Advantages: Great Sound, Great Looks, Great Price
Disadvantages: Remotes a bit cheap, no USB port,

...Having been in the market to downsize my old hi fi for something more compact, I've settled on the Teac reference 300 mkIII with DAB tuner. Its a 3 box system as opposed to the other smaller one box systems manufactured by Teac and others such as Denon, Arcam and Onkyo. As such, although being larger, it is more user friendly to use and has more power at 45 wpc RMS. At around £500 rrp it stands up favourably in price to the Arcam Solo Mini and comes in silver or black finish with machined aluminium fronts and a classy blue display on each unit. It actually appears slightly retro in appearance although the remotes are a bit cheap looking. The silver units can be found for as little as £349 without speakers so its quite a bargain. Sound quality for such a small unit is really clear and well defined with a warm bass typical of Teac... Read review

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Advantages: Quality and reliability of drive
Disadvantages: Outdated and discontinued model

...The Teac 532 cd rom drive is an cd-rom reader that is designed to be fitted internally into a PC. I had this unit in my PC for about 2 years before I decided to upgrade the whole system. I paid about £120 for this drive and at the time 32x read speed was about the industry standard. How times change as now we are looking up to 72x read speeds on cd-rom drives, which make this unit look positively tortoise-like! Specs This cd-rom drive is compatible with operating systems up to Windows 98. It has a 32x read speed and needs to be fitted into a IDE interface inside the computer. The drive measures, (W) 5.75” (H) 1.65” (D) 7.56”. It weighs 2.65lbs. Overall these are the standard measurements for a cd-rom drive, otherwise it wouldn’t fit into your computer! On the front panel of the unit, from left to right there are... Read review

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Advantages: Compact, yet Powerful
Disadvantages: None

...After re-aranging our lounge a decision was made that the black clunky stacking hi-fi had to go, so a search on the internet and a visit to the Richer Sounds website led me initially to the Denon DM31. I visited my local Richer sounds shop in Norwich the following day with the intention of purchasing a Denon, but a very helpful assistant informed me if I was to run powerful speakers such as mine (Bose Acoustimass 5) I would be better off with the Teac CRL600 with a higher wattage. I hesitated as I had no info on this model, but decided to go with it when he assured me if I wasnt happy I could return it within 14days. I plugged it all in at home and WOW I was very impressed. Far superior than my stacking ugly system. This unit sits beneath my tv ontop of the DVD player and looks well at home. The audio quality from the CD and radio... Read review

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Advantages: Reliable sturdy product
Disadvantages: Not the fastest

...The Teac 56S was the second cd writer I bought after stepping up from a 2*2*16 Yamaha IDE drive. The 56S is a SCSI interface drive and as such requires you to but a SCSI card . I had decided to do this as I was wanting to be able to carry out a number of tasks on my Pc whilst burning a disc . I bought a cheap card (around £35)which was all that was required . The drive itself is robust and can complete a 650Mb cd in around 14 mins. It was fairly straight forward to install although if you are not comfortable poking about inside your pc it may be better to get somebody else to to it for you . It is not now the fastest drive on the market but if you were wanting a comnpetitively priced drive that has certainly proved very reliable for me then this could be what you are looking for . It also comes with the software you will require... Read review

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Advantages: Unit and interface design leaves most others in the shade
Disadvantages: Heavy with the six C batteries needed for power-hungry DAB

...this may sound confusing. In practice, what you will tend to do is choose your favourite channels and programme them as numbered favourites for quickest access. Other views (alphabetical, recently added, transmitter groups - BBC National DAB etc) are mainly interesting for initial setup, when you are travelling and for general browsing. I find this interface works really well, simplifying your regular use and helpful when you want to station check. Sound quality is excellent. This is a kitchen unit, and in this case DAB is typically a great improvement over FM (for purists, the fairly low bit rates used by many channels leaves FM the preferred option for your HiFi - DAB is typically MP3 rather than CD quality). The display is large and clear, with a choice of brightness and contrast. As usual for DAB you can always see the station name... Read review

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Advantages: Good prices
Disadvantages: Pathetic customer services

...once. Anyway, I went for a new CD Writer and came out of dabs with my new Ricoh CD R/WR. I got home to discover again no software was in the box so I had to go back to dabs again. This time I was told the software was obtainable off the net but I refused to accept this and so walked out with the software for my CD Writer - or that's what they wanted me to believe anyway!! I got home and tried the new software with no luck - what a surprise!! Not in the best of moods, I went back to the warehouse and told them the software was NOT right - this time they tried to tell me that there might be a fault on the equipment itself and could i bring it back. Not a happy bunny, I got in my car, drove all the way back to Wigan got the CD Writer and drove all the way back to Bolton. Upon my return, they checked the equipment and told me... Read review

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Advantages: Aztech and Delta drives, as an example, are much cheaper than bigger names
Disadvantages: If you buy cheaper CD ROM drives expect lower performance

...I have mixed feelings about Aztech CD-ROM Drives – and other cheap makes. Everything seemed fine until the speed's started to increase to 24x and beyond. I was used to slower drives and wonder quite why anyone would need a CD-ROM to go so fast – but who am I to know? I have never had any problems with CD-ROM running at around 10 to 16 speed. Anyway, I found on a 32x Aztech drive that it couldn’t get up to full speed without cutting off before it could read data. It was a never-ending loop of stopping and starting, making installation of any program a long drawn out affair. Eventually I had the unit replaced with a Delta CD ROM. It’s better, but still seems to suffer from its high speed at times. I would recommend, and it’s only my opinion, that you spend a bit more and purchase a Yamaha, Philips, Teac or any other well... Read review

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Advantages: Great service, low prices, fast delivery
Disadvantages: Limited payment methods

...will be at your doorstep within 24hrs time. For example, I ordered some CD-Rs at about 3pm on a monday, and it arrived at 8am on the tuesday!! Fast delivery or what? As well as that, should any item of your order not be in stock, you can check the status of your order online and cancel/amend or part despatch your order whilst you wait for another item. A useful wish list is also at your disposal. If you want an item, but don't want to buy it yet, you can add items to your wishlist to keep an eye on, whilst you purchase other items. Well, there could be several more good points made, and if I were writing this back in the beginning of May, I wouldn't have a single bad point about dabs. BAD: As of May 29th 2002, dabs suddenly put a news headline on the front page to tell everyone visiting that they will no longer accept Switch/Solo card... Read review

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Advantages: good speedy delivery and good range of products. Thats it.
Disadvantages: Appalling after sales, wait forever to get through, rude staff, inept staff

...I've had a good relationship with Dabs.com up until now. A distance relationship, but a good one. I purchased a CD Rewriter from them 18 months ago, fantastic little writer, done me proud. Whats more it was ordered online on a Sunday night and delivered by Tuesday - fantastic! And a great price too! So when a friend of mine with no internet connection asked me to order him something 2 weeks ago, I had no worries about using them. There was a 7 day cancellation period according to the website, under the terms of some Government act brought in last year. This would be handy, as my friend was going to be away for a few days, and couldnt check the item until he came back. So I ordered the item, (a Belkin USB - SCSI connector to attach an older SCSI CD rewriter to his new USB only Mac), again on a Sunday night. I had checked the Belkin... Read review

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Advantages: Great digital sound, looks good, Easy to use
Disadvantages: No CD changer control

.... The only downside i can see with this unit is that it has no multi changer control, but as you can connect Mp3 players to it, so it's not all bad. In conclusion if your looking for a good quality in car DAB tuner? This would be my first choice. It's not badly priced, you don't need to buy any other boxes or wires to get DAB. It's all in the box to get you going and i like how you can connect your Mp3 player to it, saving you money buying a multi changer and ripping your car apart to fit it. Good Radio. Sony CDX-DAB6650, DAB Tuner, DRIVE-S HX, Multi Codec (Mp3/Atrac3plus playback), ID3 Tag (Track-, Artist-, Album name) / CD Text, CD-R/RW playback, BBE MP High Definition Sound, DSO (Dynamic Soundstage Organizer), EQ7 (7 Band Equalizer), S-MOSFET 4x52W output, RDS-EON Tuner, 2 Pre-out, Rear-Sub switchable pre... Read review

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