The most 1980s stereo system: Soundesign Audio Core 

I genuinely thought the thumbnail was a screenshot

That's lovely. When you were young, you didn't care about sound quality. You just cared that it looked cool and that it worked. I'd gladly have this on display and use it.

It doesn't just look 80's, it SCREAMS 80's!

I would have definitely loved to have a system like that back in the day when I was a kid.

These were the Kmart special; usually sold for $99 from 1985-88. For those who couldn't afford the big 400 watt Sharp and Fisher tower stereos these were designed to mimic. They were incredibly popular with apartment dwellers (It's primary advantage being LOOKING high power and impressive without the neighbor complaints and eviction threats of a Sharp tower.)

I think devices that are of somewhat mediocre quality but have a ton of personality and fun are an underrated category of old electronics.

I had a SoundDesign unit from the late 70's... it had christmas bulbs and the double mirror making the infinite depth illusion. It looked SUPER COOL... sounded OK... and eventually fell apart.

If I was the designer I would have asked if there was space for a Turbo button. Because, that’s why.

Remember buying stereos in the 80s, and thinking was - the busier the better. Bloody great content lad. Great find!

The front panel looks exactly like a DAW plugin UI. So in a way it is far ahead of its time.

I had one of those stereo systems back in the late 80s through early 90s. I hooked up a TV antenna to the FM external antenna to get better reception. Then I plugged in a CD Walkman to the Aux. It was a great college dorm stereo at the time.

You never cease to amaze me with your ability to find old el cheapo gizmos, fix them when needed, and demonstrate and review them in a manner that makes them desirable to own. It's because of you that I've gotten back into cassettes, and I'm not sure whether to thank you or curse you, lol.

The thing I've found is, these were low end and many considered them junk... yet every single example I find still works 100%.

My first stereo system was a Soundesign 6821M all in one complete with particle board tower and skinny tower speakers back in 1986. You could even store your cassettes in the central support column. It was awesome and the tapes i recorded with it still sound good today. It was a sound design.

Gotta love this 1980’s all in one stereo system. Sure, it’s not audiophile approved but for the average Joe, an all-in-one stereo system from Soundesign would suffice to make them happy and satisfied. Very simple and easy to use out of the box. Just plug in it, turn it on and you’re ready to go!

I had a similar stereo system with that color scheme from the 1980s, we were obsessed with technicolor shapes like triangles on electronics!

Even now, I would absolutely love to have a stereo system like this one (despite its overall cheapness)…. but oddly enough, it’s also what makes it so appealing to me! Thank you for another wonderful video!!!

This is the sort of stereo I would have aspired to as a kid. There were always loads of models like that in the catalogs of the day, usually made by Bush, Alba or Murphy in the UK. All fur coat and no knickers, as we say.

The performance of that cheap sound system reminds me to my first early 2000's bookshelf sound system manufactured by Memorex, and I remember clearly how well plays pre-recorded cassettes in THAT High fidelity.

That specific Soundesign unit and that specific Memorex tape are the chef's kiss. Would of passed this one up as a kid, but as a adult do not care that its cheap, it simply looks amazing!

That device looks brand new. The design is indeed peak ‘80 😀

I had a neighbor who lived 3 apartments from my parents back in 1991 and he had this same exact stereo system with all original parts, such as the record player and speakers! I grew up around these and wished my parents would have bought this for me and as a kid in the 80s, even if I didn't own one, would have been Thrilled to have one of these! Great Video!

I remember when my sister and I were young adolescents, our parents took us to Best where we each picked out a stereo for our rooms. My sister picked out a Sony boombox which cost about 70 dollars and I picked out a much larger Soundesign stereo that looked like a mini tower system for about 80 dollars. I remember after a few days of owning it I was jealous of my sister’s higher quality Sony boombox, it pretty much did everything better than the Soundesign. I wasn’t the fastest learner either. A few years later I bought a GE tower system, it was one of the systems that had 4’ tall speakers with only one 4” driver inside the cabinet. Eventually I started getting into vintage stereo equipment through yard sales and thrift stores in the late 90s. Back then the 70s receivers were of almost no value and you would find for just a few dollars. How times have changed.

One thing I can say for sure, you are the cassette deck repair expert. I have learned much from your videos on these old machines. HiFi or LoFi, you have a way to fix them! Thank you. 😃

I love how you got out a matching aesthetic cassette

That reminds me of my first stereo. It was a Samsung rebadged by Commodore (yes that Commodore) and was exclusive to the Australian market, originally in a bundle with the Amiga 500 but sold separately later on. Sound quality was on par with this Soundesign. I have a proper hi-fi these days, but I kinda miss that Commodore.

The great thing about 80s electronics is even the cheapest discount crap products were decent. I had a couple Soundesign 4617BUR stereo tape recorders in 1987. unfortunately they were not kid proof and didn't last long with me but I got one on ebay and the sound quality from that is better than anything out today.

I always see a ton of soundesign electronics in the thrift stores here on Long Island. That equalizer.😊 That first song you played, " In heaven there is no beer" was one of my dad's favorite , Frankie Yankovic version.

Reminds me of my childhood friends Amstrad “stereo” tower. My first stereo was Onkyo and Nikko and I don’t remember the brand of my turntable . Great video as always

Ahh Soundesign, hearing that name takes me back, My first one was a 5834BLK. I did have a few others afterwards. My last one was one that was a TV stand with fold out speakers.

I inherited this model from my grandmother. It was like new. I threw it out when the cassettes stopped working, this was before I knew anything about replacing belts. I’ve kicked myself in the butt for years over that.

Amazing time is flying shall we all go back to 80s again 😢❤❤❤

There were a bunch of brands like this affixed to lower-end equipment like this. I also remember Lloyd's and Yorx.

Bro has the best sample tracks of all retro YT

It looks cheap yet very cool at the same time. I'd love to have one.

It's always good to find a fully operational Soundesign stereo as they are a nightmare to work on mostly as everything is attached to the front fascia. This one looked a little less frustrating to fix than some of their earlier units.

So fabulously tripindicularly cool. When I was a teen in the 80s, indeed my first stereo was an all in one Soundesign. Mine had dual cassette deck AM-FM radio, an integrated fantastic plastic turntable and... brace yourself - 8 Track deck. The turntable had a nice holder for about a dozen cassettes too. Such fun, thanks!

The perfect sound system for yoga class, it even matches the yoga mats and foam rollers!

Great video! I had soundesign red boombox with a single cassette deck that I got for my 1st Holy Communion and it was one of the best gifts ever! Wish I could find another one NOS.

I would love to have this 80's vintage system in my man cave, because everything about this system screams 1980's. It would definitely be a conversation piece for sure. lol Myself being an 80's kid, I had the pleasure of owning many boom boxes and bookshelf stereo system of this era, but none of them had as much personality as this one does. I love your videos bro, please keep cranking out that great content. 👍

Awesome find, and as an 80's Kid I would have loved this in my room back in the day, as I was lucky to have an AM/FM Panasonic boombox with dual cassette decks, and ported speakers that detached from the main unit, and among my friends that was gold, as most them either had a cheap portable tape deck, basic mono AM/FM radio cassette player, or not much of anything.

I LOVE the aesthetic of this thing, I'd be proud to have. Those light-up elements are so groovy

We had a few Soundesign products during the 80s, never had any problems. They actually all did a good job at what they were made to do. 🤘

This was a dream system for me back in the day. Love seeing it in action!

I had a stereo just like this one. I loved the high speed doubling.

WOW! I HAD THIS EXACT SOUNDESIGN SYSTEM IN 1984-1985 (EVERYTHING INCLUDING THE RACK TOWER, RECORD PLAYER, AND MATCHING SPEAKERS, BOUGHT AT KMART BACK IN THE DAY KMART WAS THE COCK OF THE WALK! I was around 14-15 years old. The "Stereo Intensity" meter I remember well and used to get fascinated over watching the lights pulsing to the music. Seeing it today is a joke, LOL. The entire system worked great back in that age! That was the year I learned about "HIGH-SPEED DUBBING" from the cassette decks and thought it was the coolest thing in the world! I also remember the digital clock looking out of place and a bit crooked if you looked directly at it. Growing up in a poor family, this system was "gold" to me! I guess I was "coolest kid on the block" back in the day as you put it. Last I remember, both tape decks started eating tapes about 3-4 years after I owned it so I decided to junk it. Even the record player started skipping a lot, but at that time I never knew about "stylus's" or "cartridges" or how to replace them.....still don't! LOL I thought I'd NEVER see this stereo system ever again anywhere because I forgot the model number, ironic-ly I was thinking about this stereo system the other day too. This video thumbnail just happen to pop up on the front cover highlights of RU-vid, an accidental find. Very cool, very cool!! Nostalgia heaven! Thank you Sir for posting and sharing!!! Great presentation as well! 😁👍👍🪖

I had this stereo. I bought it at Montgomery Ward in Ithaca, New York in 1987 for my dorm room. I added an exterior CD player the following year. I continued to use the system until 1995, when I replaced it with a Sony compact stereo.

Let's face it, we'd all be pretty chuffed to have this now. And VWestlife is still the coolest kid on the block!

For me the most 80s looking, and to this day, coolest looking tape deck / tuner combo is the Onkyo Integra series TA 2090 / 9900 models. Just all lights and buttons. Crazy. And top shelf pricing of course.

Heck, you’d probably be the coolest kid in school now with something like this.

This channel is always good entertainment, you always make me smile and laugh. Your dedication to making these systems work perfectly for show and demonstration of their sonic quality is biblical. As a child, I would have been disappointed not to have the Dolby function. I had discovered the principle of operation and had demonstrated it to my father who was stunned by my discovery: "Well! You made a great discovery there!" He didn't know the Dolby system at all. .

Thank you for showcasing these types of systems. They filled a market niche of decent quality at an affordable price, and for their time were better quality than much of what we see today.

the color scheme is priceless!

Very cool !! 😎👍

Ugh, YT can be ... quite difficult to deal with occasionally. So let's make sure the algorithm recommends this great video about an interesting piece of retro tech to more people than just me.

That thing is BEAUTIFUL! I swear I had an Aunt with this Home Deck

I love this era of audio - it's a lot of fun!

This was my dad's dream back then. (I'm gonna say as a son who has a dad was a 90s teenager) He used to dream of having one of these cassette decks sitting around at "his" home, I talked to him about this like wayyy too many times. I still remember that one word he said. And he also said that soon after he switched to the CDs in the Y2K era that it has a better quality than the cassette tapes, He's almost about to discard all of them and I do have some cassette tapes from him. And after that he "still" don't like the cassette tapes after he switched to the CD format until now. And what about now? Well, He's listening to MP3 format like the most of the people these days. (But he doesn't listen to Spotify unfortunately) Heh, What a cool story from my dad. 😎 P.S : Seeing this video it'd reminded me of him.

Yeah man, I dumpstered one of these in the late '90s,...1998 and used it until I got my feet back on the ground and bought components piecemeal. I had a Soundesign in the '80s that had a single cassette recorder with the turntable & AM/FM. It was black and my little sister had the same one in pink. I got it as a present along with SAMHAIN "Initium" record and a COCTEAU TWINS & a Nick Cave record. 1986 or '87.... I was a death rocker, punk rocker. However, nothing like these kids who are goth today. These stereo/entertainment systems were surprisingly durable, and always worth carrying home from the side of the road or next to the dumpster!

Here for the algorithm... As well as the vintage electronics fix, of course!

I don't know where you find these items, but I approve! New Jersey must have the best second hand shops in the world!

Not bad at all. That was a pretty simple repair too. Had I found that broken retainer cap, I’d be tempted to carefully glue it using something extremely strong like Q-Bond. I’ve actually fixed a number of broken plastic parts on Handycams using it, though I do wonder how much longer those quick fixes are going to last.

My mother bought this new when I was a little kid. She had an additional cd player hooked up to it too. I can't remember what brand though. The setup with speakers was pretty big. When I was a teenager she gave it to me, and I still have it to this day with the stand, speakers and turntable

Who's complaining about the quality and is seriously comparing it to "High-End Systems" of $20k is a complete fool. This is a kind of toy, a novelty back in the 80's. And it's an adorable one.

These were the kind of systems that aspiring beat makers made pause tapes with back in the day because you couldn't afford a mixer and two turn tables. You find the drum break in the song you recorded off the radio, and then record it to tape, then play it back and record it to the second tape, hit the pause button, rewind it on the first tape, and then record the break again on the second tape again, hit pause again, and on and on until you have a loop that your friend could rap on. You actually had to have one of these tape decks for it to work because the levered pause button made it possible to do seemless edits that wouldn't introduce pops and noises.

I would have been the happiest kid in the universe to have a system like this. Thank you so much for sharing.

fantastic plastic! nice work MacGuyver! the fact that it's 36 years old & it all still works speaks volumes...also it's so clean it is tells me it was not used much, but like I said before, some Soundesign was actually not bad. I really like the individual volume controls for the amp. I had a 70s vintage Soundesign AM/FM with built in: turntable & 8 track...it was mostly metal & built like a tank.

I kinda miss those 80's stylings on the front. I remember, as a kid, we had one that looked similar to this. It was a great tape to tape recorder, and could fast record Commodore 64 tapes successfully.

I had no idea a vinyl soundtrack was available for Planet X3. I bet the 8 Bit Guy will appreciate the free advertisement. BTW - I love the way you end the video. ☮

The perfect system for your synthwave cassette collection!

I got something like this as my very first hi-fi system when I was 16 in 1988. It took me 4 months to save up for it working at the local supermarket Thursday evenings & Saturdays for $5.75 an hour! But, crap as it was, it was so nice having my own system & not having to transfer my new records to blank tapes on my parents hi-fi system to play on my crappy boombox.

Fantastic review. That volume indicator with the incandesent globes is an all-new one for me. That's something special in cost cutting right there. I do believe that's inspired by what we boombox collectors call the 'runway style' LED meters. usually with a mirror on top them to double the perceived amount. Ironically, Technics put such a thing on their SA-CA09 but Lasonic, Lloyds, Intersound, etc, etc followed suit on many other models.

LOL I had that exact experience 😅 I got a stereo system (a Sanyo) when I was 10 or 12 I think for my birthday back in the 80's and indeed I was the cool kid in the street 😎 I still have the picture that was taken the exact moment I saw my new stereo for the first time standing on the kitchen table. I was so happy! Ah the good old days... 😄❤ EDIT: I googled it and I think it was a Sanyo GXT 848U.

Pretty sure my ex’s parents still have this in their dining room. Last I checked 10 yrs ago, the tape transports of course no longer worked. But I did dig through the records and still have the 45 of Sweet “Ballroom Blitz” 😁

Just in time for my breakfast a new VWestlife video from the best RU-vidr Kevin! Really a cool looking audio system

So glad I'm still a tape head after all these yrs,I still do cassette recordings on my Tascam portastudios 🗽♥️📼

Great video I love the look of these things, and as an added bonus I no longer suffer from asphyxiation during exercise thanks to that handy tip on the cassette :)

Ahhh, my fellow 80s BPC connoissers, a fine piece of vintage bliken lights

That was the type of stereo setup I've had as a teen. I used either a used hi-fi, mini stereo, or a boombox not only for playing tapes & radio stations but also hooked up my Atari XE computer (as shown in the video) along with the NES so my games sounded much better than on a small TV. I even hooked it up to a VCR to record songs from a videotaped show off MTV to make my own mixtapes...

It looks so 1980s I love it.

I'm convinced that the integrated turntable on my dad's 1980's stereo has the same mechanism as the one demonstrated here.. As I renember it had a descent sound to it.

I particularly appreciate the choice of recordings used in this demonstration. 😆 And there is that beer song again.

Commenting to keep the algorithm happy for you - and I always watch anyway and this one was no exception. RU-vid is behaving strangely of late...

Had a soundesign stereo in the house growing up and it was actually pretty decent. I never understood why people hated on Soundesign so much. For it's price range and the quality you got from it you really couldn't beat it

I really enjoyed this. Reminded me of the Saisho hi-fi systems sold in the UK

I certainly wouldn't have complained about this system as a kid. Until i was about 10 I had to make eo with a Sanyo boombox, then a huge beast of a woodgrain 1970s all-in-one music centre (also from Sanyo) that was a parental hand-me-down after they bought a fancy new Sony stack system for the living room in 1989, which also eventually made its way to me and which i still have today. Incidentally i also have the Top 40 from Christmas of that year, taped onto one of those brightly coloured Memorex 'clown' cassettes featured in this video. Having grown up with it, I kinda miss that Memphis-inspired pastel look on everything from sneakers and alarm clocks to furniture and shopping malls, though it really hasn't aged well and looks very dated today.

When I was ten, I got a Soundesign 5977, and it was wonderful. So high-tech compared to the portable tape recorder from Radio Shack that I had been using. I remember watching it work as I listened, often in the dark. As a kid, I knew every inch of that thing. It was really nice that I could set it to record off the radio at different times with that clock-timer. Unfortunately for me, the tape deck jammed after almost a year, and I got to take it back and all they had was a Yorx, which was even bigger, and had a record player drawer that came out automatically. I had that one for decades. There was no way I'd ever be able to get a high-end stereo back then, I spent everything I had just to get the Soundesign. Worth every penny. I kind of want to find another one like it, but they run for $300 on eBay and who knows if it would actually work. Soundesign and Yorx weren't garbage, they were just low-end for people who couldn't get Merantz. I never really understood that there was a high-end kind of stereo, as I never saw them at the stores I went to as a ten-year-old. Actually, Emerson was the real cheap choice, I remember the tape mechanism being white plastic that would fade yellow. I'd rather have cheap metal parts than that.

Nice trip down memory lane ☺️👌🏼

I have a similar system from GPX, made in 88, great sound even on the built in turntable. It has the famous needle as this one has but its properly set for the needle. I am going to be replacing the factory needle soon with a diamond needle, as its still a good working system for a home office, and it was a gift from a close family member whos passed on.

Soundesign was always a lot of flash and little to no fizzle. Gotta love the "Stereo Intensity" graphic on this unit. Whatever that means.

Man, this one was a walk down memory lane. I didn't have that exact system but I had a similar one that also has included the high speed dubbing feature which made me very popular for a few years. I also had those blank cassettes and you are right, it couldn't be any more 80s. BTW, using polka to test the tape deck made me burst out in laughter. Well done!

Love how you appreciate the under appreciated, I just picked up the 6821 audio core at my thrift store, can’t wait to plug it in

It looks really damn cool.

Definately not a audiophile system, but way better than any of the modern affordable systems you see from Crossley and the like

having this and a sega genesis as a kid back in the day would be peak cool

That was awesome a great trip down memory lane

My first stereo was a Sounddesign all in one, with tuner, turntable and speakers. Paid about $79 in coins saved in my piggy bank when I was 13 (1973). Even though the sound was as you might expect, I loved the look of the blue and red lighted dial, and the tinted dustcover that went over the turntable.

Great fix. It can be so tricky finding these tiny obscure parts for these old players.

Never had one of these, but they’re so cool. This was when Soundesign turned into crap. I had an all-in-one stereo system from around 1995 and it was made by Soundesign and it was one of the last stereo system to offered. It has a radio, dual cassette deck with ALC and a cheap turntable that looks like the Crosley and Victrola models of its time, and it says “Made In China” on the back. Soundesign made great stereo component systems back in the 1970’s and in the 1980’s where they made all-in-one systems, clock radio and a clock radio/cassette recorder which I used to have since I was a kid, and in the 1990’s, Soundesign went downhill. I would love to see those cool looking stereo systems if Crosley or Victrola would like to see those retro 80’s all-in-one stereo system making a comeback and redesign this thing to make it look like a Soundesign 80’s stereo system.

I had a soundesign 8-track stereo back in the 1970's.