Great Sound, confusing Operation

I wanted to purchase a fairly cheap CD player, preferably 5 CD changer. I'm a huge Pioneer fan and just acquired a small inexpensive Pioneer Receiver for my den. I wanted a Pioneer CD player/changer to go with the receiver. So I look quite extensively on the Internet and read the reviews. I already have a very expensive Pioneer A/V receiver and DVD player.

First I hooked up the CD player to my receiver, that was fairly simple. This CD player comes with a removable 6 CD magazine. The idea is to load up the magazine and to purchase other magazine's for a well rounded selection of music. Being a typical male (not reading the instructions until hell freezes over) I quickly inserted a CD into the magazine, turned it on and hit the play button. The only thing that happened was the display changed to, "No Disc".
Look it over and tried it again, same thing. So I started to read the instructions and it stated that the CD's are to be placed upside down in the magazine.

I did not like this feature at all. Mainly because of the chance that the CD will get damage trying to slide it into the magazine. I decided to place four additional CD's into the magazine and try it again. Did not play. I went to eject it and nothing happened. Started to read the instructions again. Turns out that I was working the CD player from the remote that came with it. Pioneer equipment has a "control cable". That connects other Pioneer equipment together in order for the receiver's remote to work. By using the CD player remote, it cancels out the operation. Again it was written in the instructions.

The instructions were extremely complicated. It has a feature called HI-LITE SCAN that enables it to briefly scan all CD's in the magazine. But if you push the button more than once, it changes the starting times. This really threw me a curve.

The procedure for inserting the magazine into the machine is a mystery to me. The instructions say, "Insert the magazine, pushing it in until a click sound is heard. Press the > button to start playback." Well after I inserted it several times, all I got in the display was, "No Disc". I went to eject and nothing happened either. I lightly tapped on the magazine and I heard a sound and it ejected. Repeated the steps again for inserting and then it finally worked. The ejection process is a complete mystery to me. The instructions say, "Press the Eject button, remove the magazine, and then press the standby /on switch to turn off power". This also did not work. I was not sure what they meant by "remove the magazine". I was expecting for the magazine to eject itself after I hit the eject button. I lightly tapped again on the magazine and it ejected itself. Not impressed!

The good thing about this player is the sound quality is remarkable. It sounds fantastic! Deep bass, which I didn't think the Pioneer receiver I have, VSX-D407 could produce. Excellent separation. I started to wonder what it would sound like if I hooked this player up with my more expensive Pioneer Elite.

Random play is completely baffling. I may be wrong but it seems you cannot hit the Random button during play. It shuts it down and I get the annoying "No Disc" message in the display. It seems to work if I push the Random button before I start playing. Here's a portion of the instructions about Random play, "Press the Random Play button. All tracks on all discs are played in random order. To play tracks other than the deleted tracks in a random order, press the Random button after carrying out the Delete Program procedure. See "Delete Program Playback" on page 14." WHEW! Maybe I missed something? I'm seriously thinking about returning this. Stay tuned. By the way, the picture you see at the top of this review is incorrect, it is not a Pioneer but a Sony.