When I moved to my apartment five years ago and was looking for new stereo gear (I left my Zenith four-mode system at my former home, as then the rig had 17 years on it and was starting to show its age as well as being horribly dated, as it had an eight-track player/recorder), I bought what I considered to be the best small stereo rig I could find at that time. I wound up with an Aiwa bookshelf system, 200 total watts (50 wpc with provisions for surround speakers). My own opinion of this system is that, although small, it puts out great sound (to my ears, anyway), even though the digital AM/FM tuner is not the best in the world.
My system is not the best on earth (not to mention being an off brand of sorts; Aiwa hi-fi gear is much better known in Japan than on these shores), but IMHO it is probably much better than the cheap system being discussed in this thread. I think if zdsrft's friend really wanted hi-fi sound (and didn't have the room for components and big speakers), she honestly, IMHO, should have gotten a system like mine. I've had it for five and a half years (as long as I've lived here) and not only does my system sound great, it is built to last; honestly, I haven't had five minutes' worth of trouble with it. I hooked the audio from my cable box and the soundcard output from my computer to it, and now have what I consider to be a fairly good apartment audio system. I don't know what zdsrft's friend's system is like (probably very cheap stuff, given zd's description of the sound), but again I think like some of the rest of you seem to, that the young lady would be doing herself a big favor by getting rid of the thing and getting a decent stereo system ASAP, even if she has to do a little looking to find one with a turntable (mine only accepts Aiwa TTs, and the turntable is an option; don't know about others, although some very cheap ones don't even have TT inputs--for example, I'd advise her to steer clear of systems like the Magnavox MAS series of bookshelf stereos, as these are bare-minimum systems with no aux inputs at all--the most upgrading anyone can do with these is put better speakers on them, as the stock speakers are little better than those found in transistor radios or cheap boom boxes).
From the description of it, her present "system" sounds to me like little more than a very low-fi toy. I don't blame zd for crying in his post; the sound from that system would probably make most people cringe at best and cry at worst. Seems to me that thing has a stereo amplifier and speakers little better than what one would find in a cheap portable CD or cassette player. I wonder how her system sounds through headphones. :scratch2:
