Sony CDP-XE400

Name: Sony CDP-XE400
Brand: Sony

Sony's least expensive single-play CD player turned out to be one of the most reliable budget decks the company ever shipped.

Overview

The CDP-XE400 was the barebones half of a two-player launch from Sony's Consumer Audio Division, sold alongside the CDP-XE500. The pair shared a chassis, a converter, and a spec sheet. The difference was twenty dollars and a handful of conveniences. Sony listed the CDP-XE400 at $160 and the CDP-XE500 at $180, and both carried a one-year parts-and-labor warranty. The XE500 added a Sony Remote Commander, a Toslink optical digital output, and digital volume control operated from the remote. The XE400 got none of those - but it did get the infrared receiver built into its chassis. That meant the player could still be driven by the remotes supplied with many Sony receivers, and by most universal remotes.

That receiver keeps the XE400 from being a stripped-down throwaway. Buyers who already owned a Sony receiver effectively got remote control for free, and the digital volume control that lived in the remote worked on the XE400's line outputs and headphone jack just as it did on the XE500. There was one wrinkle. Sony's track-selection scheme doesn't permit direct entry of tracks above ten, so every Sony remote carries a "greater than ten" button for that purpose. Universal remotes without that button may not be compatible - AudioXpress (August 2001, p.55) singled out the Radio Shack 15-1994 as one such incompatible unit.

The two players were otherwise identical, and the shared hardware is what makes the XE400 interesting. Sony used what it called a Hybrid Pulse D/A Converter, part number CXD8567AM, a single chip combining an 8x oversampling digital filter with a bitstream-type D/A converter and analog voltage outputs. The analog stage is modest: a JRC NJM4558 op amp per channel handles filtering and output buffering, and a Mitsubishi M5218AL drives the headphones — a part capable of sinking ±50mA of load current, which is more headphone drive than the price suggests. Sony rated both players at 2Hz–20kHz ±0.5dB, 0.0045% total harmonic distortion, 100dB signal-to-noise ratio, 98dB dynamic range, and 95dB channel separation. Line output is 2V into a 50kΩ load, recommended load impedance is above 10kΩ, and the headphone jack puts out 10mW into 32Ω. Power consumption is 10W. The player measures 430 x 95 x 295mm and weighs 3.0 kg.

AudioXpress (August 2001, p.56) found the build quality out of proportion to the price. The chassis and cover are all-metal, the front-panel controls have a solid feel, the disc mechanism is sturdy, and the tray glides smoothly. The isolation feet are mounted with their screw holes off-center to help diffuse vibration modes — a small piece of engineering that most budget decks skip. Both players were made in China, and the reviewer noted that the manufacturing quality coming out of Chinese plants had improved considerably by that point; these decks showed none of the flimsy feel common to cheap consumer electronics. Inside, the XE400 and XE500 are virtually identical.

Operation is straightforward but a little odd. There's no keypad on the front panel for track selection. You spin a rotary control in the upper right corner that Sony calls the AMS, or Automatic Music Sensor. Direct track entry lives on the remote. Standard double-arrow search buttons are present, and you can search silently by pressing pause and watching the time and track display. Play modes include program play for up to 24 tracks in any order, shuffle, and repeat for a disc, a track, a program, or a fresh shuffle of the whole disc. The edit/time fade button builds a program to fit any standard cassette length and can fade out at a specific time on the disc. Peak search locates the loudest point on a disc so you can set cassette deck levels there. Music scan plays the first ten seconds of each track, extendable to 20 or 30 seconds by toggling the button. On insertion, the display shows total tracks and total playing time. If you don't hit play, that information disappears after a few seconds and the display reads zero tracks. Pressing time brings it back for about three seconds, and in play mode the time button toggles between elapsed time, remaining track time, and total remaining time.

The period press was unusually direct. AudioXpress (August 2001, p.56) called the XE400 and XE500 as good as any player the reviewer had heard under $200, and better than most in that bracket - his first choices among sub-$200 CD players. The XE500, with its Toslink output, made a respectable entry-level transport for an outboard processor, though the reviewer cautioned that Toslink isn't the best digital interface and recommended a quality interconnect. The XE400, lacking a digital output entirely, is a pure analog player.

Durability is where the XE400 earned its reputation. The Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam bought roughly twenty of these players over two years for faculty studios and the music library. About six months before the review, a dozen CDP-XE400s went into library listening carrels, where, as the reviewer put it, students give any piece of electronic equipment a real workout. They held up extremely well. A dealer reported several local radio stations using the same players with similarly positive reliability reports. That's not a lab measurement, but it's field data.

Pricing in the real world ran about $30 below the suggested retail, whether through mail order or a local dealer. For collectors today, the XE400 is a cheap way into a working single-play CD player. There's no remote in the box and no digital out, but it has the same converter, the same metal chassis, and the same mechanism as the XE500 that people actually sought out. If a remote matters, any Sony receiver remote or a compatible universal will do the job, provided it has the "greater than ten" button. Sony also styled its MDS-JE440 MiniDisc deck to sit alongside the CDP-XE400 and XE500, so a stack of these components matches.