i bought one in the late 90's. it was a 5 speaker surround system. cost me 500 quid. it was trully awful. i had bought it to replace the sony sytem that my toddler daughter had wrecked.i had it back in the box within a few hours, and back at the shop. i traded it for a technics midi system which was impressive in comparison.and 100 quid cheaper. back then i had a massive cassette collection, which the technics did a great job with.back in the late 80's and early nineties i had only ever heard a 3 hifi setups, technics, pioneer and akai. and to be honest i don't think any of them sounded any good. my sony cost me 550 quid in the late 80's which was a lot of money, and not that good.i think the limitations was with the speakers that came with those type of systems. they weren't that good at all.
i listened to systems like that for years till a friend showed me his seperates system and kef floorstanders.. i was literally blown away. i can't thank him enough for introducing me to decent sounding music. its been a passion ever since.