We bought a Nakamichi Soundspace 3 several years ago. It looks very elegant, stylish, fitting in with our general tastes. Has a built-in CD player, am-fm radio, plus inputs for audio from various sources.

It replaced a generic, functional Sony alarm clock. One appeal of the SS3 was that it would give us a clock on each nightstand and either of us could turn off the alarm in the morning.

It’s turned into one of the worst pieces of crap I’ve ever owned.

Turns out, pretty much all of the functions require the CD lid to be up. Due to a flaw in the design of the system, a little cheapo switch fails after maybe 100 openings of the lid. This causes the lid to open and close all by itself, because the system can’t tell when it is open or closed.

Initially the problem was infrequent, then sort of humorous as the lid would open by itself at odd moments during the day.

At some point the lid came off whatever track it’s on so it now makes a grinding noise as it attempts to lift itself.

This morning the Soundspace 3 launched a devastating attack on our sleep. I’d forgotten to turn off the alarm clock last night. Normally not a major problem, we tend to sleep through both alarms as one of us blindly whacks the lid to turn off the alarm.

But not this morning.

No, this morning the radio refused to shut off.

Refused!

Instead it blared out WCBS’ morning newscast while I frantically tried to shut it off. Can’t just pull the plug because it’s plugged in behind the bed.

Tried to use the remote but it failed to work either.

None of the controls on the unit would work.

Finally Lisa whacked the unit on her side of the bed (it’s just a clock, speaker, with a snooze/alarm shut off button). After a couple of whacks the stupid thing shut off.

We will be buying a cheap, functional alarm clock later today.

Not from Nakamichi.