100+ CD Changers

No, not at all! A good DAC will provide a nice, robust sound vs. the very-average analog sound that comes directly out of the Mac Mini's headphone jack.

 

Today I plan to buy a Sony 400-CD changer from my record store. It's used, but I ran it for an hour in there the other day, and it plays great. I had the discs on "shuffle", and it felt like having a jukebox. I've always been extremely careful about my CDs and returning them right away to their jewel cases, so I'm hoping that there won't be any damage to my discs in using the 400 changer, as well as letting all those CDs just sit in there for years, without putting them back into their cases...?

 

Well I have clung to my records, cared for them, and loved them for getting close to 50 years and feel totally nutty about it. Especially when I see the prices I could obtain for them. Even my collection of MOFI CDs makes me smile.

 

I had a Sony 400 disk player and my opinion is it was rough on my disks. Better to rip 'em to a computer hard drive.

 

I've been doing a lot of Internet research and yes, a lot of people are saying the players hurt the CDs. So I might not go through with buying this after all..

I only like physical media, which is why I wanted to get the player. (I don't do downloads).

 

I bought two Sony CDP-CX333ES 300-disc megachangers some years ago. They are daisy-chained in one system. When I lived in Delaware, I had one filled with original CDs and the second one partially filled with original CDs. I got tired of retrieving CDs when I wanted to listen on a better player or in another system, so I eventually emptied both megachangers and started making CD-Rs for them. That is time-consuming, so I didn't get very far. Since I moved to Michigan, I haven't loaded them with CD-Rs, so they sit idle most of the time. I occasionally throw a disc or two in them for kicks. They are fun machines but not practical since I have multiple players and two systems.

These megachangers are good just for background listening. If you have a good single-disc player, you will experience a significant drop-off in sound with a megachanger.

 

I used to have a 300 cd changer. Sony. It was junk, sound wise and build wise.

 

I've got about 3000 CDs ripped. It's important to a program that ensures rips are without errors. Examples are EAC (free), dBPowerAmp (faster), or JRiver. I prefer dBPowerAmp, which is fastest. I use an external drive; if the program rip might have errors, I rip those tracks again with the internal drive. I have another external drive ($20 used from Goodwill), and it's surprising that read errors on one drive are often fine on another.

I have found it much more likely that a CD goes bad than a digital file. In the course of ripping 3000, I found about 20 CDs with unrecoverable errors or that had become unreadable over the years. Not through scratches, but some problems with the reflective layer.

Part of this setup is that you must back up music files regularly to another hard disk. Many of us who go the server route store the music on a RAID array and back that up regularly, too. While a single file is unlikely to go bad, every hard disk crashes eventually, and then the entire collection is toast unless backed up. I store on a RAID NAS, backup to a USB drive, and keep a third copy of everything on my laptop computer.

Finally, if no one has said this, there is a significant learning curve in going to computer-based audio. There are many good free and paid tools. Sometimes, it's worth buying something, even when the alternatives are free, for better ease of use and tech support. That was my feeling in getting the paid version of dBPowerAmp and springing for JRiver. Others are very happy using the free tools.

Have fun!

Mike

 

I have an RCA 301 disc player stored in my closet right now. It plays discs fine. But when it comes to fidelity in sound, is no match for my Fisher player.

Single disc, or 5 disc changers are the best route to take IMO. Better sound, and they normally don't hurt your CDs!

Besides, usually I just listen to one disc at a time, then put the CD back in it's jewel case when it's done. And back on the shelf it goes!

 

If you have a PC, use dBPoweramp (worth the cash, many times over). If you have a Mac, use XLD (free). Get a big hard drive, then get at least two more, one off site, for backups. Rip the CDs, and put them on a shelf. Took me two months to do mine properly, with the right metadata and artwork, and now I can pick what I want to listen to and stream it round the house in lossless. I have used multi disc players, and they are rough on discs. Rip, backup, stream, every time.

 

Same experience here. And take my advice: don't ever try to move the player with any discs inside. Bad idea.

 

Been there and done that, not a pretty sight. Placing hundreds of discs back into their correct groove/slot is tedious at best. A lasting legacy of those days are CD booklets with numbers hand written on them corresponding to the discs assigned location in the player. Then there was the data entry by computer keyboard. The booklets were kept in two large CD "albums" grouped by genre. Flipping through the "albums" and picking disks... I don't miss that.

 

The first real stereo setup that had my name on it was a sony unit that comprised of 2 cassette decks, a tuner, display with graphic EQ and cd text, and most importantly - a 51 disc changer. It was pretty much the coolest thing any music loving 8 year old could get for their birthday. The changer function still works well. The buttons kinda went wonky over the years for whatever reason, cheap electronics I suppose, but the changer was gentle on my discs. If they ever went in, they came out the same way.

Maybe it wasn't 500 discs or anything like that, but similar concept. It worked great and I had always considered getting one of the bigger ones. But in this day and age? It's really useless hardware.


EAC, networked attached storage, and a streamer attached to a good DAC are all you need.

 

I love to sit up late at night and click on albums and tracks to hear from my music server. Listening to things I have not heard in ages or in some cases never heard.

I'll go from Country, to the Ventures, to Billy Ward and the Dominos, Hank Ballard, to some Jazz and then lost one-hit wonders of youth and back to George Jones. All over the map and back. It's a blast. I am a couple of years away from being done ripping. But it's a lot of fun so far.

 

Well, I went ahead and bought the used Sony 400 CD Changer yesterday. I loaded it with 110 discs, and I played it on "shuffle" last night for SEVEN HOURS, and had an absolute BALL! It works great. The only thing I'm concerned about is that it may harm my discs in the long run, like some here claim.
I should also mention that the 110 discs are only Beatles/Solo Beatles, so I have made this a "Beatles Jukebox", specifically.

 

That's what I've always done, but with the 400 CD Changer, I now am listening to random tracks on "shuffle" that I never would have heard before, if I never had the desire to play a certain single disc more than once every 10 years!

 

I resisted this notion for a while, and it was time-consuming, but I'm so glad I did it. Every note I own is literally at my fingertips (with redundancy via a second drive), and best of all, no more frustrating balky discs, yet the CDs are still nearby in case I want to consult the notes, etc.

CD multichangers: bad idea in 1995, unfathomable idea in 2015.

 

Ha I did the same thing with a Sony 300. I bought one of those case logic 300 or so CD holder books, but put the covers in the book, then on each pocket put a little office depot white dot sticker number for each corresponding CD. I remember having post-it notes on the covers with all the best track numbers to then build playlists for parties. I think realplayer was about it at the time computer wise.

For the OP: But yes the biggest jump in sq ever was dumping that player, it is not that great and would be going down a dead-end with everything available today. You should very be happy with a mac mini and a dac. You can go toslink from the mac mini headphone out or USB out although your dac should be asynchronous USB to reclock things [others can give you better info or correct me on this] There are plenty of DACs to choose from portable to rack size, $20 to $20k. Just say what budget and size you are considering, if you are looking for wired or wireless, if you would ever use a iphone/headphone portable rig, and I am sure you will get some help.

Finally if space for your CDs is a big issue, you are not a collector, and the disposition of your CDs will occur only when you are six feet under, you can dump the jewel cases, put the CDs in the caselogic books [maybe by genre, or in my case all hi res in a book, all Grateful Dead in a book, the often listened to redbook go in an a-f book, g-m book etc., not often listened to or replaced masterings in another] then store the covers in shoe boxes out of sight with alphabet dividers to help you find them in the rare occasion you need to check a credit or catalog number. To avoid divorce I did so for about 2k cds, works well.

 

Good ideas for storage - thanks.

 

It just made me laugh to myself remembering how my wife will from time to time say, hey that pile of new CDs is getting pretty big what is the deal, why can’t you just put them in the books as you buy them. So now we have storing sessions, for lack of better word, a couple of times a year… she gets a kick sorting the cds, the jewel cases fill up a garbage bag each time, the pile goes away and everybody wins. Yes it can get pretty sad what passes for fun around here. I should say there are some hard-to-find, out-of-print or extra-collectible numbers that I just can’t break down, so I do still keep those cases but the CDs are in the books.

 

Yeah, do that about once. Lesson learned. I wouldn't take another one of those things if it was free.

 

I was this close to buying one of those changers. Sound quality was always a question for me.

 

Mine works like a charm! The biggest drawback is making a list of what's in the player. however once you do that, say in excel, you can easily program playlists..

Oh and sound quality, using a real glass fiber TOSlink (WireWorld) cable to a Digital to Analog Converter (DAC), is excellent.

 

^^ holy cow I never figured out you could hook a keyboard up to it. I can't remember why you would do that, is it for naming things if it could not read the metadata, making playlists?

 

Manually entering metadata