Q: I decided to buy a new music system. I was thinking of buying some components, so I ended up in a high-end store where I almost found myself spending 3,000 euros.

Finally I decided to wait some more. I started thinking about buying a home cinema set to include the DVD option. Then somebody told me that stuff gives pretty bad sound with music CDs. So now I really don't know what to do.

Perhaps I should get a a high-end DVD player with some good loud speakers, to listen to music and watch DVDs.

Do you have any suggestions on what I should do?

-- Mark Rotenstein, the Netherlands

A:Your e-mail seems to consist of two questions, which I will summarize before addressing them.

The first question regards the sound quality of what you call a "home cinema set." The second regards recommendations for building a system.

Though you are writing from Europe, where products' offerings may be different in some cases, the principles of good system building are the same no matter where in the world you live.

When you mentioned a "home cinema set," you were undoubtedly referring to either a home theater in a box (HTIB) or a boxed speaker set using tiny speakers and a subwoofer.

From my sitting spot, whoever told you they do not sound good with music was giving you good information.

Tiny speakers cannot reproduce sound nearly as well as bookshelf-size or tower speakers.

Very small speakers cannot move much air, and this limits the sounds they can reproduce. Typically these tiny speakers fall short in reproducing frequencies anywhere from 80 hertz to 200 hertz, which is a critical range for music as well as human voices.

With some of these systems, the satellites cannot reproduce all of a deep voice, so the subwoofer reproduces the rest of the voice.

This is far from desirable in a sound system, especially home theater. Many of these tiny speakers do not have a separate tweeter, so treble reproduction suffers as well.

You can read more on this subject at the "speakers" section of my Web site.

For the best compromise of size and sound quality, use bookshelf-size speakers with a woofer at least 5 inches in size along with a subwoofer.

Tower speakers are still the best if you have the space and budget for them.

You seem to be thinking of buying a high-end DVD player for your system in order to get the best sound quality.

This is unnecessary as your DVD playerwill be connected to your receiver with a digital connector.

The receiver then converts ones and zeros from the DVD player into sound. Ones and zeros are ones and zeros no matter if they come from a $39 DVD player or a $30,000 DVD player.

I would recommend buying a good- quality DVD player, but unless you are using an elaborate front projection video system, you do not need a high-end unit.

The proper course to getting the best sound for your money is to buy the best speakers you can afford and work backward from there.

Though most people think of the Far East for electronics, the best speakers are made in the United States, Canada and Great Britain. Start your shopping with brands from these countries.

At current exchange rates 3,000 euros is around $3,700, which will get you a spectacular sounding system for both movies and music.

I recommend spending around 2,100 euros for speakers, 700 euros on a home theater receiver and 200 euros on a DVD player. This will get beautiful sound quality.