We purchased the Denon DN-961FA with our IMAX/Sonics sound system, and it has served us well for our purposes. The average Joe may find this CD player a little frustrating, but for people who only need the basic functions with good quality sound, this will more than suffice.

The player is fairly senstitive to scratches on the CD, and also to the time countdown. Ours has a tendency to stop for about ten seconds with around 1.5 minutes remaining in the first track, regardless of scratches. This is an oddity that has been repaired a couple times to no avail. It is probably unique to our specific player. However, it has no problems reading CD-R’s or CD-RW’s, regardless of color. One problem I have had is that it will pick up and play the tiniest of imperfections on the disc. If you had a slight burning error on your CDR, even if your home system doesn’t pick it up, there’s a chance the Denon DN-961FA will pick it up, and you’ll hear a small "zzt" of buzz at the error.

The player has the ability to count down the number of minutes/seconds remaining in a given track, or if you prefer to know the number of elapsed seconds, you can choose that as well.

One interesting and nice feature is the queueing track feature. While a given track is playing, you can select another track to play next (it doesn’t have to be the following one). The next track’s number will flash while the current song plays and then begins immediately after.

It may be a little confusing for people unfamiliar with the Denon setup to advance tracks - on this player, the knob serves as your track selector, while the ff and rr search buttons will sort of slow fast forward through a playing track. In addition, you have the normal play/pause and stop buttons, and buttons to adjust time mode. There are no obvious track advance symbols anywhere symbols, so it may take some people a while to pick up on the knob for track choice option a little off-putting. It’s also a tray player, so if you prefer something else, you’re out of luck.

Some people may not like the lack of features on this player. One of Denon’s more economical one-disc players, it’s really meant to be part of a inboard/soundwall system and not for the average home theater system. You won’t find at Best Buy, though, so it’s probably not even an option for most people.

I would find it hard to use this as part of a mixing system. It’s really meant to be in a system where only one disc will be played at one time, liek background music in an office or elevator or movie theater situation.

Now, the sound quality that comes out of it is pretty good. If you have the speakers, it will permit a full rich sound with no tinniness or fuzziness. If not, the sound will stink anyways, so you may as well not buy this until you’ve invested in better-quality speakers first.

All in all, a nice little player if you don’t mind the lack of mega features. It works well with our big system and is compact and easy to install as well. Not sure how much it costs because it came with the system.