I guess you could say I'm an "Audiophile", de facto, since some of the best audipo tube gear has come through my hands at one point when I was much younger( IM 50 now).
I broke out an old boombox and played a nice Violin Concerto on a well recorded Teac SA tape , and the level of and detail was astonishing. Actually I've got probably a few thousand dollars worth of vintage speakers to have as a reference. The box I was listening to was a Sharp QT-90. The Violin really came through very natural and with tons of analogue texture and that "edge"( of course, you must be reasonable with the volume as headroom is everything and past a certain point , which isnt very much, it will dissapear).
Now I'm listening to a Sharp GF-575 boombox. It was real stiff at first brought out from storage and sounded very dry and sterile,but after playing it for 24 hours it has warmed up very much. Its not a bad unit at all. It has a very respectable low midrange that makes the Classical symphony pleasant to listen to...
It doesnt have the sweet upper mids of the Sharp QT-90, but its more full sounding.
Boomboxes can and do provide very fullfilling listening . Anyone in agreement?

Actually I'm going to reply to my own thread to elaborate what a great Headphone out section the big GF-575 Sharp has ...when I hooked up a nice pair of Audio-Technica AD2000K's into it on a fasnicating and dynamic classical score, I was simply amazed! Gone was the boominess from teh woofer, and the headphones supplanted the overbearing EQ of the speakers into spomething..dare I say,and in context.. Sublime!!
Lets not give away this secret of what great little headphone units these are or well have the folks from that other website grabbing our stuff!!

quote:

Originally posted by jerryjg:
Boomboxes can and do provide very fullfilling listening . Anyone in agreement?

Count me in. I've spent countless hours with a boombox on my lap (one of my favorite listening positions), absorbing and becoming absorbed by the sound. When I do that with Beethoven's 7th, I lose myself in the music. On a stressful day, it's a godsend!

quote:

Originally posted by baby boomer:
I've spent countless hours with a boombox on my lap (one of my favorite listening positions

I know that one very well, used to listen to the old Pioneer SK303 like that all the time when I lived back with the parents!

To the OP, I've always thought the 575 has a nice rounded sound, just not that bassy like a lot of those GF's.

I agree. I used to enjoy nothing better than doing a crossword on the kitchen table, with a box blaring away.

yup, agree totally. Listening to FM on the RCM-70 is just amazing. You can hear subtleties that are missing on the newer "digital" stereos.

There is something magical when you hear your favorite tunes played through these boxes. I believe the fullness (frequency wise) and the amount of power (sound)that these older units can produce is a breath of fresh air as compared to all the the new age eggs on the market today. And being able to actually have these great sounding machines run on batteries and take them from room to room, place to place makes them something special.

i do still listen to music on my boomboxes. i also use them when i am listening to a track wich has just been mastered.
i enjoy listening to my boomboxes very much. i do like to listen to the big stereos here too.
i like some of the modern boomboxes too tho. i mean the panasonic 707 i have is pretty nice sounding.
the two big sony boomboxes i have are the closest to a home stereo that i have heard.
i even dont mind listening to music on some of the cruddy ones i have.

From the other end of the spectrum I'm always surprised by how nice and even the lowest quality rubbish streamed off the internet can sound. Sure it's never going to sound amazing, but the 56k net radio stuff (like flashbackradio.com) can sound very pleasant, whereas it often sounds shrill and harsh with obvious compression artefacts on modern speakers. Especially those designed for a PC.

Love the balance of these radios, always shines through, you can tune almost anything to sound reasonable. They cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars in the 70s and 80s with good reason, you just can't beat components actually designed for sound quality.



Rock On.