Going into the dark side.....please help


Lots of change in life and thinking about completely blow out my seperates and switch to Bose 321.

I have a 3 weeks old baby girl and have to start to plan baby proof my living room area. I have a complete full setup in my basement theater with Maggie1.6, Meridian 561 and Proceed amp and HSU VTF 3. I will keep those and use them to get my fix of hifi or mid-fi actually.

T current living room is mainly for casual TV/DVD viewing and mostly background music. I have Acurus ACT3, Green Mountain Europa, HSU VTF-2 and Classe 150 there. Nothing fancy but decent sounding. Wife complains about the look, difficulty to operate and many wires around when baby gets a bit older.

So it seems the only way out for me is to get rid of them and get an Bose 321 or somehting like that, 2.1 not 5.1, fairly modern looking, stremlined, and easy to operat, ie build in DVD. I know I have to take a big set back in terms of sound quality. But I want to ask for some help here to see if there is any alternative to the Bo$e. I normally would have researched myself but with a new born, bewteen work and diaper change and feeding, that's a complete luxury I can't afford.

I have read someone mentioned Denon S301 (discountiued) is decent and I saw Kef KIT-100 the other day in the sotre which probably is better than the Bose. The system maily be used for background music, classical/Jazz probably 90% of time and 10% for DVD view. Anyone want to chip in. Thanks for reading my long post. Regards.

rich
ddl24
If your goal is just to simplify, you can do a lot better than that. And, I'm not talking about breaking the bank either. Have you looked at the integrateds for sale here?
Hey, rich, good luck with new baby! I don't have a suggestion hifi-wise, but your intuitions are right in my experience...children are so curious and do things you just can't imagine ahead of time. One example (not hif but electronics): when my daughter was maybe 5 she had a friend sleep over. They got up early to watch cartoons on the TV. They were nice and quiet and that was great, but when I finally got up and went to look in on them, they had a water spray bottle and were squirting at the tv screen. That of course freaked me out in terms of safety....When I calmed down enough to ask them why they did it, they said they were squirting the bad guys.....Have fun with your new daughter!
give you wife exactly what she wants... DVD player plugged directly into the tv and use the TV speakers... Or buy a LCD tv with the DVD built in (Westinghouse 40").

Sell off the components and throw that money into your basement system!

Sorry... Single Guy Response
Congratulations. Nothing in life is better than children. However, their presence doesn't mean you have to lose your things. Just use common sense about what you get and how you display it. FWIW, here are a few general points.

1. No tubes. (My son is three, and I've used solid state since he was born.)
2. Forget turn tables. Ain't gonna happen.
3. Buy integrated amps. Buy them used. Integrateds are smaller, with fewer wires and knobs, and they sound damn good. Put it out of reach. Nothing sits lower than two feet.
4. Get longer speaker cables. Long enough so they can't be pulled. Better yet, hide them inside PVC pipe.
5. Use floorstander speakers or monitors with stands that are lead/sand filled, with extra weight on the feet. Keep the grills on. Use electrical tape on the binding posts.
6. Tell your girl "not to touch". It works.

I've used this system with great success. Have fun--you'll never be the same. And good luck. You've got about 10 months before things get crazy.