Review Amplified iPod speakers sets are ten a penny these days, but most of them assume your MP3 player is your only sound source. iLuv's 9200 is very different. It embraces the CD, packing in four disc spindles in addition to the iPod dock. But is the 9200 nothing more than a cut-price B&O wannabe - or does it deliver a quality audio experience whatever music you pump through it?

iLuv 9200: back in black

It's no lightweight, that's for sure. Out of the box the 9200 has all the heft of a small LCD TV. The main unit is packed in with a clip-on stand and two satellite speakers, each with their own clip-on stands. The stands are optional: the 9200 comes with a set of screws, rawlplugs and a drill-hole map for wall mounting. In fact, that's possibly the best configuration - the 9200 is a large unit that won't sit comfortably next to most TV and AV stacks. This boy is designed to stand alone.

And not just in terms of its looks. There's no auxilliary sound input, so you can't hook it up to your DVD player, games console or any other sound source.

No, the 9200 is your classic 1970s music centre concept brought up bang to date for the iPod era. For your listening pleasure, it has a top-mounted iPod dock, a built-in FM tuner and that in-your-face quartet of CD drives. And that's it. There's not even a 3.5mm microphone socket. There is at least a 3.5mm headphone socket, round the front.

The back of the 9200 has just three audio connectors - two wire-clips for the speakers and an RCA jack for an optional sub-woofer - a two-pin power port and a fixed radio antenna wire. No more, no less.

Just as well, then, that it sounds so bloody good. The speakers units each contain two cones: a 45mm tweeter and a 90mm for the mid-range frequencies and bass. MP3 and AAC files inevitably lose detail in the higher frequencies, but the 9200 sounded particularly strong on the trebles, nicely balancing the lower frequencies and avoiding the flatness you often get when lossy audio formats are played out loud.

Some older material recorded in the 1960s and 70s was less pleasing, coming out a little lacking in body and treble heavy. But by no means unlistenable for that. Alas, the 9200 has no tone controls or EQ, so there's no way to adjust the sound to compensate.

iLuv 9200: the wall

But don't let this suggest that the 9200 delivers a poor audio experience. It doesn't. The unit produces a solid, room-filling sound with plenty of punch when the volume's turned up. You can take it to the max without the sound distorting, though at this level it's far from ear-splitting, suggesting that iLuv has engineered the volume control too keep the sound well within tolerances.

Switch to CD here isn't as big a step up as it is with some systems, the 9200's reproduction of lossy formats well able to keep up - but no, not quite match - the quality of CD audio. I would have liked to try the 9200 out with a sub-woofer, but I was very impressed with the sound the system produces on its own. The 9200's CD output is both vibrant and immediate, with superb stereo imaging that really comes across on orchestral material and albums that have some fun with stereo, like Dark Side of the Moon.

The radio is less impressive, simply because the antenna is just a wire, so stereo reproduction was noisier than it ought to be. Since the antenna is fixed onto the unit, you can't replace it with a decent stereo-friendly alternative.

However, the remote control is the package's weakest component. Its looks aren't bad, if you like bumps rather than buttons, but unlike the 9200 itself, the remote feels cheaply made thanks to some ill-fitting, poorly moulded plastic. The key layout is poor and it suffers from duplication. There are two sets of play/pause and track skip keys, for example, one for the iPod, the other for the CD player. Why we can't have one set, which works with whichever input has been selected? Worse, the iPod controls sit between the disc selection buttons and the disc control keys, duh...

A less irritated aspect of the control system is the iPod interface/ While you can play/pause your iPod, skip tracks on the currently selected playlist, and even engage the player's shuffle mode by hitting the remote's Random button, you can't choose music using the 9200.

Now, I'll admit my Nano's screen is too small to be read at a distance, but the 9200 has a big enough display to handle basic song navigation. If other iPod dock accessories can let you see what's loaded on the player, so should the 9200. If you can listen to four CDs before you need to get up and change them, why not let rump rest on sofa for a little bit longer while you pick some songs on a connected iPod?

iLuv 9200: whiter shade of pale

The iPod dock sits below a spring-loaded flap, and iLuv bundles half a dozen dock adaptors, each with a back against which the player rests while you select tracks. The downside: with the adaptor in place, the lid doesn't close when you take out the iPod, losing the benefit of having a flap in the first place.

The face of the 9200 is home to the power button, a circular backlit monochrome LCD and, tucked away at the bottom, enough buttons to make the machine look busy without overdoing it as so many music centres do. Among the controls are a pair of buttons to slide away the left and right CD covers - only one at a time, though. The covers open too slowly and on the review sample were liable to stick. The 9200 may look like a Bang & Olufsen unit - particularly the black model - but it's not engineered anywhere near as well.

Practical or posey? Only you can say whether the four-drive CD set-up is more B&O or B&Q, but as someone whose CDs are sitting in a box in the attic, I can't wait for the version of the 9200 without the disc drives and the space they take up. But whether you've yet to make the move to computer-stored music, or you're using both digital and physical formats, the 9200's exciting sound quality makes it very worthy of consideration. Particularly when it only costs 150 quid.

Verdict

Stylish looks and a vibrant, immediate sound quality with both CD and compressed formats allow the iLuv 9200 to get the best out of your digital music library and your physical disc collection, bringing them to life without any of the flatness that hinders most iPod amplifier and speaker sets. That more than compenstates for the poor remote, the unit's engineering quirks and the lack of an auxilliary input.