Great clairty, I love the sleep function on the remote.

Speakers. eject mechanism.

I first saw this system in Toronto in October 1999. I had seen the article on the hdcd.com website as I was interested in that format. When I finally got the money saved up for the system it had been discontinued so I had to order it from a factory outlet. When it arrived the speaker driver for the right signal was dead. I sent it back and the replacement unit worked fine. THe only thing that takes a while to get used to is the slot eject doesn't always respond the first time pressed requires a few times and sometimes a rap on the top of the machine. The sound quality produced from the amplifier is quite nice, however there is a distinct weakness in the quality of the speakers. The speakers tend to have a very muddy quality in the midrange and they tend to be rather boomish. The amplifier makes the speakers almost acceptable. The low end is not very clean and the speakers tend to have a very narrow sound imaging field. I have since replaced the factory speakers with a pair of Paradigm Reference Series Studio 20's and the sound is amazing. The pure class a amp quality is very evident when coupled with a higher end speaker and there is a slight drop in quality but it is so slight you hardly notice it. I listen to the system late at night and the class a amp is the level I listen to it at and the music comes thru clear as a bell. Once you get this system chuck the speakers and get a good pair of high end speakers and you will hate to use any other amplifier afterwards this system tends to spoil your ears with the accuracy and sheer clairity of the music. BTW it also works wonderfully with movie soundtracks and movies. I recommend this system to anyone who wants a great sounding system.

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IMPRESSIVE features for a "mini system", HDCD, replaceable speakers, hardly fair to call this a "mini system".

Speakers are too inefficient (85db/W/m), sound is missing too much midrange for me

This blasted site won''t let me write my full review because "it''s too long". Balderdash. Basically, this unit is a CD player, receiver and tuner crammed into a package less than half the size of a typical full-size CD player. The back has inputs for AM & FM antenna, "Minidisk" and "Cassette" player RCA inputs and outputs(more about those in a moment), an auxiliary input, a subwoofer output, plus a digital output for the CD player, something rarely found in a "mini" system. Another thing rarely found in a "mini" system is its ability to make full use of HDCD encoded CDs, and truthfully this feature is the main reason I bought this unit. HDCD is too complicated to go into here, but the main feature is that it supposedly increases resolution to 20 bits (normal CDs are 16 bits) on HDCD-compatible CD players, resulting in better dynamics, or something like that. See HDCD.com for the full details. The inputs and outputs on the back are intended for the matching MiniDisc player and cassette deck which are available separately, as well as the digital output (TosLink, I believe), but no one''s stopping you from hooking anything else to them. Got a record player and phono amp, or an expensive DAC? Go for it! Now on to the integrated amplifier. Kenwood claims the class A mode ensures clear sound at low levels, but with the speakers that came with it, 7.5 watts just isn''t quite enough. Plus I don''t hear much difference anyway. Finally, we come to the speakers, which are failry basic small bookshelf-style speakers. The woofer is a 4.5 inch plastic (probably polypropylene) cone with a rubber surround; the tweeter is an inverted metal dome type. They also have a fairly large (1.5") port in the front. Finally, they come with nice metal binding posts -- quite impressive. (The ones of the amplifier are plastic, though.) But all that means nothing if it doesn''t sound good. Fortunately, it does sound good. In my room, the bass goes surprisingly low, but there seems to be a peak at about 100 Hz that annoys me. Also, the midrange seems to have been sacrificed, and further disappears if you turn on "Natural Bass" (aka Loudness). Overall, it sounds quite comparable with the full-size consumer systems I''ve heard (nothing great though), and takes up less room. Get a subwoofer and maybe upgrade the main speakers, and this could be a giant-killer.

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