kamalhyder's Full Review: Sony CDX-565MXRF 10-Disc CD Changer
I was excited to get this unit installed in my Acura TL so that I could use the excellent factory stereo and play MP3 CDs through the radio. After many months of frustration, this morning I replaced the Sony unit with an Alpine CHA-S634 and it works very well.
The CD changer was installed by professionals. They did a good job and I had no complaints about the installation. The CD changer was installed in the trunk in a special section where it seemed to fit really well. It was easy to reach the unit and load or unload the CD magazine. While I used it, the CD changer never had any issues loading any CDs. It would load CDs quickly and find a track easily. I especially loved the remote and the ID3 tags it would display. Using the supplied wireless remote, I could easily change disks, access folders and change tracks. I had no trouble ever with these features and was quite pleased with these operations.
Although people had warned me about buying a unit that would play through the car radio and possible interference issues, I had no problems with either the radio reception or hearing the CD player through the car radio. The unit sounded fine with regular CDs and they sounded as good as what I would play through the car's built-in CD player.
The Sony unit played regular CDs fine, even those burned on my computer, but skipped MP3 CDs. I could hardly ever play an MP3 CD properly in the car. At first I thought what was missing was a 45-second memory buffer that's common on portable CD/MP3 players these days. I was surprised that Sony overlooked this important feature. I realized soon that the player skipped MP3 files even if the car was completely stopped, even with the engine shut off. So it's basically a bad design. I'll save you the details of many experiments I did to find out if my media/burning speed, etc. needed to be changed, but nothing I did made a difference.
Since I bought the Sony unit just to play MP3 files in the car, it was a huge disappointment. The user interface is fine but the product does not operate as promised.
Since I had purchased an extended warranty and since the unit was already under the original warranty, I took the unit back to the retailer/installer and they easily swapped it for an identical unit. The other unit had exactly the same problem. They could not help me more because this was the only Sony model that had an FM modulator (so that it would play through the car radio). The other models required their own head units and I did not want to change the factory stereo that was tuned for the car's acoustics and Bose speakers.
And by the way, the Alpine changer offers "Ai-NET" compatibility. The installer was able to install a unit that converted the "Ai-NET" signals into Honda/Acura stereo signals so that the Alpine unit a) uses the CD controls that came with the car, and b) plays directly through the factory audio system instead of over an FM channel. The cool Sony remote is gone so I can't see the song titles any more, but I have no more remotes to deal with. I do miss the Sony remotes, the wired one and the wireless one. I wish that the new Alpine unit came with such a remote.
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