Well, Takeo-san, in the living room is an old Pioneer stereo receiver with a Dual 1215 turntable by United Audio, a pair of Scott S-20 speakers, an inexpensive dual dubbing cassette player and a portable Panasonic CD player attached. I rarely use the turntable, then only to tape some of my old LPs. The tape deck gets a bit more use: my wife tapes her classical CDs (mostly Mozart) to play in the car. I do most of my listening to CDs either on the player in my Mac or on a cheap Casio stereo fake component system above it (it looks like a stacked, matched component system from the front, but a glance at the side shows you it's all one piece, except the speakers can be seperated a few feet, but not unplugged). Both sound fine for me: they cover the dynamic range of most folk music (I'll admit they don't produce the top harmonics, but I don't know if my ears can still sense them, anyway).

I assume that your system is mono because your tastes run to stuff recorded in the 20's, long before stereo, Takeo. Am I right? If I could afford it, I might buy a top of the line surround sound system for the concert hall experience, but I'd rather spend what money I have on instruments and CDs. --seed