No, honey...this won't play your 8-track collection...

I am not an electronics guru. That is the first thing I have to say. I am not, and will never be a fanatical expert on home audio equipment. I don’t have a huge home theater system, or monster stereo that will shake the plaster off the walls.

I do however love to listen to music and I don’t have to have or understand every gadget that comes out to prove it.

But, since I have recently “ gotten into” burning my own music CD’s on the computer, mostly from a fast growing MP3 collection, I have noticed that my CD collection has gotten bigger than I ever thought it would. Because of this, I though it was time to replace my ten year old Pioneer 6-disc changer.

So, yet again, I was off to Best Buy. (Seems like I never even bother to go anywhere else anymore for electronics, appliances, and etcetera…)

I honestly figured it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes since I knew that I would most likely get a Pioneer product. Basically, my only criterion was to get a changer for under $300.00 dollars.

Well, I was surprised my how many there were in that price range, and to get right to the point, the shopper in me took over and couldn’t pass up the “bargain” of the 301-disc Pioneer PD-F1009. Why? Because I couldn’t get over the idea that it seemed like such a deal to pay only 30 dollars more than the 101-disc Pioneer that was also available and get triple the disc capacity. (As I later explained to my husband that it was only $15.00 dollars more per 100 CD’s and since we had to pay $199.99 for the first 101, this had to be a deal.)

Features of the Pioneer PD-F1009
301-CD file-type changer
CD-R and CD-RW playback
CD Text compatibility
5 programmable custom files
Plus, tons of technical info that I know nothing about.

What do I know?
1. It holds 301 discs. What was I thinking! I have, maybe 80 CD’s…and that took me 10+ years to acquire. My husband didn’t have any before me; he was a happy with a few cassette tapes he lived by (The Doors) and whatever was played on the radio. Five years ago, when we got together, I was amazed that my then 29-year-old boyfriend was still using an 8-track player in his house! He wasn’t old enough, I thought, to really be familiar with that ancient format. I must say, he thought I was absolutely crazy. We would never fill up a 301-dsic changer before it wore out of old age…

2. Easy to use, even for me, and it sounds great! It changes CD’s a little faster than I thought it would and with a lot less noise than my nieces’ three-year-old 25-disc changer.

3. Random play takes on a whole new meaning when you have a changer like this… The programming options are nice, but the funny thing is once you learn all the in’s and out’s of the available options, even a very non-technical person like me suddenly wants more, and my only compliant about this product is that there are not enough options. Most of us I'm sure have a few songs here and there that we would just as soon skip and favorites that we always want to play. Here are a few examples of what you can do: you can select up to 20 songs on your "best" list by simply pressing a button on the remote while the song plays. I like the one touch feature of this because I can add new songs anytime when I hear them, but I feel 20 songs is a rather small list as this changer holds 301 CD's. Conversely, there should be a "delete" button you can press when a track comes up that you want to keep from playing in the future when you use the "random play" feature.

Another programming flaw- except for "Best", it forgets your programmed track lists any time you switch modes (you can shut off the power, but if you want to listen to a CD outside the program, you either have to stop and add it to the program or else lose your program)

There are also five "Custom" lists that are remembered like programs should be, but these can only list full Cd’s, not individual songs. But you can use this to easily group genres of music or an individuals favorite CD’s.

4. Recording is simple with an easy-to-use CD-deck synchronization feature. Easy to load, with a motorized door and a rotating magazine for disc insertion, it also helps you remember which discs you've loaded with the CD Text feature. This scans and displays disc and song titles, but only if a CD is encoded with this information, and many new ones are. But this won’t work if you burn your own CD’s or if they are older. If this is the case, than the CD Text Input, while time consuming, is still handy.

5. This changer is compatible with both CD-Rs and CD-RWs--most only play CD-Rs.

We really like this player. The price was fantastic enough (about 1/2 of the price of my six-disc changer 10 years ago), and for how we use the player I can really overlook the few flaws I mentioned. I'm really not that demanding, except for quality of course! Considering the luck I have had with Pioneer products, really feel this was a great choice. I think of it long term semi-permanent storage for all of our CD’s with plenty of space to spare for future growth!