Today's sound of music

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

They are called "audio systems" now, micro component systems or mini component systems or full-size systems with separate components. Micro is small. Mini is bigger. Full size is the biggest. Boom boxes, portable things that people take to the beach, are neither micro nor mini, (though they're smaller than both) and are sold in a separate department, next to water-resistant sports Walkmen and clock radios.

All I wanted was a small stereo for a friend who's in a hospital. Something with an off-on button, a tape deck and a three-disc CD player. Something that a nurse or a nurse's aide wouldn't have to call maintenance to use. On. Off. AM. FM. Simple?

Hardly.

The salesman at Circuit City led me to a JVC micro component system with remote. "We had a Kenwood that was a little simpler but we sold out of it," he said. The JVC sat on an end shelf like Univac, a sturdy piece of plastic, metal and Jetson design. I was impressed. It looked as if it could direct a moon landing. I counted 34 function buttons. Well, not buttons exactly, more like raised pieces of metal with tiny letters that you need a magnifying glass to read.

"Um. I was looking for something a little more basic. Something with knobs. You know, on, off, AM, FM. Do you have anything like that?"

Richard Cherry handed me his card. "Sales Counselor-Audio" it read. I was grateful to have a counselor in this department. A counselor, a little Xanax, maybe some reflexology, feng shui.

"This system here is about as simple as it gets. It can be confusing if you're not electronically savvy," he continued, deducing no doubt from my use of the words "stereo" and "knobs" that savvy and I had parted company decades ago. "Unfortunately what happens when technology becomes more advanced is that it becomes more complex."

I wandered over to a silver Aiwa micro component system with remote that looked far more streamlined than the JVC. It had just three silver button-knobs.

But, the knobs were divided into pie-shaped things and on these tiny pieces were tinier words, like "Multi-jog" and "MD."

"Multi-jog means multifunction," my audio counselor said. Like a mother in a kitchen, cooking dinner, talking on the phone, and feeding the dog at the same time.

MD? "That's where you can plug in a mini disc," Mr. Cherry explained. He also explained why you would want to plug in a mini disc but already his answer eludes me.

"I have people coming in all the time asking, 'What's the easiest. Give me the easiest,' because they're buying these systems for their parents. But the systems are getting more, not less, complicated."

I ended up buying a small Aiwa micro system (Is this redundant?) and then putting masking tape all over it. On the tape, I wrote in big letters "ON" "OFF" "CD"and "RADIO" with an arrow leading to the teeny function buttons. It looks bad but it works.

What doesn't is the radio. Mr. Cherry warned me, "Radios in the units are not as good as they used to be." That's because they come with a wire, one end of which has to be Scotch-taped to a window, the other end stuffed into two black holes in the back of the system, holes so small that the wires keep falling out. "I think it's by design," Mr. Cherry said. "The manufacturers want you to buy an external antenna."

External. Internal. Micro. Mini. CD. MD.

Audio systems are just one more example of why less is sometime more.