Audio Reviews

While this product won't transform your old TV into a state of the art home theater system, it can breathe new life into that outdated set. If you're upgrading to a more modern set, this item is perfect for converting your old one into a dedicated gaming system for the kids. Or if you're like me and you just want to be able to watch DVDs in the Rec Room from your comfortable chair on the old TV that doesn't have A/V inputs,
this RF Modulator is the ticket to take you there without breaking your bank account.

If you are wondering how to hook up your new DVD/VCR to an older TV which still works fine, then an RF Modulator is what you really need to allow the connection of a DVD player to your older TV set.

You plug your DVD/VCR player into the RF Modulator and plug the RF Modulator into the coaxial input.

It is like buying a new TV, just less expensive.

Simple to install and very worthwhile. Mine is hidden up behind the TV, you can't even see it is there.

this worked like a charm. my dvd player is connected to a tv with no av connections. this made everything work great. do no throw out that older tv. buy this and create a miracle

I purchased this on sale in my local Target and it's the neatest thing since sliced bread. The USB storage device is simple to use (you don't even have to install any software if you're running Windows 2000/ME or higher) and it stores enough for a good run (52 mp3s has been the max I've been able to put on it so far). This thing eats batteries like candy, so I only give it a 4 star rating. If you do buy this, use lithium AAA batteries, not alkaline- they're more expensive, but they'll last a lot longer.

i like it because it comes with the speakers and it can hold 80 songs i dont know why you would want a mp3 player that holds 1,000 songs

Great sytem for the price , highly recomend for anyone wanting a MP3 player ...cool thing is it also comes with those great little speakers .....they kick --- !

Minidisc recorders are one of the greatest inventions ever created. It's SO unfortunate that CD Burners have caused this products popularity to dwindle. You can do so much more with a minidisc than with a cd burner. Erase songs now or 10 years from now, rearrange tracks, give specific track numbers to certain songs, there's virtually no limit to what you can do. NONE of this can you do with a burner, except erase a track, and with most, you can only erase the last track you recorded and you must have a CD-RW to do that, and with those, the quality [is bad]! With minidisc, quality is always 100%. I can't believe with all these features, the minidisc has succome to the limited ability of the cd burner. Unfortunately, minidisc recorders are VERY hard to find these days. A lot of stores have stopped carrying them alltogether. And, good luck finding a place that will work on them SHOULD you ever need it. This is such a shame. An MD Recorder is also 10 times as easy to use as a CD-R. I've had my minidisc recorder for about 3 years and wouldn't trade it for the world. I even have a Sony MD player in my vehicle and LOVE it. Don't let this product fade away like so many other great inventions in our time. I URGE YOU, buy THE BEST, the Minidisc Recorder, let's put this product back on top and drive away...unuseful products, like the CD-R.

This player is an awesome addition to your home system. Trust me, I've been using MiniDiscs since 1997, and i found out that the MiniDisc is the best choice if you want to carry your favorite tunes, with CD quality sound (you'll hardly get that with MP3's!!!). This player (JE440) also incorporates the LP2 and LP4 compression system, so you can turn your 74 min. MiniDiscs into 148 and 296 min. discs!!!!! On LP2, the quality of sound is almost the same as it is without compression. On LP4, you'll notice some variations in music, but this is the perfect mode if you want to record a presentation/conference, because it gives you a little less than 5 hours of recording....

Editing is easy..... all of the functions are available at the stylish and well designed remote controller. Among the editing functions, you can add fade-in and fade-outs to your songs (the length is programmable), you can change the recording levels in +/- 2% increments, combine and divide tracks, among others.

So, go ahead, try this technology (MiniDisc) with this excellent player..... In order to complete my sound system, I changed my car stereo to a MiniDisc In-dash unit with a CD changer in the trunk (tapes???? you cand find them at your local museum!!!)

You won't regret the change to this technology!!!!!!!!!!!!

easy to use and learn. I would advise the purchase of an optical cable - with this connection, there is no need for manual level adjustments, so there are no are no oversaturated or low-level recordings. A few of the functions are a little confusing to start with, but the undo function makes it simple to avoid any lasting problem. A very nice pruduct at a reasonable price - I hope these will be available in the future despite what some other reviewers predict .

I have one of these, and use it every day at work. I've had it something over 12-18 months and will buy another. I particularly like the five different buttons pre-programmed with 5 different stations -- push a different button and you are on another 'band' with five different stations on those five buttons. This way you can put in 25 FM and five AM stations. I also really really like the battery-level indicator. The little screen that shows things like station and battery-level is black-on-gray and although fine to read in normal light conditions it would be impossible in the dark. On the other hand the buttons are all easy to tell apart just by touch and I use them a lot without ever looking at the unit.

After all these months the 'chrome' finish is wearing off the corners. I drop the unit about once a month and it is finally affecting the radios' ability to pull in certain stations (which is why I am replacing it.) The cassette player is still working fine.

I work in an office built of steel and concrete and full of computers and other things that affect reception. I can get very few AM stations under these adverse conditions and have problems with some of the weaker FM. This is not the Walkman's fault.

I do not give this model a perfect score because the battery compartment is a bit smarter than I am, and once I remember which way to press the lever I have to use something to lever the batteries out because it's a tight fit. Also for my purposes I wish the volume knob were on the other end of the unit but that's just me -- I happen to carry the unit upside-down. I could wish that I did not have to open the cassette compartment to change batteries but it's not that big a deal.

I have had this product for almost a year now, and I am most satisfied with its performance.

The unit has excellent radio reception and is lightweight. The tape player, which I use quite often, has been very reliable; no skipping or munching. The headset is also lightweight and delivers excellent sound.

A-plus!

A well made quality item. The comfortable headset delivers a clear stereo sound from a tape or radio station. There is no disturbance of the tape sound during jogging nor any strenuous activity that I have yet devised. Tuning of the radio stations is easy, the reception borders on perfection. Overall the unit stands up to rain, sleet and snow, unnoticed when carried in the hand or in a parka pocket it is of solid construction giving one confidence in taking it to the great outdoors. ...

I have a slight variation on the black-finished radio here; mine has an all silver front. Probably a custom model for Restoration Hardware stores. Anyway, it's a beautiful radio with incredible sound. It gets better reception than any other FM radio I've had in my office (24th floor of a tower in downtown Minneapolis), getting more stations than I ever knew existed. The sound is full, and loud! Really, that's my only issue with this radio. On a desktop in an office setting, it's pretty tough to adjust the little volume knob to a quiet enough level for daytime background listening. It's awesome when you crank it up, but I don't want to disturb my coworkers.

I was sure I would be disappointed with this radio given all the rave reviews I had read about. After all, it simply couldn't be that good, could it? I am quite happy to say that I was wrong, it is every bit as good as everyone says. I am full of admiration for the engineers who worked on this little marvel.

My listening is 95% classical, so my attention is always focused on the sound being natural, detailed, and musical. The Model One starts out with the best FM tuner on the market (hands down), which pulls in signals cleanly, even weak ones. My immediate reaction upon first hearing the sound was surprise at the details that were present in the music over an FM signal. I had always imagined that the reason my radios sounded so poor in the past was that the FM signal simply could not hold enough detail. The Model One proved this reasoning quite wrong, there is a lot of music in the FM signal. In fact, I could effortlessly pick out every instrument in the orchestra on this radio.

In the beginning, I was not overly impressed with the low frequencies produced by this radio. But then, I had simply set the radio down on an old desk, and could feel the desk vibrating in sympathy with the low frequencies from the radio. So I went to Home Depot and got a very heavy piece of ceramic tile to place under the radio to prevent the table from siphoning off all the bass. The difference was dramatic. This radio produces a LOT of bass. Very clear and musical bass. The elephant from Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals placed the string bass right in my room, I could swear. I found that when I placed the radio about 8 inches from a wall, the bass was even further enhanced. Other reviewers like to marvel at how much bass there is coming from this tiny radio, but I am much more impressed by how tight and musical the bass actually is. This is not to take anything away from its very clear and reliable treble range; it is just that one can't help noticing how small the radio really is, and with all that bass, and .... well, you know.

This is by far the most value I have ever gotten out of this little money for a piece of audio equipment. The Model One is very, very, sweet and musical, and this description is true for its entire remarkable frequency range. I listen to it about 9-10 hours a day, and weeks after the first listen, I still catch myself looking up from what I was doing at that moment to admire its sound.

I bought this radio for my office. (Hence the black finish. The computer's black, the phone's black, etc.) Radio reception in the building is normally crummy, but the Model One pulls in my favorite stations clearly, using only the included antenna, and the sound is exceptional. Even at low volume (don't want to disturb my co-workers), lows have pretty good weight, and the mids and highs are clear. Turn it up a little, and it fills the whole room with sound that's way out of proportion to its tiny size. One of the best FM radios you'll ever use, and for a lot less money than the other "premium" radios available.

this mp3 player is great it's small enough to hold in the palm of your hand but not so small that you can't use the buttons. it's easy to put songs from your computer on it and the sound is fantastic. it doesn't hold is many songs as i thought it would but it holds plenty. i def. think that this is one of the best buys for your money if you are looking for a good mp3 player!!

This is the only one of four MP3 players i tried that had acceptable sound quality. All the others; Rio, RCA, Nike had a strange high pitched noise no matter what the source of the audio files. The Yepp does not, and the WOW sound is really quite good. The only problem is that no matter how you put songs into thae player, it plays them back in alphabetical order. This drove me crazy. The only solution to this is to put each album(or collection of songs) in its own folder and copy them using windows explorer. Then each folders songs are in order. other than that problem this is the best MP3 player you can get for the money.

Samsung makes a great mp3 player. This tiny thing has so much in it. The sound is out of this world! A great deal!!

Warning this is a high end unit 105 watts per channel, 6.1 channel but does not have speaker switching.A/B I have an extra pair of speakers in my patio and this unit has only has 1 main front speaker unit hook. Now I have to figure out how I can use my outdoor speakers!

Also, no phono hook up.

Ralph DeVito

I replaced my old sony and aiwa surround systems with this sherwood and it's like I never had surround before. My old systems cost 5 times as much as this sherwood but don't even compare.

Before you buy any home theater receiver be sure to compare the specifications and features of this Sherwood. I hve to tell you that if you were able to do side by side comparisons with the Sony, Pioneer, Yamaha, Denon and Harman Kardon as I have using the same speakers and room you would ask yourself why pay for anything else.

For the price, this unit does everything I wanted it to, in terms of sound and features. I had hoped that composite video inputs could be output via the s-video out, but I can accept the fact that I'd have to pay more for this feature.

However, I'm in the process of returning this unit for one single reason: there is a fairly obvious delay in the audio output. With either a DVD or digital cable box signal (using coax digital and RCA inputs, respectively) there is a delay between the video source and the audio output, resulting in slightly out-of-sync dialog. If I also hook up the RCA audio-out of the DVD directly to the TV, then the delay is more obvious -- the TV outputs the sound before the receiver, causing an echo effect. I've called Sony and they have no suggestions other than returning the unit.

Assuming this is an isolated problem with this particular unit, I'll be amending this review, as everything else about this receiver was totally satisfactory.

The Sony STR-DE685 is a fine receiver for the money. Lots of bells and whistles. Be careful, because it has a great THD rating in stereo, but only so-so with all 5 channels driven. Other companies do the same thing. I really like the features and the remote is probably the best in the business, despite the fact that the keys are small. All in all I liked it so much that when it came time to buy a second one, I bought a STR-DE985, which is similar, but with better specs.

I have had this reveiver for three months now and love it. I am very pleased and have not had the audio delay problem mentioned in the other review. I would highly recommend this product. Nice versitility - Tons of bells and whistles.

First of all I want to describe the positive points about this receiver, and then I will point out its weak points. This receiver is extremely easy to hook-up and set-up, although if one is going to use this receiver as the heart of a surround sound home theater system, then there are a lot of parameters that must be set up prior to the first listening. These parameter adjustments may take up to 8 to 10 hours, but they are easy and straight forward, and the manual is very well written to allow a first time user the ability to sort through all of the various features and adjustments with minimal frustration. If one is using this as the heart of a surround sound home theatre system, this receiver does provide ample connections and features to assure forward compatability with various componets and encoding, decoding of digital material. With its fiber optic inputs (which I highly recommend using) and onboard DACs, this receiver provides the flexibility that one needs to control a variety of home theatre products. The best feature of this product is the musicallity of the onboard amplifiers. With low distortion, high power, and quick response times, this receiver is an able bodied amplifier for even the most demanding musical numbers.The only reason why I bought this receiver was for the six channel discreet amplifier section coupled to a six channel analog input option. This feature was neccasary for my set-up as I have a SACD player. It is here that the receiver earns its low rateing of only three stars. The tone controls, which are pretty cheap to begin with, having no loudness compensation circuit, do not even work with a multi-channel input. The tone controls only operate on the front two channels, so any time a person wants to enjoy surround sound, it is relatively flat WITH NO POSSIBLE WAY TO ADJUST THE FREQUENCY. This is a real weakness for a receiver that was intended to be the heart of a surround sound system, but the engineers must have felt that they could save enough money by not including any tone controls that it warrented this obvious lack of crucial adjustment. Every musical piece, and most movie playback, would benifit from the ability for a user to adjust the frequency response slightly, tweek the sound so to speak. I can understand that adding tone controls to a receiver my cost a little bit of money, but the exclusion of tone controls seems to me to be a shame that SONY should rectify ASAP. But it must be remebered that this is an entry level receiver, so I guess one can't be to critical. All in all, if you are in the market for a low-cost, entry level receiver for a home theatre system, consider this model. If you have a little more money, I would highly recommend skipping this model and moving up to a genuine high fidelity receiver.

Love this receiver. Price is way low and it's packed with tons of features. Plenty of power to drive all my speakers. An user here complained about the lack of tone control but I disagree. There are just a lot of settings you can tweek on this machine. You can set your bass/treb levels, speaker sizes, speaker distances, speaker heights, and a few more. Haven't found anything bad about this receiver. I was comparing this with other brands such as Yamaha and Onkyo. They lacked some of the crucial features I was looking for (assignable digital audio inputs, video switching, etc) and the Sony looks great. Definitely recommend.

What attracted me to this particular receiver was it's ability to handle Component Video and High Definition TV, in particular. I recently bought an HD-ready TV and have an HD Cable TV Converter as well as a DVD player with Progressive Scan. I needed a new receiver that could handle the switching duties between the various components. The 895 does the job handily. A necessary feature was the 80Mhz pass-thru between the Converter box and the Monitor. (No other A/V receivers in this price range have this high a quality of spec.) This allows ample bandwidth for the High Definition signal to pass thru the receiver and onto the Monitor with no degradation to the signal.
In addition to a dedicated Component Video input for the DVD Player, the receiver boasts a coaxial digital audio input. The Progressive Scan video and CD quality sound that the 895 allows to pass through is extraordinary.
Then there is the 895's 6.1 surround sound.... fantastic! I have a unique situation in that I have 2 CD Players with digital outputs that needed to be hooked up to the receiver. No problem due to the assignable fibre optic digital inputs. You can even re-label how you want the input description to show up on the front panel of the 895. Cool! (So was the color option - I opted for the silver to match my TV ;-) I have been extremely satisfied with this Sony receiver and rate it a solid 5 STARS.

Upon reading other customer reviews I bought this tape recorder. It is ok for voice recording and playback, but when I recorded my piano practice the playback sounded awful. Since I had bought it for that purpose I returned it. For voice it has a good tone and the machine noise is less than others I have heard. So, especially considering all the features including cue/review it is a good choice for voice recording.

I've had one of these since 1993. It's perfect. It's a tape player and recorder, and that's it.

It never jams on a good tape. It's perfect at what it does.

Being an audiobook lover I use it to listen to my books around the house and it has had a lot of use!

Unlike units that have CD players, the tape is the focus, not an afterthought.

Also, it's far superior to tape units that switch sides for you, because they often switch sides at the least resistance, not necessarily the end of the tape.

In summation, this is the tape audiobook listener's friend for reliable, no trouble, listening for hours and hours and years to come..

This is a very nice cassette recorder, that is loaded with features that most cassette recorders don't have anymore. It has microphone jack, ear jack, tape counter, sliding volume control(on side of unit), built-in very sensative mic, that picks up full-fidelity sound. Uses full-size cassette tapes, has full-auto stop; which means that it will stop in Rewind, Fast Forward, and playing or recording. Speaker produces good sound, with clear recordings. I recently recorded old 78 records, using this recorder, and placing it near the record player. It produced, very clear, full-fidelity recordings; even from scratchy sounding 78 records. It also has cue and review, that let you rewind or fast-forward to selections without pressing stop key. Comes with AC adapter, and uses 4 "AA" batteries. Recorder is simple to operate, but produces good voice or music recordings. It has ALC for perfect recordings every time, without making adjustments. Highly recommend this recorder.