Now that may seem an odd pairing - a £2,100 speaker with a £650 mini-system? On the contrary, we found ourselves drawn inescapably to the conclusion that, with a budget of two to three thousand pounds, a Mini, plus the best loudspeakers one can find, it's still an eminently sensible choice.

After all, the Mini isn't just competent; it is, in context, stunning.

Superb CD audio quality

One does, of course, makes allowances for systems like this and we had a high expectation of some residual hiss or hum. But, hang on - there isn't any.

With fine-quality separates, you have to press your ear to the tweeter to hear anything of that nature and, yet even though the Auditorium is a sensitive speaker, we were not aware of any background noise. So far so good!

The CD player, however, is bound to be a bit coarse and lacking in detail compared with any half-decent separates. Except that it's not! We compared it with the exceptionally fine Chord DAC64 fed by a decent transport.

While we could spot it as an upgrade on the Mini's built-in player, it was the sort of differential we'd expect from a £500-class CD player (and some of them are quite alarmingly good).

But isn't the Mini's amplifier a bit of a puny starveling? Well no, it isn't. It does run out of power eventually, but up to that point it has astonishingly high-levels of detail, control and grip.

It's not a Krell or Musical Fidelity, but it has real insight, tuneful bass, sweet and extended treble and admirably little character of its own - it gets on with any style of music with equanimity.

Why bother with separates?

The DAB tuner is perfectly decent, while the FM one may be the weakest part of the system but that's all relative and it's still better than the FM section of some digital/analogue tuners we've come across, with a nice 'bite' to the sound and good integrity.

It's worth mentioning that a quick visit to the lab, resulted in a set of measurements not unlike those from good modern separates, and the real-world power output is comfortably above the rated 25 watts.

This is a system that plays music with gusto, conviction and a degree of finesse that could convince the most hardcore devotees of separates to change their ways.

It's possible that some painstakingly assembled systems of CD, amp and tuner for under £1,000 could see it off, but they still wouldn't offer as many features and would probably take up about five times the space.

Endless possibilities

So what are the applications for the Mini? From ultra-upmarket alarm clock to the heart of a dedicated stereo system, they are nearly endless.

Add a pair of Musos or other miniature speaker and put it in a bedroom, study or kitchen. Use it to lift the performance of a (non-multichannel) TV setup and add games, mobile music player and auxiliary inputs to the equation.

Or, as already suggested, add the best speakers you can buy, secure in the knowledge that the range of inputs and outputs makes it painlessly upgradeable both upstream and down. You could even give one as a present and spread a little real music replay quality.

After all, we have no hesitation in declaring the Arcam Solo Mini as one of the nicest and most exciting hi-fi products we've come across in a very long time. We can't recommend it more highly.