Simple - elegant styling. Uncluttered, logically-arranged, ergonomic controls. Solid feel and build ... even though it is plastic. The single rotary control is tight with no drift. Multiple radio station presets are easy to operate. Clock function is nice to have. Mute Button. Display color options: Amber, Green ... or NO DISPLAY. Absolutely QUIET playback. Pure musical information - no static at all!

Plastic face construction. Control buttons are a little smallish for my stout fingers ... I like buttons that are sized for your average kindergartner with poorly developed motor skills. Hey ! I should concentrate on my driving ! The removable face mechanism is a little awkward and touchy. The face of the unit is surprisingly lightweight and seemingly fragile. Do I understand, correctly, that Nakamichi is out of the Mobile Audio business ? Should I have warranty concerns ? Etronics offers short term warranty and replacement guarantee ... so no worries. Small, insignificant remote. I rarely use these in any case.

Time to replace the (crackling) factory head unit in my teenage sons 1988 BMW 528e. I wanted an in-dash cd player that didn't look like the circus just came to town. Something that would quietly complement the classic BLACK interior. Since I was not about to pay $ 600.00 + for a used McIntosh MX-406 ... I decided on a Nakamichi CD-400. Closeout-bargain priced at $ 279.00 from eTronics. Shipped the same day of order ... factory fresh box. Did a little internet research for advice on how to hook up to the BMW's built-in fader control. Nakamichi's well marked, solidly-built, harness made install easy. The unit comes with a full complement of component plugs. The DIN collar supplied with the CD-400 fit like a glove. There was plenty of room in the dash for this unit and harness. The plastic trim ring finished the install like a factory part. I retained the BMW amp to power the CD-400. Great Sound ! Plays my sons burned CD's accurately enough to tell which were sloppy downloads. Separate: Subwoofer, Bass, Mid, and Treble controls give fantastic ability to shape the dynamic playback. The CD-400's accuracy revealed each speaker defect in the aging BMW factory speaker set. Radio section sounds great, with excellent pull strength & tone ... even with my fussy power antenna at half mast. The unit plays extremely quiet. No hum. No hiss. Dead quiet. No CD skipping at all ... perfect. No distortion at high volumes. No static at all.

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Sounds good, nice faceplate design layout, ROTARY knob, stealthy look, 3 band +- 6db 100/1000/10000 hertz equalizer, mute function

WEAK preouts, WEAK internal amplifier, CD signal pick-up issues, ejected CDs are very very warm...could be related to CD signal pick-up issues?

Let me start off by mentioning some of the features that I like about this unit: A ROTARY KNOB, an internal AMP_OFF feature, adjustable contrast, a very useful INFRARED remote, adjustable amber/green color combinations, big buttons, clutter-free faceplate design, and big lcd digits for easy readability. The button layout user friendly, they're big and easy find especially at highway speeds. The volume/tone knob and track/tune buttons are on the left side, which is within easy reach of the driver. How does it sound? It sounds pretty good...but this is my opinion and my ears judge sounds differently than yours, so don't rely too much on this portion. The output section of this unit seems to be EXAGGERATED. 4v rms unclipped is what you and I are told but I don't believe it. After feeding a CD with 0db signals from 20hz to 20khz into this unit, I could only get my AC meter to max out at about 300mV at 75% of maximum volume(45 out of a scale of 60) !!! That explains why I had to turn my gains fairly high up. Even though I had the gains that high up, the signal was still clean, but it would probably better for my amps if the CD-400 actually threw out 4 volts of actual rms signal. This 300mV signal came through all three pairs of preouts, although the subout needed to be adjusted to +10. Here's the weird part, when the volume is at 59/60 (well past clipping), the outputs are near 4 volts!!! Is there something wrong with my unit or is Nakamichi playing that marketing hype game? This unit also has a pair of auxilary inputs with adjustable sensitivity, a nice feature for you mp3 player owners. The internal amp: even though I've never used it, I've tested it and it too isn't as strong as quoted by Nakamichi. We're looking at approximately 8 watts of clean rms signal for each channel!!! It doesn't matter to me because I use the AMP_OFF feature. But the internal amp gets HOT, too hot to touch. Not scorching hot, but it's hot. Here's where it all goes sour. I don't know if this is a common problem with CD-400s but I know that am not the only one to experience this: The CD Player has problems reading CDs after being on for a couple of tracks!!! An "information pick-up issue" is what it's called, and it's annoying as hell when it kicks in. A continuous cycling of "music one second, then silence the next"...can you imagine? Nakamichi will be fixing this problem on mine very soon, let's hope it won't happen again after the surgery. This cd player rarely skips on the highway and doesn't skip too much on uneven streets. You can change from one track to another pretty quickly, and it reads most of my cds without hesitation. ...And to clear something up, those of you complaining about "I can't go from track 1 to 20 or 20 to 1 with this deck...YES YOU CAN!!!" You just have to adjust it, press the ADJUST button until you see the "TRACK" option...then turn the knob and there you go...going from 1-20 or 20-1 is now possible!!! The radio...I rarely listen to the radio. Pulls in the 18 fm and 12 am presets strongly, what else is there to say? If you are interested, buy and hope you don't get a defective one. If you are unlucky like me, you'll see firsthand what the pick-up issue is.

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My sixth HU and first Nakamichi product, and this one sounds the best. Never had pick-up issues with others though.

sound quality ,simplicity, rotary volume, selectable illumination, aux input

wont play when its cold

ive researched nakamichi head units for quite some time now, and actually tried out a 45z last year and had a problem with the outputs shorting out against the case so i returned it for a refund. when the unit did work, it works awesome, specially the sq. thats why i kept on waiting for a new model to come out, and the cd400 is the one to get. the display is simple, tasteful, not too bright, yet not too subtle. the buttons have a great feel to them and are in pretty good places. the rotary volume is absolutely perfect, tight feel, takes the volume up and down just the right amount with each spin, and looks great. the sq out of this thing is quite good as people claim of nakamichi head units. though i dont notice a night and day difference between this and my kenwood excelon that was before it, it is still a step above any of the others ive ever auditioned. i do have one compaint about this, and thats when its cold outside the cd will just sit and spin and wont read any tracks no matter what i do, unless i eject the cd and put it back in, then it works fine again. thats something thats a pain, but i guess i can live with it. it does read all cdrs i have fed it, and does not skip(not yet anyway).i would say overall i am quite pleased with this unit. i was looking for the best sq deck available for under $800 and this fits the bill.

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alpine, kenwood, jvc, rockford fosgate, eclipse, clarion, sony, most any other brand too!

Non clipping outputs. Clever design for AUX in and pre outs. Easy to use. Sounds amazing. Full feature remote control

Bulky front plate - I'm being picky here.

This product does exactly what it says on the tin. It really brings out amazing detail in the music, when I first installed the CD-400, I listened to all my favorite CDs again so I could find out what they should REALLY sound like. I bought the NAK with out auditioning it as I had heard so many good reviews about Nakamichi, and to be honest I was only expecting to hear subtle difference in my system, but the change blew me away, I spent the rest of that day smiling. Highly recomended for anyone who wants proper HiFi in their car. My previos Headunit was an alpine 7852, which was the top of the range amplified unit when i bought it a few years ago...those extra 23bits in the DAc really make a diffrence :)

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