Huge On Versatility
Newcastle Herald
Tuesday April 4, 2006
This brilliant little package pushes all the right buttons, says Neil Keene.
KILLING two birds with one stone is good enough for most, but a new stereo system package from Panasonic takes out a whole flock.The SC-PM71 is a high-end micro hi-fi system that plays CDs and cassette tapes, but it's also an MP3 player and a base unit for ripping music onto digital media.Not only that, it comes with a portable music player that rivals an iPod for size and function.The teeny-tiny MP3 player is barely bigger than a matchbox, and the reason it is able to stay so small but sound so sweet is that it plays music from SD memory cards those tiny slivers of technology you usually use for digital cameras.The cards click into the side of the MP3 player and are equally compatible with the main micro system.That means up to 1GB of digital music files stored on the card can be played straight through the stereo's SD card slot without having to hook up an external MP3 unit.It is a two-way street you can also "rip" music from CD straight onto the memory card at up to 4x speed without having to upload it onto a computer first. But perhaps the most joyous aspect, for me anyway, was the ability to seamlessly record from cassette tape to SD card.Finally, all those old and irreplaceable compilation tapes that never made it to CD can be added to my digital music collection.Going back to basics, the micro hi-fi system is a high performer and this is reflected in the $769 price tag. It takes up to five CDs at once in a tidy stacker that can be opened to swap discs while music is still playing.Sound is loud and clear despite the system's "micro" labelling and Panasonic says that's because of two special features: H-Bass technology and doubled amps and wiring.According to the company's blurb, H-Bass "enables you to actually feel rather than just hear bass sounds" . . . sounds a bit trippy but it did produce some very chunky, distortion-free beats with even the bassiest tracks in my collection. The other drawcard is the bi-amp/bi-wiring feature.Basically, most stereos use one amp, and have two wires for each speaker.The PM71 has separate amplifiers for high and low sounds, and sends them to each speaker via four separate wires without mixing the two ends of the audio spectrum.The remote control is fully functioned, though could have been a little more user friendly when it came to ripping music onto the SD card perhaps something that comes with a little more experience with the unit.Moving on, the portable SD MP3 player included in the pack defies description: most people I showed it to didn't believe it was a music device.Its mirrored finish hides one of those embedded "organic" displays similar to Sony's new MP3 Walkman, which illuminates when the unit powers up.That mirror look makes the display hard to see in bright light and the unit's miniscule size means the buttons are a bit fiddly, but once you find them it's easy enough to navigate through the functions.The player includes a 128MB SD card (puny in comparison to, say, a larger iPod's 20GB, but upgradeable to 1GB), an FM tuner with up to 20 presets and a voice recorder that did a decent job of picking up sound.It also has a marathon battery life of more than 14 hours.However, the unit's size meant it was hard to manipulate without interfering with the in-built microphone and voice recordings were sometimes drowned out momentarily by moving a single finger or shifting the unit's position.One of the advertised benefits of playing from an SD card is that there is no music skipping and less chance of digital error.True to its claim, we couldn't get our test model to miss a beat despite our best attempts to shake and rattle it into submission.Considering the MP3 player alone retails for $299, this little package proves to be a very sound investment.SMALL DETAILSPanasonic SC-PM71? Recommended retail price: $769? 160-watt total power output? 5 CD changer? SD memory card slot? Single cassette deck? Records from CD and tape to SD digital? Portable SV-SD100M MP3 player and 128MB SD card included
© 2006 Newcastle Herald