A whole lotta mp3's for my Jetta...
Written: Oct 11 '02
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Pros: Plays mp3's, works with any headunit, built in RF modulator.
Cons: Slow disc changes, finicky about media.
The Bottom Line: If you still like regular CD's as well as mp3's, this is a good choice. Otherwise, the interface leaves something to be desired.
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| ahren's Full Review: Sony CDX-565MXRF 10-Disc CD Changer |
I tend to ramble a bit in my reviews before I get started on functionality (see, I'm doing it already), so if you'd rather skip to the meat of the review, scroll down about three paragraphs. If you want to know the intricacies of my thought processes in the decision to buy this player, read on.
About two years ago (2000), I was extremely excited about getting a Phatbox mp3 player (check out www.phatnoise.com) for my VW Jetta -- it promised an interface to my factory radio and up to 6 GB of mp3's in the trunk of my car. Two years later, I was still waiting for it to come out, and was appalled at the expected $799 price tag for the unit. What a crock! I decided then and there that I had to find another way.
After reading a bunch of web forums about mp3 solutions for cars, I came across a picture of the Sony CDX 565MXRF MP3 CD changer. No one at the websites who carried the model knew anything about it, and there were no reviews on it, so I called up a local car audio place. They said I could return it if I didn't like it, so I took the plunge.
There are three versions of this changer: the one I have, and two units that interface directly to a Sony head unit (six disc and ten disc versions, respectively). Theoretically there are adapters that make the latter two work with some European VW's factory head units, but there wasn't one for my car, and I was worried about the loss of CD text functionality. If you have over a hundred songs on a CD, it's important to be able to read the title. So I got the RF version, which comes with it's own wired remote/display unit and plays through a preset radio station.
OK, enough history. Here's where the review really starts:
Sound Quality
The first thing people ask about an RF based changer (one that plays through the radio) is "doesn't the sound quality suck?". The answer in this case is no, for a couple of reasons. First of all, the changer doesn't actually "broadcast" -- it is directly wired into your antenna, so there is no signal attenuation from traveling through the air. Secondly, when you hear songs on the radio, they typically lose the high and low frequencies to fit in the FCC mandated bandwidth for that station (the station clips the song before broadcasting it). Since this unit doesn't have to contend with the FCC, it reproduces the sound without any clipping. As added bonuses, the changer has a programmable broadcast frequency (you can do it from the remote -- no rooting around in your trunk!), and it also fills dead time between songs with silence, rather than not broadcasting anything. This last feature is important, and is often excluded on cheap RF modulators, filling the time between songs with annoying radio static. In short, the sound is just fine on this changer.
Control and Interface
The changer comes with two remotes, a “wired” remote with a blue LCD display unit, and a wireless remote about the size of a credit card. I’m not sure why it’s important to have two remotes – in fact I think it’s a little bit stupid, especially since some important features can only be implemented from the wireless remote. But I digress.
The “wired” remote is the one with the display, and has a few other functions as well. First of all, it has a dial for changing songs, which is nice for scrolling quickly through a CD. You can also use it to do things like change equalizer settings and the broadcast station for the RF unit. There is a button to change the display from song titles to the current time on the track, a button to play/pause, and a button to change the shuffle mode of the changer. There are three shuffle (random) modes for the changer, shuffle all (shuffles between all discs), shuffle disc (shuffles songs on this disc only) or shuffle album (shuffles a “folder” of songs on an mp3 disc). The display on the remote scrolls the song title (or title/artist/album from the ID3 tag if you have it set to display ID3 tags, see wireless remote below), but ONLY when you change songs. This is pretty annoying – it would be nice if it scrolled all the time, You really don’t want to take your eyes off the road for as long as it takes to scroll a song title.
The wireless remote has added capabilities. It allows play/pause, change shuffle mode, and the following buttons to navigate through music:
-Forward/Back 1 song
-Forward/Back 10 songs
-Forward/Back Album
-Forward/Back Disc
It also has a really important button, which changes the display mode for the tracks from track name to track number to ID3 tag. It’s REALLY annoying that this isn’t on the wired remote, as this is the only way to get it to re-scroll a song title without changing songs.
Media and Format Compatibility
No one is going to buy this unit just to play regular CD's, so the question is, how does it do with mp3’s? First of all, it’s important for your files to have ID3 tags. Otherwise, it just scrolls the name of the file, and I think it’s limited to 31 characters. The changer supports VBR mp3’s, but the track time is screwed up. It does not support WMA or OGG files.
As for directory structure, you’re pretty much limited to one layer of folders. The player deems folders “albums”, and any songs in subfolders are ignored. An annoying thing about folder names is that the unit will only display the first 8 characters, and does not scroll. This sucks if you want to organize your songs by artist/album, as there aren’t enough characters to store all of that information. One last rant: it takes the changer a LONG time to change discs if the disc you are changing to has a lot of mp3’s on it. A full 650 meg disc with 120 songs on it took about 20 seconds for it to “scan”.
Lastly, the changer seems rather finicky about media. First of all, the speed at which CD’s are burned has a profound effect upon whether or not the player recognizes them. I had a friend burn CD’s at 16x, which the player didn’t recognize at all, regardless of media type(silver, blue, green). 8x resulted in choppy audio, and we had to go down to 4x to get CD’s it liked. Strangely, it seemed to like CD-RW media better than CDR. Granted, this could have been due to the burner we were using, but it seemed odd all the same. I’ve used other drives with the same media, and had success as well, but those drives all burned at 4x.
Overall Rating
I’d give this changer 2 stars out of 5. It has some good features – the ability to play mp3 discs, a well-designed wireless remote, and a nicely integrated RF modulator that provides good sound and keeps cable clutter in the dashboard to a minimum. If you still have a large collection of regular CD’s, but also want to listen to mp3 CD’s, it’s not a bad purchase.
However, if you’re like me and you’re striving for a completely mp3 solution, it isn’t the ideal solution. The interface quirks of slow disc changes and limited track/album display capability make playing mp3’s a lot bigger pain than any of the newer hard-drive based units. Couple that with the fact that you have to burn CD’s slowly, and the whole process gets a tad tiresome. If I had to do it over again, (and I may sell this thing soon – email me if you want to buy it ;), I think I’d get an ipod or similar, and wire it into the changer inputs on my factory head unit. More wires in the cockpit, but a better (and safer!) interface.
Keywords (for google – shameless, I know): CDX-565MXRF, CDX 565MXRF, Sony, MP3 CD Changer, 10 Disc, 10 Disk, ID3 Tags, RF modulator, FM radio, XPLOD.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 275.00
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Epinions.com ID:
ahren
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Member: Ahren Johnson
Location: Durham, NC
Reviews written: 9
Trusted by: 6 members
About Me:
Robotics engineer. Grew up in NC, went to CA, now I'm back.
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