Harman/Kardon TL8500 CD-changer

Instead of a front-opening drawer, it sports a top-loading platter under a transparent plastic cover. In addition, the buttons on the plastic front panel are all large and curvaceously contoured. All in all, not only is this changer charmingly reminiscent of LP turntables of yore, it's also just plain better looking than the others.

Although its front panel is refreshingly clean, the TL8500 does not lack features. A repeat button lets you replay discs, tracks, or segments, and a random button sets the player to select tracks on a disc in random order. The remote control provides amenities such as index search, track intro scan, A-B repeat, thirty-track programming, and automatic insertion of 4-second pauses between tracks for tape recording. All operating modes are indicated on a very comprehensive and legible front-panel display, which you can turn off if you like.

The TL8500 exposes four disc wells at a time, and the fifth disc can be rotated into loading position with the Disc Skip button. One peculiarity is that when you've finished playing a single disc, the changer doesn't automatically rotate it out: You have to hit the Disc Skip button to retrieve it. In addition, there are several sharp edges inside the tray area that might scratch discs. The TL8500's disc-transport and changer mechanism are protected during shipping with a transport screw and clamping button, and it was fairly quiet when changing discs.

The TL8500 was without a digital output, headphone jack, or level control. The back panel provides fixed-level analog outputs and remote-control in/out minijacks for connection to other Harman/Kardon components. Like all but one of the other changers, the TL8500 uses low-bit D/A conversion. The Harman/Kardon beat out the other changers in channel separation at both 1,000 and 20,000 Hz.