Stylish with great sound
Written: Jun 06 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: It looks absolutely amazing.
Cons: Flimsy build on the CD pickup, but may have been peculiar to my model.
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| Danhon's Full Review: Sony CMT-ED1 Shelf System |
I'll come straight out with it. When I saw this in the Sony Centre, it was just begging to be bought. Sleek, with seemingly flat-panel speakers, a brushed-metal facade... a glass top lid. A bright LCD display screen, and a wonderful rotating stand.
So I got it. The Sony CMT-ED1. One of Sony's first efforts at a micro Hi-Fi system, and with Sony reliability, you won't be disappointed. The all-in-one system incorporates a CD player with a glass top lid (flip the glass open, plonk down the CD and then place the optional vibration stabiliser on top), an FM/AM tuner with 60FM presets and 20AM presets, and a Dolby B tape deck with auto reverse. Throw in a clock, alarm and timer-recording from the radio, remote control, phono inputs and outputs and a TOSLink socket for direct-digital minidisc recordings and you've got a pretty comprehensive system.
This system is great for making minidisc copies of CDs: thrown in the CD, connect up your optical cable, wait seventy four minutes, and there you go. Great music on the move and in your room.
Speaker quality is excellent, considering the size of the speakers: friends are consistently amazed by the quality of sound, and the system includes an active bass feature called "DBFB". The built-in DSP also offers two modes of sound processing, near-field and wide, with the latter producing good 3D spatialised audio effects.
Now to the downsides.
My LCD display has died on me twice, now. I'm not sure why this is, the backlight seems to just stop working. It requires a replacement from a Sony service centre, which as we all know isn't ever going to be a cheap option.
My CD holding mechanism required replacement. This wasn't good, either, with the glue holding the "lock" becoming unstuck, CDs were not being held in a horizontal position and ended up spinning tilted. Needless to say, playing CDs became much harder. In fact, playing CDs became impossible. This required a replacement as well, though the system is not working as well as it did brand new.
If you're looking for a small system that combines great looks with great sound, look no further. In addition to that, if you're looking to show off with a system that will turn heads, then look no further as well: the speakers, whether mounted horizontally as "wings" on the main system, or mounted vertically, look great, and Sony supply a choice of two coloured speaker grills, blue and red. Sony, again, have produced a winner.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Danhon
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Member: Dan Hon
Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 1 member
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