Home audio help

[QuikSand]

The FOFC board has just become the place to go for help with this sort of thing... you guys (and gals) are the best.


So, Mrs. Q and I are looking to replace an old monolith of a stereo system with something portable, to play CDs and radio. I have suggested that it would be nice to get something that can play a CD that has files in .mp3 format on it -- that way, we'd be able to jam extra stuff onto one CD and get a lot of use out of it.

So, I have been looking for such an item, and I'm getting confused by terminology. For instance, I'm looking at this item:

http://www.sears.com/sr/javasr/product.do?BV_UseBVCookie=Yes&vertical=ELEC&pid=05790325000&subcat=Stereo+Systems

...which is billed as having:

CD/CD-R/RW, MP3 (CD-R/RW) compatible playback

To me, that sounds like just what I want -- I can rip six or eight a,bums worth of stuff onto one blank CD from our computer, and put it into this CD player, and it will play those songs from that CD. Am I right -- will that work?

Or, does this just mean something cheap... like I can burn an audio CD from an MP3 source and it will work on this machine?


Short answer is -- what exact feature am I looking for here, and what phrasing will ensure that I'm getting what I want? This item is only $99, and it's from a store where we now possess a gift card (but not much that interests us)... so if this did the trick, that would be great.

Any help from the ever-reliable FOFC crowd?

[kcchief19]

You are indeed interpreting this correctly. You can play an audio CD on a -R or -RW CD, or you can play plain old MP3 files on a CD-R or CD-RW. That is very good since, since some CD players will not play CD-RWs at all.

Two things about this item:

* I would not describe it as "portable" -- it is a "bookshelf" system designed to sit on a shelf or table, but not be easily moved from location to location. I note that because you had mentioned something portable. If you want something you can move from room to room, this is not the item for you.

* The No. 1 difference from system to system based on price will be the speakers. For those features at that price, the speakers will be decent but not great. You can get a system with better speakers if you shop around. I'm not a huge Panasonic fan for audio systems, but YMMV.

[QuikSand]

Thanks for the input... we are debating whether to just go cheap (since this will not exactly be a high-use) object anyway, or whether to get something a bit more serious.

And yes, I overstated my need for "portable" - we're just looking for soemthing that is fairly self-contained... a bookshelf model is about right. We're not looking to take it to a picnic.

Thanks again.