Sound Quality, small-size, beautiful appearance

Build quality is so-so for $300 retail. The system is far better than most minisystems, especially those ugly silver monsters at Best Buy and Circuit City, but isn't really a hi-fi component (amplifier quality, etc.)

I purchased the FS-5000 in December 1999 for a special price of $199 at Circuit City. The salesman matched Costco's price, which was very nice of him. I must admit that for $200 the unit's build quality, sound quality and cosmetics have generally impressed me. I would not be so satisfied if I paid the full retail of $300 for the unit, however.


Sound Quality

The FS-5000 is very enjoyable to listen to. It provides excellent clarity and adequate bass. You can add a subwoofer to the unit for more punch. In my opinion, the sound quality is superior to the other similar products I looked at, which are listed above.

It is superior to the Model 88 in my opinion because it doesn't try to do too much. Kloss tried to produce tons of bass with a built-in sub at the expense of clarity and natural sound. My ear just couldn't get used to it. The JVC has adequate punch but sounds more natural. The built in bass-enhance feature works better than the Mega Bass features on most boomboxes. Of course, the wood MDF speakers, though small, sound more sweet than typical plastic units found in this price range.

Features:

The FS-5000 is VERY expandable. You can add a cassette deck, MD deck (with optical out), an additional aux source component, a subwoofer. I hooked up all my home gear and it works well. Very few other minisystems offer this flexibility. This versatility will serve me well for years.

Tuner Quality

Contrary to what others have said above, I find reception to be excellent on the unit, even with the included wire antenna. I was not impressed by the Model 88's much-raved about tuner sensitivity and habit of going into FM-mono mode on its own. IMHO very few modern digital "synthesized" tuners can keep up with those old analog tuners of twenty years ago in sensitivity (with dial cords, remember those?)

Appearance:

What can I say? Its very pretty to look at. In fact, it is too pretty for my office because I'm afraid someone will walk away with it. The speakers on the 5000 are pretty, but the 6000 and 7000 are even cooler. I never could figure out if the 5000, 6000, and 7000 use the same cone technology. Some say that the 5000 has paper but the others have ceramic and metal. I think JVC just changed the appearance-color but the SQ is the same. Hyper-Neo Olefin is some kind of poly composite.

Conclusion:

I am very happy with the unit and would recommend it to prospective buyers. But, the $299 price tag is a bit high in my opinion for the quality. Try to find it marked down as I did.

Do not be fooled into thinking this is a high-end or even mid-fi component. It is much better than a boombox or the average mini-hifi but inferior to even inexpensive components which could be had for a similar price. Check the cheap-quality knobs that are boombox-quality or the plastic case. On this point, I hope it lasts. Also, if you are looking for a high quality minisystem, Denon just introduced a system with Mission loudspeakers. I have Missions and I suspect this system rocks.

Thank you audioreview and to those who have helped me here.

JC

Similar Products Used:

Henry Kloss Model 88, boomboxes, demo-ed Bose Wave Radio

great sound

No way to access tuner presets on the unit, you must use the remote. Really annoying. Remote is only OK.

This is a great sounding unit. I don't notice any noise from the CD drive after in makes its initial start up hiss/scratch noise. I just wish I could select memory stations on the unit not just from the remote.

Similar Products Used:

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size, convincingly good sound, good looks, technically sweet

price, won't play loudly. Not the most sound system for the money, to say the least

This is a system that charms you with its finesse rather than try to knock you down with its brilliance or macho. It's polite down to its beveled-glass (actually acrylic) top and out to its sophisticated compressor that never lets the deceptively-simple speakers or amp sound stressed or strained. It is, however, anything but mid-fi. It's an inexpensive descendant of an old ideal of speaker design and a fine exemplar of that ideal-- and thus, technically interesting.

It's long been a desideratum of speaker design that if you can possibly use a single element to produce the full frequency range, you do it. This is what drives people to electrostatics, or, if they're cost-conscious, to headphones, or, if they're cost-conscious and British, to something called the Jordan Module, a little 2 1/2" aluminum-cone speaker designed to be equalized heavily and used full range down to about 150 Hz. To make a long story short, this was an exercise in frustration and a tribute to the idealism of its maker. Limited power handling, mediocre dispersion of high frequencies, ringing of the aluminum cone, these were all problems that a system like this cannot overcome without expensive help. But why even try? What's the point?

Clarity. Any time you break up the frequency range for spatially-separated woofers and tweeters, you do violence to the already-strained human hearing's ability to suspend disbelief. Short version: crossovers are the dirty secret of loudspeaker design. Even coincident designs like KEF's are compromises. But the difference is audible, and you can hear it on the FS-5000.

The tradeoff is.. well, all the things the previous reviewers mentioned. The payoff is what our Canadian friend mentioned: clarity, the hearing of previously-garbled lyrics, and more.

This is a clavichord, not a grand piano. It's a Vespa, not a Kawasaki. It's all about finesse, not brute force. Did I mention the styling? Highly reminiscent of 30s Streamline Style, with the "glass" inserts and the spooky-blue neon illumination and curved surfaces and dark pewter and faux marble color scheme. It resembles something from the marble lobby of a Rockefeller Center skyscraper.

The sound is smooth, mellow, surprisingly detailed. The speaker boxes are acoustically dead (try the knuckle-rap test) and the edges are all rounded to kill diffraction. There's more here than meets the eye. Will it play loud? No. The system will rock'n'roll, but prefers to keep things cool, just as the styling implies. The CD player is (in my unit, anyway) silent and quick up to speed. The tuner is far more competent than any boombox I've ever owned, including some rather expensive ones. It will prevent you from making it sound bad by unobtrusively compressing the signal it presents to its amp and speakers. As I said, it's all about finesse in a small package.

The price? $300 is too much. Watch for closeouts. More than $200 right now is too much. Mine's a Wards floor model for $180, only because I couldn't wait for it to go down another 10% next month and grabbed it. Watch out for this little set of boxes; you might fall in love with it.

Similar Products Used:

various boomboxes, satellite-sub sytems with small speakers like the KLH 911B and Optimus LX5

This is an update. The 5000 and 7000 have now been officially replaced by very different-looking models.

We acquired a second 5000 (another floor model) for $140, and we've tried a couple of different subs.

1) The CD player mechanism *is* noisier than it could or should be. If your setup is in the kitchen as mine is, the mechanism's noise is completely drowned out by the rumble of teenage children and general hubbub. In the hushed ambiance of a bedroom, though... it sounds like a miniature bench grinder. Not horribly loud, but not in keeping with the spirit of the thing.

The CD player basically just plays CDs in a no-frills way, which is not a problem until you come to use the CD player as a wakeup alarm and find that you must wake to track 1. See the reviews of the FS-7000 for more on this.

While we're on the subject of wakeup features, you *can* tell the 5000 to wake you at a preset volume, so no matter where you left the volume control the night before, it will wake you at the volume you programmed.

2) As volume controls age, they become ever so slightly intermittent as they're wiped through their range. This can be heard as a slight scratchiness or crackle. In the 5000, this has the annoying effect of kicking the compressor into play, so a quick twist of the knob produces loud bursts of volume. The cure is a spritz from a can of contact cleaner, but the control is buried deep inside and disassembling a 5000 (say, to clean Coke spills-- did I mention teenagers?), whose construction resembles a Chinese puzzle, is a bit of a pain. The quick fix is simply to crank the volume knob rapidly back and forth several times. Annoying-- again, out of character, but fixable.

3) The sound quality remains wonderful in its own 3" speaker driven full range kind of way. A sub is necessary for those times when you really want to impress the neighbors, though, and I recommend the little Yamaha YST-SW45. Be sure to turn off the 5000's bass boost to its own speakers when you use a sub. You'll be amazed at how loud and clean the system will play then. It also helps to have the 5000's speakers at ear height and away from all walls.

4) The optical out makes great MiniDisc copies of CDs.