Seeking Bookshelf Stereo Buying Advice

[starmalachite]

My parents' bookshelf stereo got fried by a thunderstorm 2 months ago, so I'm trying to find them a replacement for Christmas.  It needs to have reasonable-for-under-$200 sound quality & good volume. (They're both getting deaf.)  They still play some of their old tapes, so a cassette deck would be useful.  And it needs to be pretty simple to use,

Comments

[robin_june]

If you're willing to go with a boombox instead of a shelf system, I recently bought this to replace the same model but 11 years older, whose CD drive stopped recognizing when it had a disc in it:

http://www.hhgregg.com/sony-cd-radio-cassette-boombox-with-10-key-remote-commander-remote-control/item/CFDS350SIL

Compared to the older model, the current one is missing a clock, and a boxy shape that permitted me to make temporary stacks of CDs on top. However, it now holds the radio station presets through unpluggings / power outages.

[starmalachite]

I will if I have to, but since both of them have dicey hearing I'm trying to hold out for the better sound quality of separate speakers. That's probably more important than playing cassettes at this point, though it'd be nice to have both. Thanks.

[mdlbear]

A DVD player, which are dirt cheap these days, makes a perfectly good CD drive, so if you can find an all-in-one with cassette and no CD you can just run audio cables over to the DVD player.

That's what we did when our last CD drive died. They just don't make 'em any more.

[starmalachite]

Good idea, but in their LR that would run the cables across the front door of the house. Thanks anyway.

[starmalachite]

I'll keep that as an option, thanks.