Stick to basics. Review on Choosing a Sound System

At the outset let me say that this review is based on very limited experience with audio systems - namely - a telefunken( german brand) - [my father's], a videocon stereo - my roommate's, and a sony two in one - my own.

None of them have a cd playing facility - they were all two in ones - that is radio and cassette player. The last one still is.

The telefunken one was a good one till it turned four years old. Then it's thread broke - the one that's used to control the radio channels. The tape recorder used to make meteoric sounds too.

So this gentleman was sentenced to retirement.

The other stereo I came across was my roommate's videocon stereo - it had those huge speakers, and a lot of flashy buttons on it. We used to play it during lunch time and also after we came back from work, every day but no rough usage at all.

However, something broke inside somewhere - and the stereo went kaput. This took less than three months to happen. The workshop guy had something very unflattering to say about'these new fangled brands that take people for a ride'. That, in fact was the first time we(me and my roommate) realised that there's more to quality that just the brand name.

So far, this was the experience I had had - when I set out to buy a stereo on my own, which was a SONY.

By now I had become really wary about flashy buttons, huge speakers and mega advertisements whenever it came to stereo systems.

So when I bought my sony stereo, it was a very simple model, all black and grey, with no gimmicks.

It's now two years old, and working as good as new. It's eaten a lot of dust too, [lazy me] but that hasn't affected performance. At times, the sound just goes off - but that's how we come to know that there's a power cut!

The stereo doesn't have too many features - no recording facility, no auto reverse, nothing. Very basic model - I forget the model number - will post it as soon as possible, but whatever features it has, this sony works perfectly fine.

So to sum up, reliability is important - if you are spending upwards of 3000 Rupees for a system, don't you think it should last for at least five years - that's two rupees a day? I doesn't really matter if you don't have all the latest features - they just keep adding them, but how many will you really use?

This is not to disparage multifunctional systems, but to emphasise on the reliability aspect.

Your comments invited.