Like a couple of other reviewers have mentioned, I have owned the older Sony 400 disc changer for many years without a single problem; I absolutely love it. When I purchased the updated CX455, I was excited that this would offer the same performance, while adding the ability to play MP3s.

I realized this was not meant to be as soon as I saw that Sony had done away with the "Group File" function which was by far my favorite feature on the old player. In retrospect, this should have clued me in that this was a "problem product." Why would you replace the Group Files with "Top Artist" files that only let you group discs by a particular artist? Listening to music by genre (eg: hard rock, party, dinner music, holidays) is the best feature on the old CX400. Who sits down and listens extensively to one artist? And if you like the Top Artist feature, you could have done this anyway on the Group File system, by assigning discs by the same artist to one Group. The answer is, Sony most likely could not get the Group Files to work properly on this unit, because the unit is a mess.

First of all, when you locate discs by artist (which is how I find most of my CDs), each time you press the "Artist File" button it goes back to the beginning. The old unit stayed with the last Artist played. Therefore, if you want to take out six Van Halen CDs, you need to start at "Allman Brothers" and scroll through the whole alphabet EVERY TIME.

All this could be bearable, but, as other reviewers have mentioned, the player at random decides to scramble your Artist File. Suddenly, without warning,many of the CDs become linked up to the wrong artist, or no artist at all. A great thing to happen after you spend hours programming the information!! I purchased one CX455 that did this twice, then returned it. The second unit was fine for about six months, then did the same thing. It was under warranty, so I called Sony and was told on the first call that the CX455 is "eligible for replacement."

Unfortunately, the CX455 cannot be replaced, because Sony has ceased to manufacture new units!! I foolishly gave authorization for the unit to be repaired. It has been repaired TWICE over the last three months and still does the same thing!! Obviously Sony knows what the problem is, but they are powerless to fix it. Therefore they have discontinued production of the unit. I have demanded that Sony either refund my purchase price or exchange it for a different unit (the CX355 does not seem to have this problem).

Every company has occasional glitches, but this is an embarrassment. Sony obviously had problems in the development of this unit, which led to them ditching the Group Files. This unit should never have been released; they should have kept the CX400 until they got it right. A RECALL is the only just way to deal with this complete dog of a product.

Sony had a good thing going with their CX400 MegaChanger. Unfortunately they tinkered with it and the end result is a nightmare. Gone are the eight music category buttons you could use to quickly categorize each music CD. Gone is the speed of the earlier units: this unit takes almost 30 seconds to change from one CD to another and about that long to initialize after it is powered-up. Gone is the ability to change from continuous to shuffle or one disc play to all disc play modes while the CD unit is playing; you must now first stop the unit before changing modes. Worst of all, this unit scrambles the link between artist names and their associated CD's. Sony is aware of this problem but cannot fix it and "officially" denies it exists. We should know: we've been thru four of these units trying to find one that works as advertised. None of them do.

Yes, this unit will play MP3 encoded CD's. Big deal. MP3's on a CD player are pretty-much worthless since you've no way to control the music selection within a given disc (no artist or album select options within the disc). Also, you cannot view the track title for the disc on this CD player until the track cues-up.

Save your money. Reject the Sony CX455.

I am a professional musician and have an extensive CD collection. In spring 2001 I purchased the older Sony CDP-CX 400 and it has worked beautifully ever since. I love it. NO problem. My CD collection grew and I decided to purchase another 400 CD changer in late fall of 2003. By then, Sony had "upgraded" to the CDP-CX455. I bought it and "piggy-backed" it with my older CDP-CX 400.

I am as unhappy with the newer model as I am happy with the older! The older model allows you to classify your CD's using 3 different criteria: CD name, artist name and by up to 8 different groups. It's very flexible. But the newer model only lets you classify the music by CD title and artist.

But, ok, I guess I can live with that. What is FAR WORSE is that I have had to have the unit either repaired or replaced 3 times for the same recurring problem, which is that the artist file info for individual CD's will change arbitrarily or disappear altogether. As I type this, I am preparing to search for the documentation of the 1st 2 repair/exchange jobs on the unit to fax to Sony. After that, I'll be boxing it up YET AGAIN to send to Sony ONE MORE TIME...all within 13 months from the time I purchased it.

There are other companies making "CD Jukeboxes"...do yourself a favor and check them out.

After some deliberation, we decided to purchase this 400 CD player to consolidate about half of our collection. I assumed (perhaps to my fault) that like my computer, when I inserted a CD into it, the player would know the title, artist and song list for most (but not all) of the CD's -- NOT SO -- not even close! Of the 400 entered into the system, only about ten (yes 10!) CD's actually had any information come up at all. For all of the rest, you must enter the title and artist - cannot enter song name (not that you'd want to with that many CD's) - but I had no idea how much time would be needed to enter in all of those titles, even with the keyboard used.

Now I should say that I'm actually pretty good with electronics and can pretty much figure most things out on my own, so this is not the ranting of a ludite who can't get the thing to work. If given the opportunity to do so again, I would look for something else altogether. This was a bad decision for someone with a lot of CD's, especially if you're limited with your free time. I also agree with the other folks who said that 20 characters is too few and I'm really disappointed that you can't enter a title, artist AND genre. But what I'm most upset about is that it took me days (a few to several hours each day) to get this fully programmed and loaded.

Buyer beware! Seriously.

It is difficult to get hold of all those CD's crammed into it, but if you add the SAVR and JukeBox from Panther Studios, it becomes a dream machine! I can see all the CD's I have and make play lists that shuffle between my changers like butter. I love it!

See their product at: http://pantherstudioscorp.com