sam@cornell.UUCP (03/27/85)
From: sam (Sam Toueg)
I have received enough requests for information about
my newly purchased Magnavox 3040 CD player to warrant
this posting...
It is still too early for me to evaluate it accurately,
but here are some of my first impressions:
1) It has a lot of (too many?) programming features,
including random access by tracks or by time, and programming
by selecting the wanted tracks, or by DELETING the unwanted ones.
2) It has remote control. But the remote unit does not allow random access
programming, only "next, previous, scan (10 secs of each track), pause
stop, play, and standby (i.e., stop after the end of the current track)"
3) it is quite heavy (and large) compared to, say a Yamaha CD-X1
(17 pounds against 8).
4) I GUESS it is heavier than most other players because
it is more solid and built better (actually this is probably just
wishful thinking, vaguely based on some of the published reviews).
5) But in my opinion it does not "feel" (or look) as good as the
Yamaha. The knobs, and buttons (say of the numeric pad of the
random access module) do not feel as "smooth" and "solid" as the
ones found in most japanese Hi-Fi products. I hope this
is just an impression which has nothing to do with reliability.
6) It is not the best "human engineered" product I have seen:
In the Yamaha player, once you put a CD in the drawer, to play it
it is enough to give a gentle push to the drawer:
the drawer then automatically retracts and the record (oops!) the CD
starts playing. In the Magnavox, such gentle pushes are of no help.
One must explicitly push a button (marked "play") to achieve that.
Guess where this "play" button is????
UNDER the open drawer (i.e. invisible unless you are kneeling).
Of course, one can push the "open/close" button first (this closes
the drawer) and then "play"....Another alternative is to just press
"play" in the remote control unit!
7) the 12 CD's or so that I borrowed from friends (asking them
to lend me their best sounding CD's) do sound EXTREMELY good,
(So much that I am afraid I will soon ignore all my record collection)
but I can't compare it to the Yamaha X-1 that I had for
few days a few months ago: the only way to say something
meaningful would be to stage an A/B comparison (actually,
I might be able to do that some time in the next few weeks, if so I
will post my impressions).
8) The address of the mail order place I got it from is:
Stereo Discounters Electronic World,
Inc. 6730 Santa Barbara Ct.,
Baltimore MD 21227
Toll-free number: 1-800-6383920
Other number: 301-7963980
(they mail a free catalogue of the things they sell, this
catalog includes a picture and some info of this and other CD players).
My experience with them is limited to the purchase of my Magnavox.
As I posted before, their price is $368 (vs. $600 list price),
and I got it exactly one week after I ordered it by phone.
Maybe just luck.
Sam Toueg
P.S. Is there a net.CD group out there? I am relatively new to
this net...