get a mega changer, actually a pair of them, to hold my collection and allow me to get instant access to any disc.

I did quite a bit of research on what was available. Basically it boiled down to Sony or Pioneer. To my mind the Pioneer had quite an advantage because you could enter both album title and artist name and search on either. Since I already own, and am quite satisfied with, other Pioneer Elite series equipment I decided to buy a pair of these units.

It took a couple of days to load all of my discs in and another day or so to type in the artist/title for each of the CD's. At the end of this process I threw away all of my jewel boxes and got quite a bit of free space back in my rather small living room. Cool!

The PD-F19 works quietly and quickly and shuffles discs with ease. Since the mechanism must be complex, this ease of operation gives me piece of mind and speaks of this being a high quality unit. The problems come when two units are hooked together in a master/slave configuration.

First, in this configuration you are forced to use the analog connection because the unit does not have a digital pass through. This is not a huge drawback in my application as my receiver doesn't have enough digital inputs to support a CD player, just AC-3 RF, LD and DVD inputs. However this should be a consideration if you do use digital inputs. I should note however that the sound of this unit is just fine with no obvious or even subtle flaws when listening using the internal DAC's.

The second major problem with a pair of these units is the software. The software was obviously done by firmware people and so the operation is primitive. While 20 custom groups are available when two units are hooked together (10 per unit) the custom groups on each unit are limited to cataloging discs on the same unit. On the plus side a disc can belong to more than one group. Similarly programs are limited to discs on one unit, a program can consist of discs from the master or discs from the slave, but the two cannot be intermixed. Oddly, the favorite track mode does allow mixing of discs from the two units, so the program and custom file limitations are more puzzling.

I thought, "oh well, those Escient CD changer controllers look really cool and provide far more capability than any CD changer on the market" (see www.escient.com). But it turns out that the Pioneer firmware does not deal with the disc ID code but instead memorized discs via slot number. Since Escient uses the disc ID to automatically build it's database of your discs your are out of luck here (NB: Escient said that they are working with Pioneer to get the disc ID code on the serial bus, but that that would not happen until sometime next (Y2K) year).

Overall I would have to give the software, when used to control a pair of these, a rather mediocre rating. The master/slave model chosen by the designers was not the correct way to model the system and it appears that the protocol on the wire was not flexible enough to allow more creative use of the resources shared by the two players.

So, now that I've spent several paragraphs trashing the system, what do I really think about it? Well, basically I like it alot. After I had loaded in discs in the usual alphabetical order, I reloaded them in a more completely thought out order sorted by genre. I programmed up 18 custom groups and started playing groups in random mode. I have a big and varied enough collection that I can play a type of music for almost any mood and the ability to shuffle discs which had long been buried and gathering dust on my shelves was really a revelation. The search facilities, although limited (you can only search based on the first letter of the title or artist), are easy enough to use and allow you to find recordings fairly quickly. I'm very happy with the unit, although the firmware could have been done much more nicely. The sound is very good, the mechanism is smooth as silk and very quick and they allow me to rediscover a very large CD collection which had been gathering dust. I highly recommend a mega changer to anyone who has a large CD collection and as far as I'm concerned the Pioneer Elite PD-F19 has the nod over the equivalent Sony ES units because of it's significantly lower price. However this only applies only if you are buying a single unit. If I had to make the choice over again I might (after consulting the credit limit on my Visa) buy the Sony, mainly because it will work with the Escient controller.

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Sony C85ES 5 disc changer

Well, it does organize your cd's into cool groups and allow you to access them different ways. Keyboard input's great. Looks okay

The sound is sub-par for the price. I have $400-a-piece NHT VT-2's, a $450 Onkyo 656, and a $225 Toshiba 2108 DVD player. It doesn't seem right that, now, the most expensive component for my stereo listening ($550 for the PD F19) introduces the worst sound. My system is not up too high on the performance end of things, and I don't want a Pioneer Elite product bringing it down any, gigachanger or not. The sound was like someone hit one of those "spatialize" or "wide" or "ambience" buttons you find on a $89 boom box. I lost a lot of the well-defined imaging I was getting with above mentioned components. Unless I find a kick*ss DAC for $200 or so, I'm afraid that, to me, the money spent is not worth the benefits of cd filing and organization. Especially since I have a changer in my car and, when you removea cd, it doesn't tie the cd's name to the cd itself, just the spot it was occupying, and they're tough to get out (understandable with the close quarters they occupy.) Remote too, as others mention. 12 character limit for input text. It would be nice if the scrolling feature that CD Text uses on 12+ Album & song & Artist title could apply to user-input text.

So, I guess I'll be taking it back some time this week. It's ashame, cause it is a cool way of keeping your collection.

Ease of use, convenience, good looks.

Loses memory, poor remote, tracking problems.

After owning this unit for over 2 years, the convenience of use is overshadowed by the occasional loss of memory. After inputting and catagorizing almost 300 CD's, the last thing you're expecting is to lose everything. This has happened twice now, and coupled with an optical problem that causes mistracking, the unit is on it's second trip for repair. To those that blame the 'power' button, I can assure you that this unit can lose it's memory in the "power-ON' mode. The feeling of losing all that work inputting your CD's is sickening. The technician told me he never heard of these units losing memory. Now, reading here, I see it's a common ailment with this unit.

Bottom line: Do Your Homework Before Buying!

Otherwise, this unit is good looking, is easy to operate, and (when working properly) very convenient. Hearing CD's that have been neglected for years is refreshing. It would be impossible for me to ever go back to a unit that didn't have these kind of features.

I was just shopping for an A/V receiver, and bought the Denon 3801 in lieu of the Pioneer. Thanks Audioreview!

price, ease of operation, fairly quick changes between discs, overall performance and sound quality is excellent

none so far

I had doubts about this product after reading some of the reviews here, but for $140 at ubid I figured I had nothing to lose. I definitely do not regret this decision. So far I have had absolutely no problems with this unit. It is without a doubt the best investment in my system that I have made. Going from a 5 disc changer to 301 has completely changed the way I listen to music, random play with 300 discs is awesome. This is the main feature I use, I still haven't utilized the custom files or best song file yet. I hope I don't run into memory problems like other reviewers have but if I do I would still be happy with this machine. If you can get it for under $250 I would without hesitation recommend this to anyone.

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sony 5 disc changer

price, ease of operation, fairly quick changes between discs, overall performance and sound quality is excellent

none so far

I had doubts about this product after reading some of the reviews here, but for $140 at ubid I figured I had nothing to lose. I definitely do not regret this decision. So far I have had absolutely no problems with this unit. It is without a doubt the best investment in my system that I have made. Going from a 5 disc changer to 301 has completely changed the way I listen to music, random play with 300 discs is awesome. This is the main feature I use, I still haven't utilized the custom files or best song file yet. I hope I don't run into memory problems like other reviewers have but if I do I would still be happy with this machine. If you can get it for under $250 I would without hesitation recommend this to anyone.

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sony 5 disc changer

Sound, 24-bit DACS, storage capacity

Small remote, connectors not gold plated.

I don't get it. Why are you guys using the power button on the unit? Why don't you use the remote or better yet buy a universal remote. You should not have to turn on/off power from the units front button. I dont get it. I leave the power button in the on position and I use my receivers remote to power down everything.

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Sony changers