compact stereos

Firstly, I have had no experience with the system buzzing on low volumes as mentioned in a previous review, this maybe due to another appliance interfering with the system.

I read a lot reviews on this site and was after an AIWA, however being impatient I wanted to go out and buy a system for my bedroom straight away. I listened to the Sony in Circuit City and I was impressed. The sound quality or volume is not going to blow you away, especially if you have a good quality seperates system. But for [the price] it is good. It is more than loud enough for a bedroom, office or similar.

The sleep mode and timer makes it a good choice if it is to be used in a bedroom. However, the disk changing mechanism is on the loud side so stick to one CD if you are trying to go to sleep to music.

The system is small and compact and is nicely finished (as long as you do not look at the back of the speakers). It would have been nice to change the speaker cables but they are hard-wired into the system.

The Tuner is of good quality, although I would like to have had the RDS feature available on the European model (although only limited US radio stations broadcast in RDS.)

The remote control is fine and has all the features you would expect, however, many of the buttons are the same size and shape making it hard to use in low-light/dark situations. Combine this with the noisy CD changer and this is why it did not get the 5 star rating.

First looks: looks great, takes only little bookshelf space, good controls design (better than the other, older sony micro systems), 3 CD, relatively inexpensive (nice "bang for the buck")

...but, as this system is only 15W / speaker, we would expect it would give a decent performance at low volume!
A constant background noise is hearable from the system, for example even if the CD paused, the noise is greater when the CD is playing... The amplifier has a design flaw or it is deliberately of low quality.
The "noise" is unbereable with headphones.

At normal/high volume, this system sounds great but... I still think this product is inconsistant in quality with other sony products.

The unit looks fine, and the gray/wood look blends in well with furniture.

After one year of operation, I began noticing the hiss mentioned in other reviews. Whenever the unit is on standby (no music playing), you can clearly hear a radio station playing in the background. It's absolutely torturous. Imagine watching a DVD on a laptop connected to this device. Every time time there is a pause in the action, you hear a faint sound resembling a radio playing in low volume. If you pay attention, you can make out entire songs. If you live in an area with bad reception, you won't hear songs like I do, you'll simply hear hiss.

The sound will not go away when you play CDs...you can drown it out by playing music loud enough. Unfortunately, that defeats the purpose of a bookshelf system.

I called Sony, and they have no information on this problem. Stay away from this extremely disappointing unit. I purchased it for $200, and it still retails for $150. It sells on Ebay for $55.