Around 2009, I really started getting into music for the first time. I was about 9 years old and was deeply intrigued with the sounds of then trending artists like Owl City, Black Eyed Peas, Gorillaz, and Daft Punk. Sure, my musical taste at this time was a bit eclectic and unrefined, but I was getting ahold of classic Rock, Classical, and Jazz CDs my parents had lying around, so my taste was bound to 'improve' over time. The boombox which had been stored in the closet for many years was finally getting some attention. Now, I had been fooling with MP3 players & Jukebox Software a few years prior but I really had liked them for just the tech factor rather than the act of enjoying music. It was also this year when I inevitably began wanting better sound quality than what that mediocre Philips boombox could provide, so I asked my parents for a shelf system. Back at this time, you could find really good sounding systems at thrift stores and Goodwills, and once I got to hear a large Sony system that a friend of mine had bought at a yard sale, I was blown away (being the boombox simpleton I was). His system had a 50 disc changer, twin cassette deck, and a 'Groove' bass feature... it could shake a preteens bedroom that's for sure! I think I was even more blown away that these large systems were commonly selling for like $5-$10 at the time. Thankfully, I believe my parents saw a purchase of a shelf system as an investment in my love of music, so for my birthday in 2009, I received a Sony Muteki LBT-LCD7DI. I actually still have this system, and after unearthing it roughly 10 years after being stored in a closet, I saw that there was little to no information for it available online, so I have decided to take some photos of it, walk through this unit, and also just reminisce a bit. This thing is truly fascinating to look at and use, and it has features that no other system of this size has! Before going into this unit, let's talk about the hifi music landscape in 2009... it wasn't good. This time period was very strange because while Bluetooth speakers hadn't gained widespread popularity yet, people were throwing out most all of their hifi systems and larger boomboxes in favor of these small iPod docks. iPod docks of all shapes and sizes were the thing to have, and as such, larger quality shelf systems were no longer in-vogue and were disappearing from store shelves and people's homes everywhere. A few iPod docks really and truly sounded great, but those were pricy and most people just bought the iHome units for $20 or so and called it a day. The iPod generation ushered in the era of convenience over quality, and that mentality still holds true with most today. Sony at this time in particular had greatly shrunk their stereo & hifi catalog down to just a few consumer models, but they still offered a line of high end shelf systems called 'Muteki'. Muteki systems were quite expensive compared to other systems at the time, and were trademarked by the sleek orange & black look and a massive feature set. Being physically much bigger than the competition was also a standout quality if I recall correctly. Some Muteki models focused on home theater, some on Karaoke, and some on parties. That was really the point of them... a large hifi system that is high end for a specific type of person. But this specific Muteki system, the LBT-LCD7DI, doesn't focus on one use case, it tries to do literally everything under the sun... in fact, here is it's feature set: 7-inch color LCD monitor Full DVD playback with Dolby Digital and DTS support. Karaoke system with 2 mic input, echo, digital key change, vocal cancelation, and full performance scoring system. Video CD, CD-RW, CD+G, MP3 CD, WMA CD, and PhotoCD support. 3-disc DVD Changer iPod support with Music, Photo and Video playback ability. Component video/digital DTS output for connecting with a surround processor/video receiver. Groove & Z-groove bass party modes. 3-Band EQ with 3 user presets. Tone Presents (Rock, Pop, Jazz, Etc.) USB flash drive Playback with support for MP3, WAV, WMA, PNG, JPEG, and more. Record CD, AM/FM, AUX in, and voice to USB, with scheduled timer recording for each. Subwoofer support. Quite the feature set, eh? What's more, the system even has a flashy animated demo mode to remind you of these features so that you never forget! Quite flashy indeed.... so now that you understand just what you were getting with this unit, it might be a good time to mention the price. Muteki systems indeed were quite expensive and this unit originally retailed for between $500 and $600. I remember it being advertised online on a few sites between that range, and thinking how lucky I was to have something so premium to myself. This was actually the first item I ever had that I really cherished and looked after with greater care than usual. Truly, it was rare for anyone to pay this kind of money for a shelf system back then (given the 2008 economic crash and iPod dock craze). Anyways, let's start off our analysis of this beast with some CD playback! As far as simple CD playback goes, this is a fairly complicated user interface, and navigating it can be quite tricky. In fact, the UI for the entire system is a bit ugly and not well thought out. I still remember being disappointed in the look/feel of the firmware back in the day. Even so, it was cool to have this amount of features available without a computer. From this CD playback screen, you can program the CD player to play a range of tracks on a single disc, select tracks across up to 3 discs, engage CD to USB MP3 copying mode, select repeat, or enter karaoke mode and have a vocal performance session. There is a lot you could do with this, and as someone who didn't have their own computer, these features came in handy quite often. Karaoke is also fairly fleshed out as well. You can plug in two mics, control microphone volume independently, and also adjust echo levels. Microphones generally sounded very natural and impressive with the system to me, and I would on occasion sing along with some tracks and use the vocal score mode for fun. The key change mode also came in handy because you could move 6 musical whole steps up or down, and it did a decent job not making the music sound crushed or weird at different keys. On the negative side, the UI once again feels unimpressive, and the way your vocal score is displayed looks a bit lame. It's important to remember that at this time, American Idol was new and popular, and those 'Singing Machines' were also a popular Christmas gift, so having this feature set was very attractive to a kid. In fact, it did kind of feel like Sony considered kids as a primary use case for this product, it's just that the price and non-kid friendly design made it totally out of reach for most children. The REAL star of the show with this system is the DVD movie playback, and watching movies is what I spent so many hours doing with this unit. It can play pretty much any movie (region 1), and it all shows right up on the 7" LCD display. What's more, movies sound awesome on this system and the sound quality for movies still holds up even today! There are DVD navigation controls on the unit itself, so a remote is not required to move through menus and play movies (you can see where I've worn off the text on the enter button). Also, all of the EQ modes and bass functions will still work in DVD mode. The downside of the DVD playback is the LCD screen picture quality. It is very dim and low resolution, plus it appears that the display shows an interlaced video feed (even the UI shows as interlaced on the LCD screen). As a kid, I was totally fine with it, but now, I would struggle to watch movies on this device. On the bright side, you can turn off the LCD screen and use component out + digital Toslink audio to go into a separate TV or receiver. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the DVD side of the unit is its extensive setup menus. There is so much around the language, DVD playback, video quality, and audio that you can change here. You can even enter a surround sound setup config tool that only shows 2 speakers no matter what option you select. Next, let's talk about the iPod support. This unit supports any iPod that has a dock connector, and can display movies and pictures as well as play music from an iPod. As you can clearly see, the UI for the iPod system is completely separate from the rest of the OS, and when you press the iPod button, you can see it 'booting up' this secondary software layer. It doesn't look super polished and clean, but being able to see the track info and playbar was cool, plus the menus were presented clear enough. iPods were at the height of their popularity at this point, and this device having fantastic iPod support made it quite desirable. I didn't personally own an iPod when I got the unit, but I would get one about a year later. One quirk of this UI is that you can change its color from blue to grey, green, red, or black. This setting doesn't change the color of the rest of the UI, only the iPod mode. Strange. Not a lot to say about the FM/AM radio. It has 20 presents each for AM & FM, picks up stations well, and has yet another odd UI. One quirk of this mode is that the screen has a blocked off section that says 'MAIN DISPLAY', but this section stays blank most of the time and doesn't serve the user in any meaningful way. The on screen instructions are a help though. You can also see here roughly how the record to USB system works. You simply press a button, it comes up with a message showing you the free space on the drive, and it begins recording. If you press the record button again while it's recording, it will start on a new MP3 file. This is useful if you are recording multiple songs from the radio at once. Something like this seems really rudimentary today, but you have to remember, back then you didn't have music streaming like you do now, so people still enjoyed the radio and recorded from it some. Also important to remember is that I was a kid without his own computer who was curious about music, so I used this feature all of the time. One other thing to mention is that when you are playing music from CD, USB, or FM, the display has about 5 randomized screensavers that activate after about 10sec to keep the display from getting burn in. It's an LCD so it doesn't have burn in as a CRT does, but it's a nice feature (again, something that I think kids would find amusing). Sadly, the screensavers are just GIF images with about 8 frames each showing 2 frames per second. Each screensaver also has visible image compression artifacts. Finally, let's talk about sound quality. First of all, this system gets very loud. It supposedly outputs at a max of 180wpc (at 3% thd lol), so it's quite capable. This unit sounds really good when you are eye level with it. It has a strong deep bass that isn't muddy, and the Xross emission tweeters ensure plenty of good highs get delivered straight to your ear. In addition, the myriad of different EQ settings and bass enhancements dramatically change the sound footprint and style, so there is plenty of customization that is sure to make any genre sound good... at eye level. Sadly, this system's tweeters are very directional and are inset back several inches from the front of each cabinet, plus it doesn't have any real mid drivers it can use to spread sound around the room (all of the orange speakers are bass woofers that do not play mid frequencies well at noticeable volumes). This means that if the system is below you or above you, you are going to get a very muddy dull sound that is unbalanced and missing most trebble frequencies. Sony should have moved the tweeters forward instead of burying them inside a spreader. Movies are the saving grace here; As I mentioned earlier, it sounds excellent when watching movies. Ultimately, as much as I love this system and used to think it sounded good, unless you are looking for something extremely loud and bassy (for parties and movies), I would look elsewhere. And so this takes us to the final problem... who is this system for? I feel like most of the novelty of this unit is desirable specifically for kids, but not really for average adults. Sure it's pretty darn cool for us hifi nerds to point at, but even back then, most adults wouldn't have cared about the karaoke features or watching movies on a low quality 7" screen... these features plus the price might have even been a deal breaker to adults. At the same time, most kids wouldn't have cared about the Dolby Digital, DTS out, or USB record... and the price would have easily pushed kids toward 'The Singing Machine' products instead if they wanted something that did karaoke. After all of the more successful focused Muteki products Sony created, why did they chose these features and create this? Anyways, this unit introduced allowed me to experience and explore music at much better quality than an average boombox, and also gave me a future taste for the quirkier side of hifi. I'll always remember it fondly and look forward to holding onto it for years to come.
Wow, now that's a review! Side note: It's funny that Sony claims 180 wpc (360 total), yet the power consumption label on the back says only 150W. You cannot produce more power than you consume.
Thanks for reading my very long winded monologue haha. Yeah, I’m not sure how exactly that works, but all of these systems do the same thing… they claim crazy power but then have specifications that come nowhere close…
Yes, what a wonderfully detailed review. It's great to read this about such a device. I remember seeing these kinds, not the same tho, of sets quite often at the thrift store a few years ago. But now I hardly ever see them anymore. Maybe they're becoming scarce, or maybe I just don't see them. I have no idea. Who knows, in the future it might even become really collectible! That was indeed the time when everything had to have a 7-inch LCD screen. I also thought it was very important back then that it also had to be DivX compatible, because that was the future! You don't hear much about that anymore... That raw power, far above the power consumption, is regulated by a capacitor that charges briefly and then releases the power it takes for that single millisecond peak on the speakers. So the marketing department can also make a good impression in the brochures.
I know exactly what you mean about the iPod dock. For a short while it seemed most electronic devices over £30 had one. In 2011 we bought a 19" Panasonic TV for the kitchen. Of course it came with a plug in iPod dock, with the old style 30 pin connector. It has never been plugged into the TV. I always found it strange that Sony were trying to promote their own MP3 players (which I have quite a few of) but devices like this were promoting Apple's dominance in that market. As for @Michiel 's comments about this type of system, before she ended up in a nursing home a 90 year old neighbour across the road had a neat Panasonic system. Not as fancy as this but with full remote, CD changer etc. Probably bought when she was in her 60s. The 70 year olds next door replaced anything they had with Spotify and a Bluetooth speaker years ago. In a video about a mini system Techmoan made some good comments about stereos getting smaller and smaller as they went from furniture size Radiograms to these before disappearing altogether.
