This is a great product and achieves exactly what I wanted. No more cables no more piled up receivers and players and no more annoying home theatre surround ( if I want surround I now go to a theatre where it sort of works ok ) I am a sound engineer by trade. I got this system because I had stopped listening to my real HIFI and was listening mostly to a Bose Ipod dock chugging away in the background and this is like an enormous one of those. Like the Bose there is signal processing going on here, its called "Embracing Sound" check out the website for tech details. All the speakers are close together in the middle of the unit except the sub which is underneath. Because of this the stereo image is not super wide but it is wide enough. It has seven one hundred watt D class amps one for each speaker.
I would like to mix music on one of these to see what happened, some cd's sound great and some sound quite different. Some cd's seem to have a lot more reverb on vocals that I never heard before on more typical wide spread speaker systems. The demo cd plays some footsteps that walk 10 feet to the side of the unit quite freaky. Normal Hi fi systems rely on a phantom centre which tends change wherever are in the room, this doesnt happen on this system. It sounds the same wherever you are.
I like it because it solves a lot annoying problems for users who live in small houses and it sounds real good but you have to get used to it. I would like to say it could be a great reference for mixing because well mixed music sounds great yet some poorer mixed music sounds average ,on a conventional system the placement of the speakers could cover this up. I would like to say it but until I mix on one I wont know.
Its perfect for my situation, it sounds smooth without that super extended sizzley top end that seems to be appearing in more and more systems and it goes real loud if you need.