The Day the Music Died

My home stereo went kaput last weekend.

It's just a cheap little Sharp shelf stereo system but we used it everyday. An internal component seems to have failed, which is likely too expensive to diagnose and fix – probably more than the whole thing cost in the first place. So I pulled the system, not sure what its final fate will be.

In addition to all of our entertainment system running through that system, it was also our main radio in the house. Now we're relegated to the television's internal speakers, which will have to do, but we're still out of a radio, and we're a radio family. Shannon listens to Christian music and I'm a talk radio addict.

My intention was to buy a similar cheap shelf unit to replace the broken one. But all the new stereo systems (within a reasonable price range) have replaced the stereo L/R inputs with a 3.5mm audio jack. So I can't run a stereo signal from my television through these systems. The 3.5mm jack is for computers and iPods, which would be great, but if you want to listen to the TV through these new stereos, you're out of luck.

I have no intention of spending multiple hundreds of dollars on this; it's not that important. But if money was no object, I'd get a surround sound audio receiver for the entertainment system and a separate Bose radio for the rest of the house. Cost: over $1000 easy. Make it all high-end Bose systems and you're talking upward of $5000.