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 :New model, new owner
As I write this, I have owned my CDX-F5500 for less than a week, so this will be more of an initial impression than a detailed review [he laughingly said before he actually finished writing it {grin}].
I will begin by saying that I bought this Sony to replace an older Sony cassette unit, and as it happens, the physical dimensions of the two are almost exactly the same [standard DIN size, apparently], and the connectors and wiring are identical. This made for an extremely simple installation in my case, since I was able to use the harness and dash adapter I already had installed [although I had to cannibalize the side clips from the old unit, as the mountings are not the same], and it took very little time for me to have my F5500 up and running. Indeed, ease of installation was one of the primary factors influencing my decision - I wanted a unit that would go into my existing mounting and connect to my existing wiring. The other factor was, of course, the MP3 CD feature - I listen to my MP3 discs far more often than my cassettes, and to be honest, I generally used the cassette deck in my old unit as nothing more than a place to plug in an audio adapter for my expansion.
Having already owned an older Sony stereo, I was already familiar with Sony's "cross-key" controls for tuning and CD track selection. However, there are some differences between the F5500 and my old unit when it comes to setting preferences, many of which are rather non-intuitive and required me to search the manual. Some information can be a bit hard to find, and so can the tiny buttons. A few options and features involve simultaneously pressing on the knob and various buttons. I would not give this unit very high marks for ergonomics.
Also in the ergonomics department, I should mention that the faceplate takes some practice when it comes to attaching and removing it. Maybe it's just that my stereo isn't fully broken in yet, but the tolerances seem to be rather tight, and sometimes it can take a couple of tries to get the faceplate latched properly. Once it's on, though, it feels like it is well-made and pivots very smoothly.
I consider my old unit to have had phenomenal FM sensitivity - I am in the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles and it easily received many San Diego stations - and the same can be said for this unit. Sony's terrific SSIR-EX tuner section shines once again in the F5500. AM reception is quite good as well; I can easily receive many distant AM stations from all over the western U.S. [Denver, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and so on].
I have seen at least one seller's description state that the F5500 supports RDS; however, there is no mention of RDS in the manual, and I have never seen any RDS data on my display. On the other hand, the F5500 does have an 8-character alphanumeric display which can be programmed to display the descriptions of your choice, such as the call signs, for each of its 18 FM and 12 AM presets. That is good enough for me, at least, but if you must have RDS, this might not be the right model for you.
Reviewer update, Nov. 2004: I have found that a station does not need to be stored in a preset before it can be assigned an alphanumeric description - you can set a description for any station, stored or not. However, I also discovered accidentally, when I encountered a "MEM FULL" error message, that the available memory for these descriptions is limited. This is not mentioned in the manual, nor is the amount of available memory specified. To be fair, though, I WAS trying to tag every station I could receive - that's a lot of signals around here - and I almost got every one tagged. Most owners are very unlikely ever to see the "MEM FULL" message.
I have also seen a description which shows this stereo as having different display colours available [red, yellow, etc.], but as with RDS, there is no mention of this alleged feature anywhere in the manual. The only available display colour appears to be blue - light characters on a darker background - which can be set to bright or dim, and the bright setting is bright indeed. I believe it is possible to control the brightness with your vehicle's dashboard lighting controls, but that particular wire seems not to have been hooked up in my car by the installer who put in my old stereo, so all I can say is, check the manuals.
MP3 playback is generally good. I regularly drive on some slightly less-than-perfect roads - although they are certainly not pothole-riddled nightmares - and the CD player has yet to give even a very tiny hiccup during my normal commuter use. Sony credits this to their vibration-absorbing "DRIVE-S" CD mechanism. I will admit that I was at first a bit put off by the specs I have seen which state that this Sony has no shock protection memory [I have compared it to another unit by Dual which has 100-sec. protection], but so far, things seem to be going very well without it. Time will tell; again, it has been less than a week so far.
Reviewer update, Nov. 2004: Okay, I've had a few tiny skips, but they all happened while driving over rough patches or large bumps. Plain audio CD's are more likely to skip than MP3 discs. MP3 playback continues to be very reliable.
Track access time tends to be fast during playback, but I would prefer to have faster seek times when skipping through a large number of tracks. The disc's TOC is read before the disc is played, so that isn't the problem - it seems that what is slowing down the track access is that the player reads the ID3 tags of every single track it skips past. Sony should have included a true "fast-forward" track skip mode which ignores ID3 tags once the track skip key has been held down for, say, two seconds.
I have a dozen MP3 discs with anywhere from 140 to 200 tracks each, and although I certainly have not yet played every one of them from start to finish, I have discovered only one track so far that the F5500 will not play. I don't know the reason; my Philips eXpanium 103 and my home DVD player never have any problems with that track. To its credit, though, the inability to play that particular track does not make the F5500 hang or lock up like my eXpanium might do - it simply tries for five to ten seconds or so, gives up, and moves on.
In MP3 playback, the alphanumeric display handles ID3 tags as well as filenames and can be set to show the track number and elapsed time, the filename, the album [folder] name, the ID3 tag data in title/artist/album order, or just the clock, which hides the track names until a new track starts, at which point the first 8 characters of the filename are displayed for a few seconds before the clock returns. The ID3 tag display brings me to another minor complaint I have about this unit - even with "A.SCROLL" set to ON, the track information scrolls only once as each track begins. Turn it off, and the info never scrolls at all, so only the first 8 characters are displayed. One would assume that auto-scroll would mean that the track info would keep scrolling, but apparently it doesn't. This doesn't really bother me all that much, though - these are discs that I've burned myself and I know what song is playing when I hear it.
The F5500 seems to have different sonic characteristics than my old stereo - in short, it doesn't sound quite the same. I'm not saying that's good or bad, but it takes a lot of fiddling with the 3-band EQ to get it to where it sounds right to me. Additional bands in the EQ would make things easier. I'm not a big fan of the "DSO" [Dynamic Sound stage Organizer] feature, which is supposed to raise the apparent sound source position in those cases where speakers are mounted low, as in the doors. My speakers are in my dashboard and rear deck - "ear level," as it were - so I don't know how well the DSO might work for door-mounted speakers, but of its three levels, only level 1 sounds even remotely good to me. DSO level 1 does give the overall sound a somewhat more spacious and open characteristic, but at increasing levels, it only serves to make the midrange and treble [ESPECIALLY the midrange] sound overly emphasized and harsh, causing a pronounced "tin can" effect. It seems to me that DSO plays tricks with the midrange and treble timing and phasing - out-of-phase signals tend to interfere with and cancel each other - and frankly, it sounds strange to me. Have I mentioned that I don't like the DSO feature very much? [Reviewer update, Nov. 2004: The manual does mention, though, that DSO might produce undesirable results under certain conditions.]
This unit has the ability to connect to several types of optional equipment, including power amps, CD changers, MD changers, a stalk-mounted "Remote Commander" remote control, and/or XM satellite radio tuners. I have none of the above, so I can't comment on how well any of these features work. Amazon's specs say that this unit has no aux. inputs, but it does in fact have one pair of rear RCA inputs. This is shown as "BUS AUDIO IN" on the installation sheet, so I would assume that it is intended for use with external changers and tuners.
Overall, I would say that the F5500 seems to be well-built, but the ergonomics could use some improvement, as could the display. The buttons are tiny and much of the user interface is non-intuitive, with some features having no visible markings at all. You WILL want to study the manual, and it WILL take some time for you to become completely familiar with the controls. Sonically, it's not bad once you've found an EQ3 curve, balance, and F/R fader settings that work for you, but in my opinion, the DSO feature is all but useless. The jury is still out on the reliability of the CD section, but mine is working just fine so far.
 
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