Review Of late, the compact Hi-Fi system has struggled to find a place in the affections of consumers keener on more sophisticated home cinema audio rigs. However, the technology that looked like it was about to drive the last nail into the compact Hi-Fi coffin is set to breath new life into the format as products like the Gigajuke deliver the playback quality of a Hi-Fi combined with the storage capacity of a hard drive.

At first glance, this system looks like an ordinary mid-priced second-room audio product, fit perhaps for an uneventful life of infrequent use in a bedroom or study. But on closer inspection, this little machine deserves much more attention, due to its good looks, good sounds and big brain.

The Gigajuke possesses an 80GB hard drive, which drags the compact Hi-Fi system into the 21st Century, not kicking and screaming, but like it had never been away. Music storage, manipulation and controllability are no longer dominated by the portable and music-server sectors. The genie is out of the bottle and this type of functionality is open to all product categories.

However, we have to start with the basics. If a system like this fell down on the playback and more basic functions, its flashier abilities would all come to nought. Putting a CD into the front-loading deck delivers a confident attack-minded playback, which defies the machine's diminutive dimensions. On the first few plays, there was plenty of width and height to the sound which made us think that perhaps the unit, and in particular its speakers, could handle a sterner test.

Half a brand new Megadeth CD later and we were not disappointed. There is real punch to the sound of the Gigajuke and enough agility to handle the most complex guitar solos and drum breaks. But the really nice thing here is that the system doesn't sound like it is trying too hard, and the treble and bass are mixed together to reproduce a realistic feeling sound. Happily, playback is not just all about attack and big sounds, in a particularly adventurous afternoon at Register Hardware Towers we tried some Steeleye Span - a folk music band from the 1970s that's actually illegal in some countries.

However, what the band's music does do, with its very eclectic mix of vocals and traditional instruments, is find out whether a system is all shout and has no subtlety. The Gigajuke came through this toughest of tests with flying colours. Sony's S-Master Digital amplification technology, seen mostly on its 'proper Hi-Fi' products, lends a big helping hand here, allowing the machine to present enough big notes mixed with the more subtle sounds to make straightforward playback an enjoyable and engaging experience.

DAB digital radio makes a perhaps unexpected appearance and performs well enough to not feel like an afterthought. If anything, the sound quality feels even better than on CD, and a quick listen to some cricket commentary confirmed this. Most DAB systems deal well with a nice lively signal with lots of information stuffed into it, but often lacks the more '3D' feeling that analogue signals seem to possess. But here there was enough subtly and detail to fill in the gaps and provide a good enough sound in DAB. FM fans will not be disappointed either as playback here is solid, warm and reliable.

But enough of the basic features - this system is really all about its powerful brain and the ways that it can set free the humble compact Hi-Fi to explore new horizons. An 80GB hard drive and internet connection give the system legs that earlier relatives could only dream of. A maximum of 40,000 tracks can be stored on the unit's hard drive and there are a pleasing number of ways to get the info onto the machine. A CD can be placed in the drawer and the Gigajuke rips it in much the same way as a PC might and pretty quickly too - officially, the Duke can record at 16x normal CD playback speed, which is currently one of the fastest around for this type of product.

Gracenote's CD database comes pre-loaded, so even without logging onto to the web lots of CD title and track inro is immediately available after recording. The database is by no means exhaustive - ask it something a little obscure and it struggles - but because the unit can go online to search, folk with more eclectic tastes can tag up their obscure MP3s. From here you can do all the things that you'd expect from an iPod or MP3 player, like search for a particular artist, album, or song.

Many consumers who might be interested in buying the Gigajuke will have stored all their music on a computer or portable player. Fortunately, the Gigajuke allows you to plug either in. It then simply copies all the tracks onto its own hard drive.

We made it a little easy for the Gigajuke and plugged in a fully loaded Walkman, but connection and download time were good. The unit's nice, large display took a while to decide how long our 1GB of MP3 and ATRAC songs would take to download, but in the end it took about 15 minutes to get everything from the Walkman stored away. No exactly quick, in other words - Sony really should have included a high-speed USB 2.0 port not the slow 1.1.

For those that want to delve deeper into the way the unit records there is also the option to decide what format the unit records in. The Gigajuke can record in Linear PCM, which involves no compression of data so playback is up there with CD quality. The unit can also record in Sony's own ATRAC3 or ATRAC3plus compressed formats. Then, of course, there's good old MP3.

However, Sony has gone that bit further with the product and incorporated some functions you might not expect. The X-DJ function at first sounds like one of those clunky database search systems that you just know you will never use. But on closer inspection this does have some interesting and useful abilities. Tracks can be sorted into 23 three separate "channels" that contain music of a certain mood. Channels include "good morning" for those early starts and "party time" for... well... party time. It's also possible to do searches while a song is playing. For instance, you can search for all the songs on the hard drive by the artist who's being played, and the Gigajuke will place them all in a playlist.

A nice but quirky function that we found particularly interesting was to compile all the tracks released in a certain year, perfect for retro evenings or just a trip down Amnesia Lane.

The unit has an easy-to-programme timer, which allows the recording of radio shows. We've not always been totally convinced on the amount of use you might get out of a function like this - radio is an immediate medium and tends to be at its best when enjoyed live. However, with the spread of DAB, there are enough programmes of interest out there to warrant getting used to playing around with this function, particularly as the unit can (slowly) download any content from its hard drive to a portable player so you can enjoy radio shows, on anything else for that matter, on the move.

Verdict

There are many more features to the Gigajuke than can be covered here, which for a sub-£500 product is pretty impressive. What Sony has really got right here is providing a machine that genuinely releases the potential of your music collection, but has done it in a system that's easy to use and has good quality sound, so often a dirty word at the more modest price points of the digital music world.