Music centre

Integrated audio equipment has a long history, beginning with the integration of the record player and the wireless receiver. Such units were usually called radiograms or stereograms in British English and consoles in American English. Very often these were designed as items of household furniture, with a large wooden cabinet on legs. These units were originally monaural, and featured a single integrated loudspeaker in the main body of the cabinet. By the 1960s these units had become smaller, and had developed to include stereophonic reproduction. The necessity of having suitable separation of the speakers meant that the single cabinet designs evolved into three-box designs, and the main box could become much smaller. By the beginning of the 1970s systems were starting to be made of plastic and other materials rather than wood.

The 1970s saw the inclusion of a deck for playing compact cassettes as well as a record player and receiver, and the term music centre came into common use. The inclusion of a turntable capable of playing full-sized gramophone records tended to dictate the overall size of these units, which remained relatively large. The cassette deck was either a top-loading unit beside the turntable or a front-loading unit mounted on a deeper front panel. By the end of the decade, the first very small systems started to appear, which dropped the integrated record player in order to reduce the size of the other components significantly. Other innovations such as electronic control of the cassette transport mechanism (as opposed to direct mechanical operation) allowed further size reductions.

The compact disc appeared in the early 1980s and the integrated hi-fi system came into its own, because the small size of a CD player compared to a turntable meant that this function could be reintegrated into the main unit without compromising its small size.

The music centre has always been rather looked down upon by the hi-fi enthusiast. In the early days the sound quality was far below what was possible using separate components. The main compromise is in the area of the loudspeakers, where small size is favoured over the ability to reproduce an extended low frequency response. Modern equipment has improved in this respect, and such systems are popular. There are still some compromises in terms of what components are used within the integrated unit, compared to what could be fitted in a set of separates, but the differences are smaller than they used to be. There are a few exceptions however and these music centres used parts and designs from their separate counterparts of the time, for example amplifier modules, cassette transports and turntable assemblies that were offered in standalone equipment were often fitted into an all in one enclosure to create a music centre with the same, or close to, quality and fidelity as the individual equipment.

The market for these systems is probably now larger than that for "true" hi-fi. Small units take up less space, and are more suitable in urban areas.

• Entertainment center
• Shelf stereo - a home stereo system that is small enough to be placed on a shelf or similar location, 1980s onward
• Boombox - a portable suitcase-sized cassette player and AM/FM radio, mid 1970s to 1990s