My View (Hitachi AXM7)

Member Name: BhangraMan

Product:	Hitachi AXM7
Date:	31/03/02 (300 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: AMP, TUNER, TAPE DECK

Disadvantages: SPEAKERS, hmm..., ummm...

I bought The Hitachi Early 2001 and was very pleased to ge the main unit(amp,radio tuner minidisk and cd player), speakers and the tape deck(with all the latest DOLBY things) for only £300(compared to £380 for a sony equivalent which didnt have DOLBY things)
The packaging it came in was very good, and quite small. It was well packed with all the right things inside.. after a look at the instucton manual(which was VERY poorly written, with only a few crappy "clip art" images) i finally got down to set up the equiptment, it was very easy for me because i am very good at this kind of things anyway. I powered it up and i was very suprised and the sound, for the price it was about avarage. The system looked very nice stacked up and i couldn't beleive Hitachi could make something so beutiful.
The radio was very good, it has a RMS system which find info on the radio station you need. I was very suprised and the sound quality of the radio, it was better than my £120 PIONEER on on my main system!
The cd played with about avarage quality with a tray which was very solidly built.
the Minidisc was good quality with a good loading system but unfortuanatly quite poor quality sound. All the frequancys were not quite perfect.
The tape deck was amazing quality. the built quality was better than SONY and the sound qualtiy was amazing. The tape deck has 3 modes of play and 2 DOLBY's. To try out the DOLBY features, i tried using a 20 year old tape on it. I switch on one of the dolby's and to my suprise it completely filtered ALL the distortion.
The remote control is easy to use and good quality. beleive me I have drop it on the floor many times.
AND finally the AMPLIFYER was the last thing i tried out. TO try this i plugged in my PIONEER dvd player and played a CD on it. The sound quality was incredable. the clarity was very pure. The speach was perfectly rounded, and every note was perfect.
The spe
akers. These are the things that disapoint this system. They are 2-way with one 4inch long-throw paper driver and a 1/2 tweeter. The speaker cases were small and quite deep. At the rear of the speaker were 2 gold plateted screw type inputs so you could use banana plugs on the speaker wires. The sound of these speakers were AWFUL! the sound was almost distorted. and the mid-freq was almost not there, there was next to NO bass at, and the high end wasn't sharp at all.
Due to the ARFUL speakers, i went online and bought a pair of WARFEDALE VALVUS 300's and some GALE spear wire (£60 total), and the sound was 100.000.000 times better. Now the system sounded like a £600 system. (shame on you Hitachi)

As a conclusion, i would like to say that all the the features are very good quality.(except for speakers) The build quality was very very good. Only just get rid of the original speakers and spend £70 on quality speakers and wire). The whole system is made of metal and it has a thick aluminum front panel which is very classy. If you wont a buget system that is very good quailty and that will last for years to come this is the one for you.
Thx for reading.

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