Boston Acoustics Horizon Trio Clock Radio w/ CD Player (Mist)

• Stereo clock radio with CD player
• Onboard AM and FM tuner with two external audio inputs
• BassTrac electronic variable bass boost
• High contrast graphic LCD display
• Compatible with the HRD-1 dock accessory

I already own one Boston Acoustics Clock Radio and decided to purchase another which plays CDs.

Unfortunately, there is a manufacturing glitch by which the audio mutes briefly at the end of each track when playing a CD straight through. This might not be noticeable on CDs where there is some silence between tracks. But on many classical CDs where there is continuity of music between tracks, this results in missing about a second of music at each track change.

This was confirmed by BA (because it always "searches" for the next track) and I found it unacceptable. So I had to return it.

However, if you are not into classical CDs, then this is otherwise an excellent CD/AM/FM clock radio. The sound quality is superb as one would expect from such an expensive item. I did find the snooze bar for the alarm a bit too sensitive, which on two occasions caused it to snooze for 15 minutes instead of 10.

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I really wanted to keep this radio it looks and sounds great! The issue I had was with cd playback. As one reviewer stated, there is a one-second silent gap between songs as the player searches for the next track. This is not noticeable most of the time, HOWEVER it disrupts playback on cds where one track follows another without a gap. For example, the one-two punch of ZZ Top's "Waitin' for the Bus"/"Jesus Just Left Chicago" is interrupted as the first second of the latter song is omitted. Led Zeppelin's "Heartbreaker"/"Living Loving Maid [She's Just A Woman]" would be another example. There are enough instances of this in my cd collection to make this unit sadly unusable. The sound is fantastic, but for the money, I really needed it to play cds as the artist intended.

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I have had this product for about a month now and in this time I have used it long enough to try most of its features and to break in the speakers.

The construction of the Horizon Trio is very solid, with quality materials and the device has a sturdy, yet stylish industrial design. It has a fairly small footprint, even though its width makes it looks a little bit bulky.

The sound quality is good, at all levels of sound, BUT bear on mind that even though the speakers have integrated woofers, they will not defy any laws of physics, therefore the sound is proportional to the size of the equipment.

That said, the sound quality is good enough for filling a small to medium room, like a bedroom or kitchen, which I guess are the intended spots for this kind of radio.

Even at the top volume (50) you get a well balanced and pleasant sound, with well defined treble and bass. I specially like the sound for jazz recordings and classic rock.

The three knob controls are pretty intuitive and really easy to learn to operate. You can control treble and bass, set the two alarms, select radio, cd, or any two input sources.

Radio reception on FM is good in general, in some stations I have to move the provided cord antenna to get better reception. I don't use AM much, but they sound average.

CDs sound is excellent. I can play my MP3 burned Cds in the unit. Three issues here with CDs:

They get really hot when playing for a while.

I have problem with one comercial CD that the unit does not read and expels from the cd slot, I get the message E36

(I have played that cd in a Bose Lifestyle and a Panasonic CD changer without problem).

As some reviewers wrote, when playing CDs with continous tracks the unit skip one second between tracks, making a weird pause in the music.

Also, once when playing a CD, the unit stopped out of the blue and none of the controls allowed me to change it, so I had to disconnect the cable from the electrical outlet.

The alarms have worked fine, with the small exception that the alarm 1 seems to have a tendency to loose the programming, even though it is set to a time (an it appears in the setting) sometimes when I activate it it shows that it is set for "12:00".

I don't have any problem with the the digital display at night; it adjust appropiately to the darkness level of the room, so I have not lost any sleep about it, literally.

The remote is compact, well laid out. The only thing is that you need to make sure you align it correctly with the unit to be able to set the commands, if you aim to much out of the right angle it will not accept the commands.

I have been unable to test the HRD-I dock (I ordered it later) to test the system with an iPod. The unit has a port in the back where the dock can be connected to play iPod music.

Al in all, I like the built and features of the unit up to a point, but the fact that I have found several flaws in the performance, make me to advise to any prospect buyers to wait until the price goes down or BA addresses those bugs.

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Everything about this stereo is amazing. It produces an unbeatable sound not to mention a compact size. I have been looking for years to find a compact radio that didn't sound like a tin box. This one does the job.

I purchased this for my bedroom, and I had two issues with it:

1) The LCD display was so bright, even with brightness set to zero, that it lite up my room

2) I compared it to my bose wave system, and the sound quality was not even close