State of the Hi-Fi (and new additions!)

New additions!

I went to VCF Southwest in Dallas this weekend, and one of the folks selling stuff at their booth had two MiniDisc units! I got the combo, plus a bunch of MiniDiscs themselves, for $150 – I’m pretty happy with that deal.

Sony MZ-R37 portable MiniDisc player/recorder

My Sony MZ-R37 as seen from the front, with the disc compartment open and a disc peeking out

My Sony MZ-R37 as seen from the top, with the disc compartment open and a disc peeking out

Sony MDS-JE500 component MiniDisc player/recorder

My Sony MDS-JE500 as seen from the front, playing a MiniDisc and showing the album name as Night Visions

The rest of the system

Of course, since I'm making this post a "state of the hi-fi" I should show the other components in my system.

Sony STR-DH190 stereo receiver

My Sony STR-DH190 as seen from the front, under my MiniDisc player and above my cassette deck.

This is a perfectly adequate receiver and amp. There's nothing really special about it, but it can drive my speakers just about as loud as I want it to and has exactly the number of inputs I need. Maybe I'll end up with a better receiver or amp in the future.

JVC TD-W501 stereo double cassette deck

My JVC TD-W501 as seen from the front, under my receiver and above my CD changer.

This thing is a bit of a piece of junk. The right deck (the playback one) has a non-functional left channel, and both channels sound kinda muffled. Sadly it still works better than my other deck, so until I either repair the other deck or find yet another I'm stuck with this one.

Sony CDP-CX153 compact disc player with 100-disc changer

My Sony CDP-CX153 as seen from the front, under my cassette deck.

I love this thing. It is incredibly overkill, especially since my CD listening consists of finding a disc in its jewel case from my collection and putting it in to play, but the spinny mechanism is so neat.

Audio Technica AT-LP60X turntable

My Audio Technica AT-LP60X as seen from the top. No record in it, but you can see the bottom corner of the sleeve for my copy of The Strokes' "The New Abnormal" to the side.

Another perfectly adequate component, this turntable functions fine and sounds good. There's nothing all that special about an AT-LP60X, other than that it's Good™. I like watching the automatic mechanism though.

Polk Audio T15 speakers

One of my Polk T15 speakers as seen from the front, with a bunch of clutter all around it.

These speakers are gonna get a replacement at some point. They're fine, but I think I can do a lot better for a few hundred bucks. I'll be on the lookout in the Austin Audiophiles Facebook group!