There may be something else that may be worth noticing as far as boomboxes and similar audio equipment is concerned. What I have noticed over the last few years is the appearance of the "premium" radio. Typically these are portable and tabletop radios that have been worked in a manner above the typical portable or clock radio that is on the market currently.

It has been started off with the arrival of the Bose Wave Radio, a tabletop clock radio that has sound above the average for a product of its class. Then there have been the arrival of the Tivoli radios designed by Henry Kloss. Similarly brands like Cambridge Soundworks and Boston Acoustics have released radios that are beyond the ordinary. This has also been assisted with the arrival of DAB digital radio in Europe, Internet radio, DLNA-compliant network audio playback, the Apple iPod and the USB memory drive mounting as a music collection.

This has led to Roberts Radio and Bush Radio, two classic British radio manufacturers coming out of the dead and two new British digital-radio startups appearing in the form of Revo and Pure Audio. As well, there is an increasing number of these premium tabletop and portable radios that have sound similar to some of the equipment made available through the 70s and 80s.

I have infact reviewed two Internet radios om my Home Networking and IT Information And Discussion blog. One of them, the Kogan WiFi Digital Table Radio (http://homenetworking01.info/2009/11/product-review-kogan-wi-fi-internet-table-radio-with-ipod-dock-frontier-internet-radio-platform/) is as big as a mid-sized table radio but can put the sound equivalent to an average mono radio-cassette in the 70s, and another, the Revo iBlik RadioStation (http://homenetworking01.info/2009/11/product-review-revo-iblik-radiostation-internet-clock-radio-frontier-internet-radio-platform/), is able to put the same kind of sound as most older clock radios. The Kogan brand is a new mail-order consumer-electronics brand being sold online in Australia and IMBO, makes me think of Radio Shack's Realistic brand and the equipment made under that logo through the 60s to the 80s.

Similarly, some of these manufacturers are running a stereo table-radio model with a built-in CD player and line-level input. A few of the models do support DAB digital radio, SD card and/or USB device read functionality, Internet radio / DLNA network media playback and an iPod dock amongst other functions. They typically can put up a powerful sound, usually due to small high-efficiency speakers, a highly-tuned speaker enclosuer and, perhaps, a downward-facing bass driver. This usually allows them to do what some of the high-end ghetto-blasters (Sharp GF-777z, Sharp VZ-2000, Hitachi TRK-8610, Sanyo M-9998, etc) were able to do -- become a single-piece music system capable of reproducing muic in a high-quality manner for apartments, dorm rooms and the like.

The above-mentioned sets may not be available in most of the typical "big-box" discounters in the suburbs, but more likely would be available in other stores like department stores, boutique audio or mail-order/online.

I also reckon that the premium radio scene is now creating a new "race for the top" amongst some manufacturers rather than the common "race for the bottom" that is practiced by most mass-market manufacturers.

The Pure Sensia is an interesting technology, although it is poorly executed.

Of course there is the most premium of premium radios, the Meridian F80 which is jaw droppingly good, with an equally jaw dropping price !

Very Interesting post. Thanks. I have an Old KLH tube table radio. It looks crude but sounds the best.I also have a much newer Tivoli Kloss ( the "K" in KLH) analog solid state radio that sounds and also looks good. Add to that an older Classic Proton table radio that I bought, and Ive got a good staple of old table tops .
Don't really know of the newer ones mentioned, but Im not into Bose , and probably none of the other newest ones mentioned sound any better , and possibly might not even sound as good as the older ones I have, Meridian notwithstanding. The Meridian of course is a high current digital design, and no doubt its its astounding and very tonally neutral Im sure, but I'd be willing to bet its fatiguing to listen to and has some famous digital sterility to its tone and isnt as warm ,rich and dimensional as my tube or even analog radios, plus I paid about 1900.00 less.

To expand on the radio which set the standard for high fidelity in a small package - the KLH model eight from 1960 which empoyed only 7 tubes but had amazing sound quality thanks to having an RF stage, 3 IF stages and had push-pull output. it was also the only tube radio to use the acoustic suspension speaker system instead of a mechanical suspension. These little 4 inch drivers could reproduce frequencies down to 55 cps !

High Fidelity Magazine was stunned by the sound quality.

Back in 1960, many folks said $160.($600 in 2010 dollars) was way too much for a radio. Henry Kloss replied..... "It's a lot of money for a radio, but it's a lot of radio for the money" !

My artical on these.... www.antiqueradio.com/June05_Hayden.html
Most of the higher end boombox's have good ciruits and when coupled with quality speakers, they do produced fine sound. This can't be said for the cheap units....some sound pretty aweful.