Yamaha CD-N301 Compact Disc Player - Black

I'm really pleased with this. I bought it to replace a 12 year old Yamaha CDX-493 which was refusing to play half my CDs.Firstly it sounds noticeably a lot better than my old player, which I wasn't expecting. The CD drawer mechanism is deliciously smooth and quiet. If you close the tray with a gentle push it will begin playback straight away. The uncharacteristically flimsy (for Yamaha) "Select" button can be used to quickly select a track.Secondly it streams from iTunes effortlessly from my iMac or phone via its wireless Airplay receiver. Simple and terrific!Thirdly I'm really enjoying stations like Radio Caroline 259 Gold broadcasting at 320Kps quality.However the "Net Radio" features are much more clunky. First you need to go online to http://yradio.vtuner.com/ and enter your e-mail and vTuner ID (MAC address of the unit found from “Network Info" in the Setup menu.) In fairness, vTuner offers a massive 30,000 stations worldwide, so simply scrolling down a list of internet stations is obviously not a good option. On the website you choose stations which can be organised in Bookmark Folders e.g. "BBC", "US Stations", "Podcasts" etc. Now, after connecting, the word "Bookmarks" appears below "NetRadio" and you must find your way to the desired station using the remote, though annoyingly not by using the Enter or arrow presses you expect.Smartphone control of CD and radio playback using the Yamaha "NP Controller" app is much more logical and surprisingly fast and responsive.To get internet radio you need to connect it via an ethernet cable. Powerline type adapters are a good option for this. You can also set up a "wireless ethernet bridge" using Yamaha's pricey YWA-10 WiFi Adapter, but I used the nifty "LB-LINK 150Mbps Portable Wi-Fi Bridge". It had poor instructions so I used www.sky-anytime-plus.co.uk/mp.pdf Steps 1-6 to set it up, and it only cost a very reasonable £9.I haven't tried playing music from a DLNA external hard drive so I can't comment on that.Apart from the seldom used "Select" button it's well built and designed, with a solid aluminium fascia.Overall this has SO many good features that I can happily ignore its few foibles. Highly recommended.

Excellent bit of kit, very easy to set up. Using it on a wired LAN so have solid and steady connection for internet radio. Sound is great. The reason I am not giving it 5 stars is due to the rather primitive app needed to use it with remote commands e.g. you cannot create radio station favourites through the app or directly on the device [using the supplied remote control] - you have to create an online account on the radio station portal site and create favourites there. Inconvenient.Using this with a iPhone 5s to run the app, streaming a lot from Amazon Music using Airplay. I only noticed this model by chance while looking for an internet enabled receiver, pretty expensive items really. Also streams very well from my QNAP NAS box. Haven't tried it using Plex yet but assume this will be fine.This unit is cheaper than a network receiver, and means I can continue to use my own excellent receiver which has a phono input [not all receivers have this and you have to get an adaptor, more expense]. The CD player in the CD-N301 is very good, too, possibly not as good as the existing Marantz though.Altogether, an affordable way to incorporate internet services into your Hi-Fi system.

Ok so while it worked it was pretty good. The app is miserable but the sound quality was perfectly good etc. However after three and a half months it stopped turning on. Alas sufficient time had passed that I could no longer get a refund and had to get a repair, which to be fair Superfi have been good about.Whether it is because this little unit has a lot of feature packed in for quite a low price I'm not sure, but I would not buy again.

I purchased this product to listen CDs, internet radios and Spotify using one single remote control and one app. I attached it to an external DAC+amplifier through a coaxial cable, thus I cannot tell nothing about its audio quality, however from a pure digital perspective, Spotify Connect and CDs work great and also the Internet Radio would be ok, if only there were a better way to control it. In fact, the internet radio with the poor App it comes is the real disappoint. As suspected from the tiny LCD on the front panel it's impossible to navigate through thousands of radio stations. It isn't reactive at all and it takes ages to search the station you desire. You may imagine this is normal and you should better use the mobile App. That's true, you can use the mobile "NP Player", the Yamaha App, but surprisingly it's not faster or easier to use than the poor front panel display. Worse, some of the radio stations do not show up at all, because the App trunks the list to some dozens of lines and those that alphabetically come further in the list are not shown at all, so you cannot select them at all! You might suggest to reorder the list form Z to A rather than from A to Z, or search for the radio by typing the full name but all these simple features are not available!! I hope Yamaha will release a new version of their crappy NP Player App, but I fear it will never happen because they do not care about the few hundred customers that bought this niche CD player. It's a pity because the CD-N301 could rate 5 stars rather than two if only it would deliver all it promises.

This first one of these I had to return as it wouldn't connect to my system. The second one from another supplier worked within minutes of getting out of the boxes matches my Yamaha amp perfectly. Love the neat look of this unit and the utility of having a CD player also. I think the sound is as good as a much more expensive streamer that's in another room. For £229.00 or thereabouts I think this is a bargain. Only problem is that sometimes the internet radio drops out, which is strange when I can still get it via my Amazon echo, but then again that does too at certain times -usually on radio 4! All in all very pleased.