Excellent receiver & player, weak speakers
Pros:
Awesome sound, build quality, ease of use (except remote)
Cons:
Weak speakers, no balance adjustments, hard to use remote, lame wake-up timer
The Bottom Line:
There is no comparison in this price range sound wise. If you can buy it without the bundled speakers and add some decent ones.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
The receiver and CD player are wonderful. The speakers, unfortunately not. They lack bass response and the imaging is just not there. The built quality of the speakers is cheap -- particle board, bare (no veener) in the back! It's obvious they just don't match the rest of the system.
It used to be different - before there was PS-509 system (which I have been using for 4 years). It has the same receiver and CD changer units (just black, not silver, however later they introduced PS-510 which was silver). PS-509/PS-510 shipped with Polk RT-105 speakers that were quite good (actually, according to Polk Audio, they were made by Onkyo, Polk just helped them with the design and allowed to use Polk name for marketing). Apparently in order to cut costs they ended the joint-venture and started to bundle the system with their poor speakers. PS-509 originally cost $500, MC35TECH is one hundred less (or even less than that).
My advice -- get the receiver and CD player (you can get refurbished ones cheaply) and get some better speakers. For less money you'll get a better system. That's what I did (I wanted to get another set).
What else?
The remote is hard to use. But at least it lets you adjust bass & treble settings (not possible without remote; some other functions are also available only on the remote).
The wake-up timer is very lame. It just turns the unit on without adjusting volume, so if you use the sleep timer to fall asleep with the music, you can't really use the wake-up timer. Also if you use CD for the timer, it will just play the last CD that was played with track 1. The bottom line is the wake-up timer is pretty much useless.
Also, there is no balance adjustment, but the acoustic presence makes up for that reasonably well.
Bottom line: the sound quality is fantastic. Speakers are poor, mediocre at best, but still much better than those bundled with typical consumer stereos. Overall this stereo is much better value (and sound quality) than comparable offerings from Denon & Yamaha.
