Craic agus Ceol

Back in the elder days of hi-fi, there was an ongoing war of words and, indeed, a philosophical chasm between two breeds of music-making equipment. In one camp stood hi-fi separates — the true path. In the other: midi systems, the great hulking all-in-one stacks which came topped with a turntable, under which were ranked successive layers of twin cassette, graphic equaliser and amplifier, sometimes with more than their fair share of flashing lights, and partnered with huge but often lightweight speakers of fairly thin MDF. Later, as CD players replaced turntables, these midi systems shrank down into mini systems and ultimately micro systems (and even, for a while, micro separates), until the whole all-in-one genre was eventually supplanted by the one-box wireless music systems of today.

Denon’s CEOL N11DAB system, then, is a survivor in terms of product genre, but reinvents the breed thanks to updated abilities that are thoroughly modern and all-encompassing for today’s world of streaming and file replay. What’s more, the inclusion of external inputs and even the quality of its amplification are more separates-level than mini system, while the supplied SC-N10 speakers are no MDF lightweights. And as we shall see, it’s a combination that presents a serious challenge to the box-bound sound of many trendier one-box solutions.

Equipment

We hadn’t previously investigated the etymological origin of Denon’s ongoing CEOL series of systems. The only relevant derivation we could find is the Irish Gaelic word originally meaning ‘music’ or ‘musical music and diversion is often translated as ‘fun’, but it’s broader than that, with a meaning closer to ‘enjoyable social activity’).