Grundig Ovation has great sound and features
Yes, I know that a reviewer stated the remote was big, but it's not that bad, considering the miriad of features on this Music System. I have a Bose Wave Radio with CD player and honestly its minimally adjustable. With the Bose, you turn it on and the sound comes out. With the Ovation, the audio output is adjustable, configurable to 5 different genres of music. The tuner also accepts broadcast information from radio stations where avaiable, displaying song titles, etc. The sound on this unit, the Ovation, is in my opinion, equal to that of the Bose Wave Radio. The Ovation's sound output - volume level is considerably more, i.e. louder than the Bose Wave Radio. This one is a keeper! I definitely recommend others get involved in listening to all genres of music on this fine system. I purchased my unit about a week ago. It was an Amazon refurbished unit. It arrived in perfect condition, new condition. And at half the price of the new model. Happy researching!
Nice player with some minor flaws
I've been looking for a small, good-looking, one-piece, better-than-a-boom-box CD player/radio for ages. Some key factors for me were: clean appearance, remote control, no battery operation, plays CD-RW, good FM reception. Why not get a Bose Wave, you might ask? Because Bose annoys me. It's irrational, I get that. Moving on...
The Ovation: It's nice and compact, and very spiffy-looking. Curved in the back, slightly slanted in the front, and the front panel opens for manual insertion of the CD. In terms of basic operation, it's very simple: plug in, turn on, insert CD. The first time you turn on the radio, it does a station scan and sets presets for all the stations it gets a clear signal for. The sound is just what I wanted for my office - clear, balanced, not tinny, enough sound for a small room. FM radio reception is nice and clear.
Now to the flaws: The remote. The size ratio between the remote and the player is wacky - it's substantially larger than my TV remote. The buttons are laid out in a nice diagonal pattern...and impossible to tell apart without carefully reading the text labels. Sigh. What were they thinking? Well, at least it's less likely to get lost.
The FM antenna is a thin wire attached to the side of the unit - I have it sort of bunched up in behind where it doesn't show, and it works just fine - the only problem with it is that it's cat-bait. Nothing a kitty likes better than a thin wire it's not supposed to play with.
Bottom line - I'm happy with it. It's a nice, solid, quality little unit (with an enormous remote).