Help finding a Hi-Fi?

[Kentish]

It seems unless you want to spend well over a grand there are no decent hi-fi's available these days, they are all little things that look all nice and trendy but hasve puny speakers and can fit on your shelves between your Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter novels but are not really that great in terms of good deep bass and crisp trebble and smooth mid tones.

There are midi units with larger speakers and better sound quality but they are all rather cheap and very plastic!

With this in mind we've been looking at home cinema systems instead so we can use it for movies and for music. They also appear to be very variable as well but having looked at a few the SONY DAV-DZ830W appears to be very good for around £400.



Does anyone have one of these and how do you find it?

Also are there any better alternatives?

Edited by Kentish on Sunday 30th December 16:46

[S7Paul]

I have a copy of the January issue of What Hi-Fi Sound & Vision. They give the DAV-DZ830 3 stars (out of 5), and say "Stylish and offers reasonable pictures but average sound".

They say the best sub-£1000 system is the Sony DAV-IS10, with the Philips HTS9800W also very good. They seem to be in the £600-650 bracket.

Further down the price range, both the LG HT902TB and the Onkyo DR-815 get 5 stars, and they're around £270-275.

If you decide to buy an all-in-one hi-fi but don't want to spend too much, they particularly recommend the Onkyo CS-515 at around £300, or you could try:-
Yamaha CRX-M170 (£300)
TEAC DR-H300DAB (£330)
Audio Analogue Enigma (£850)
Arcam Solo (£1000)

[UpTheIron]

I'd suggest you should be looking at seperates.

How much do you want to spend? What do you want to be able to play / listen to? DVD / CD / DAB / FM?

[Parrot of Doom]

Second hand separates, from Ebay or similar. You'll get a hell of a lot more value for money.

[combine]

Agree about buying second hand, tricky thing is even the high spec separates can go wrong , especially cd units , one day you pop the cd in and it doesn't want to play , the cost of the fix can be more than you paid for the unit easily , so try and buy demo units from dealers and get a warranty , and then extend it !

[MitchT]

As already said, get top-notch stuff second-hand rather than run-of-the-mill stuff new... And get powered speakers rather than an amp and passive speakers if possible.