JVC HX-Z3 CD Mini Audio System

The JVC HX-Z3 is without a doubt the finest compact components system on the market today. I have spent many hours listening to Sony, Aiwa, Panasonic, etc. etc. and the JVC Tower of Power blows them all away. JVC is known for their great sound in mini systems across their entire product line. Some brands pack in features and doodads but lack the essential feature: Great sound. The HX-Z3 delivers it in spades.

The HX-Z3 is the top end of JVC's "Tower of Power" HX series. It is complemented by it's little brother the HX-Z1, which you can find at Circuit City and similar stores. The HX-Z3 is a bit harder to find -- but well worth your efforts to locate. Here is my review

OVERVIEW

The JVC HX-Z3 is a compact component system that includes a 3 tray CD player, an excellent FM tuner, single cassette tape record, AM radio, and clock/timer. It is a bi-amped system, meaning there are two sets of amplifiers: a subwoofer system that delivers the extreme low bass, and a main speaker system that delivers the high bass, midrange and high frequencies. The HX-Z3 is massively powerful, which translates into very clean sound at any volume. The subwoofer amplifiers deliver a minimum of 160 watts continuous RMS per channel into each of 2 side-firing 8" woofers. And the main amps that deliver 70 watts RMS per channel into (2) 5-3/8" woofers and a 2" tweeter. The subwoofer drivers have a 6 layer voice coil and pump out more bass than you have ever heard from a system the size of the HX-Z3.

That's right folks, the Tower of Power has FOUR speaker drivers in each speaker cabinet. I will talk more about the sound a bit later. Suffice it to say, the Tower of Power blows away even JVC's own Giga Tube systems, for solid, tight bass and plenty of it.

The CD changer can read any combination of audio CD's, CDR disks, CDRW disks, and best of all ... MP3 CDR's and MP3 CDRW's. You can make your own MP3 disks that hold up to 10 or 12 hours of music on a single disk. For those of us who like to burn our own CD's the MP3 feature is a big win.

The HX-Z3 is Energy Star rated and had an Eco mode which makes it use very little power when it is in "off" mode. Regular "off" lets you display the clock and timers, but in eco mode it goes completely dark and draws less than 1 watt of power. Very nice.

STYLING

Yes, looks do matter. This is a very cool, high tech looking system. It looks like a mini-tower PC in design, maybe that is what they intended. The loudspeakers are the most aggressive looking design I have ever seen. It is a pretty large system as mini shelf systems go. The front panel is loaded with an array of large red indicator LED's that tell you the mode you are in. Very impressive. There is a very large volume knob on the front panel, and two other knobs. One selects the sound mode, and the other tunes the radio or selects tracks on the CD player. There are a number of small buttons on the face of the unit, for example to play the CD, turn on the radio, tape record etc.

This is not the system you would buy for your grandmother. Not a conservative looking system to bring into the office either. But the indicator lamps are very useful because there are a lot of modes on this system and you can tell at a glance what all the settings are. This is quite an impressive looking system great for a teenager or a young man. There are oversized blue fluorescent indicators and an audio level indicator. You can read the text displays from across the room. When you switch modes the system beeps at you in different tones (yes you can switch it off if you like). But the tones actually give you some feedback in getting used to the settings.

FEATURES AND CONTROLS

Setting up the HX-Z3 is a breeze. Hook up the 4 color coded wires for each speaker (2 wires to the subwoofers, 2 to the main speakers). Put some batteries in the remote, turn on the power and that's it. Very simple to set up and simple to operate. These are made for young people not techno geeks. If you read the manual you will discover a huge array of features, but no need to hurry that. I have a top of the line JVC home theater receiver and I started off using maybe 10% of the features. Over time, you naturally figure out the controls. 20% of the features you never use. You name it: random play, program play, synchro recording, digital output ... it's all there. But don't overlook the well written user manual, it has a nice explanation of MP3's especially.

The HX-Z3 Tower of Power incorporates JVC's excellent digital signal processing (DSP) features. A knob on the front panel lets you switch between 3 preset EQ settings (Rock, Pop and Classic), and 3 surround modes (Dance club, Hall and Stadium). The surround modes give you an live feeling and really open up the sound. In addition to these six presets, there are three "user mode" settings. These let you set the tone controls to your own liking. The manual settings give you great control over the sound. There are five frequency ranges you can control (LOW1, LOW2, MID, HIGH1 and HIGH2). For each frequency range you can adjust the loudness of that range in seven steps, from -3 to 3.

The volume control goes from 1 to 30. Around 10 it starts getting very loud. You really don't want to turn it more than half way up unless you are bringing the music to a dance or an outdoor party. This thing is very loud.

The subwoofer has its own separate sound control that reminds me of the up and down buttons on an elevator. These let you bump the subwoofer volume up or down, from 0 (none) to 4 (maximum). Unless you are a bass freak you don't need to turn it to 4, usually I keep it on 2 or 3. There is a very low, deep sound from the subwoofers. It is amazing a system this size delivers the lows like that. I have listened to the JVC Giga Tube systems which tout the low bass ... the HX-Z3 even blows them away. It is a very tight bass, no loose or boomy sound here. There are lamps on the front panel that light up to indicate which level the subwoofer is on.

Another DSP feature is called Extended Hyper Bass. What this does is deepen and strengthen the sound of the bass instruments by adding in some harmonics of the bass sound into the mix. Don't worry ... you don't have to do anything to make this happen. It is automatic. It gives an extremely full bass sound even at fairly low volumes.

The Compu-Play feature is also nice. When the unit is off, you can touch the CD play button, FM radio button or whatever you want to listen to. The Tower of Power turns itself on and starts playing the CD or whatever. Very nice. JVC does a great job of giving you advanced features but making the basic features convenient to use.

The remote control is well, just a remote control. Nothing special. I would like if the buttons lit up like they do on my top of the line JVC home theater system ... but they don't. Oh well. My only nit in this entire review and here goes, is this: there are some functions that can ONLY be controlled by the remote control, and others that can ONLY be controlled on the front panel of the HX-Z3. For example you can only set the clock, or define the user sound settings (see above) by pressing buttons on the front panel. You can only turn off the beeps, or switch between FM stereo and mono, by using the remote. I guess the moral of that story is don't lose the remote control. This is the only reason I downgraded it a bit on ease of use.

The cassette player makes very nice sounding recordings. It doesn't have Dolby settings. You can at the push of a single button, play a CD and record it onto a cassette tape. Cassettes are fading away as a recording medium but some folks still have a tape player (no CD) in the car stereo so it is nice to be able to make recordings from cassettes. The cassette drawer is nicely disguised on the cabinet and will likely stay that way on my system. One use of the cassette recorder that works with the clock radio feature, is you can have the HX-Z3 wake up at a certain time, tune to a particular radio station, and record a show while you are away. Similar to what you can do with a VCR. Another Gee Whiz feature with tapes is that the Tower of Power will look at the songs on a CD and play them in the correct order so that the tape never runs out in the middle of a song while you are recording. For example if the next song would be 5 minutes but you only have 3 minutes of tape left on that side, in this recording mode it will just pick a 3 minute song instead so it fits onto the tape.

There is a "digital optical out" outlet on the back, which lets you connect an optical fibre cable to a digital device like a CD recorder or minidisk recorder. There is one minor gotcha, the digital output works with audio CD's but not MP3 CD's. But if you have a Walkman-type mini disk recorder/player it is nice to be able to copy CD's from the Tower of Power.

SOUND AND PERFORMANCE

But you aren't going to by the Tower of Power for the whiz bang features. The most important, the ESSENTIAL point of the HX-Z3 is the sound. Nothing else in the store touches the HX-Z3 when it comes to deep bass response and very loud, crystal clear sound. If this was just a loud box with distorted sound I would have no interest. It is the superb quality of the sound and the nice DSP surround modes that make the HX-Z3 shine. At normal listening levels the 460 Watts RMS of power is just loafing along. Even when you crank it way up the sound is crystal clear. The twin 8" subwoofers are on loud volume are like getting punched in the stomach. And it is a very pleasant sound. Even playing classical music is very pleasant on this system. But the HX excels at bass-heavy rock, techno and dance music. It is like being in a club, no kidding. I like to hear very deep bass sound but not at mondo levels so I keep the subwoofer control on 2 or 3. However, it gets beautiful low, low bass frequencies.

The volume control goes up to 30, but you get nice moderately loud and solid sound starting from 10. 20 might be a dorm party listening level. 25?? An outdoor party.

Speaking of dorm parties, one nice feature is that you can use the controls to LOCK the CD eject button so if someone tries to purloin the CD's the disk won't eject. JVC really thought of everything! Don't worry you can unlock it once you know the secret. And with 30 hours of continuos music on 3 MP3 CD's you won't need to be changing the tunes at a party.

JVC are renowned for having an excellent FM tuner section. If you live in the city no big deal, but if you are out in the burbs or in a rural area this makes a big difference. The HX-Z3 with a decent antenna can pull in really hard to tune distant stations with no drift ... and it stays in stereo mode does not drift into mono. My advice is throw away the cheezy wire antenna that comes with it and use a nice amplified Zerk or Recoton, or an outdoor antenna.

SUMMARY

What can I say? This is the top end JVC shelf system. It puts out amazing loud clear sound, superb bass, plays every kind of MP3, CDR & CDRW you can throw at it. Is easy to use, and has impressive looks. Really a grandslam for JVC. I got an excellent deal on one of these on eBay, the list price is $450 but I picked it up for $240 plus shipping. Cheapest I have seen from a regular store is one of the NY City outfits for about $350 delivered. In a store expect it to be in the $400 range. The finest sound I have ever heard from a compact stereo system, bar none. The JVC HX-Z3 deserves my highest recommendation.