Today,for the first time in what must be 15 years i looked at a mail order catalogue (freemans).When i was younger (i'm 40 this year) i would marvel at the portable stereos and home systems that were to be had for £4 a week for 52 weeks.It was my gateway to owning a reasonable stereo for very little outlay when i was 16.The choice was amazing,all down to how much you wanted to pay.To my dismay today i found 2 pages that contained 4 stereos of mass produced gendre that i wouldnt pay anything for.No portables,although if you turn a few pages you find lots of ipod related tat.Is it just me or is the world turning into a throw away society with no real care for quality anymore.I for one feel sad that we have reached this stage,especially as my 15 year old son still finds my collection "sad".He plays his music through a phone for gods sake ! am i getting old or am i trying to hold onto an age/an era when quality counted and you got what you paid for ?

You are not alone. This is a throwaway society. My dad is a tech with over forty years of experience and he told me long ago that it was great that I was interested in construction because I would never make money fixing stereos, tv's or even computers. You either throw it away or it's gotten so simple you unplug the part and stick the new one in.

Nobody wants to take time to make "analog" mixtapes or listen to a turntable. Too much trouble, can't get the fix fast enough.

You can't even hear the mistakes in recordings anymore because they are digitally "cleaned up".

Sad.

But....there is light!

My kids and some of their freinds are fascinated by these machines. They can't believe the power they have and the "instant party" capability they create. They love the insane loudness they have (my wife doesn't ) and that they can hook an ipod up.

That probably explains the slow resurgence we see with so many commercials and images (in the US at least) with boomers in them.

And in the middle east Panasonic sells these!

I see/hear so many youngsters around with personal music blasting from phones at quite high volumes, albeit tinny and crapola sound quality. Perhaps with the loudness wars that will inevitably erupt from this trend we will see a POSSIBLE resurgence/interest in REAL portable audio and dare I say it, boomboxes.

Here's hoping.

indeed ,they all will be in the new base...


they sell a bunch in Russia too:

ES-22E-S · RX-CT850 · RX-CT870 · RX-CT890 · RX-D27 · RX-DS10 · RX-DS18 · RX-DS18EK · RX-DS19 · RX-DS28 · RX-DT37 · RX-DX1A · RX-E22E · RX-ED55 · RX-FS22

look...


gedcom might know about their quality/sound.

I really don't know how these kids listen to music on their cell phones, it sounds like dog butt! I have found it amusing to see the resurgance of boomers in commercials though, what does it mean???

.....whatever that all means.....

900 watts PMPO? Are those Class BS amplifiers?

http://districun.com/lasonic.htm

mexico still uses bomboxes or grabadoras for the better translation.. check the lasonic grabadoras and make sure you also check panasonic.

Just checked out the links from *TPR*. I think the RX-M70M3 mini looks pretty cool. I will take one in red and black thanks

quote:

Originally posted by AZA:
Just checked out the links from *TPR*. I think the RX-M70M3 mini looks pretty cool. I will take one in red and black thanks

but be carefull:
there are fakes on the market!!! :

in india they sell a mkii modell:

Hey oldskool,i hear what your sayin,images of boxes are creeping in all over the place,but its the younger generation that are doing it without knowng why ?.I watched a kids channel with my daughter the other day and the presenter had a t-shirt with a boombox on it and the word "retro" blazed across it,i dont think most of these kids/presenters/people have an idea what they are all about.Probably 99% of them wouldnt know what a cassette was as you cant plug anything into them

quote:

Originally posted by chancenellie:
...i dont think most of these kids/presenters/people have an idea what they are all about.Probably 99% of them wouldnt know what a cassette was as you cant plug anything into them

chancenellie, that is too funny about plugging into a cassette

You have to understand though - Apple offers downloads with a bit rate of 128 KBps - which is why they sound like crap. They need to be at least 320 Kbps - then they would sound decent even on a cell phone hooked up to a car stereo - or any stereo, for that matter.
Just think of it this way - modern cell phone is pretty much the same as the old day Walkman. If you had a crappy tape - it wouldn't sound good regardless of how good your Walkman was. Modern day digital songs are the equivalent of crappy tapes. Give us good bit-rates, and the quality of sound will improve a LOT.

Fake b-boxes? Sheesh, that's not good. I thought fake sneakers
was bad enough...

quote:

Originally posted by chancenellie:
...am i getting old or am i trying to hold onto an age/an era when quality counted and you got what you paid for ?

No. it isn't you, we all agree - the mobile phone music thing is horrible. It's no surprise however. If you want your technology to make money these days you need to be able to shoehorn it into a mobile phone. Do that successfully & you're on the gravy train for life. It appears there are now over 3 billion active mobile phone subscriptions woldwide - now that's a big market...

The mp3 kbps thing is valid for sure, however the reason mobile phones sound awful, is the tiny speaker(s). You could feed a mobile phone a signal from a wonderful sound source & it would still sound insubstantial, compressed & thin.

Also, I have a few acceptable sounding 96kbps mp3s. No argument that the CD version would sound alot better - crisper & more dynamic, but at least the sound is reasonably full with lower frequencies present, when played through a proper stereo, b-box or car system.

I'd much rather have an mp3 system with good amplification & speakers. Just feed it with lossless mp3s & you're away.
Any mp3s are always going to sound rubbish on one of those phones.

TPR, that's shocking! With such little differences between the genuine boxes and the fakes, I'm wondering if I might have some 'fake' boxes.

You probably have nothing to worry about RA & here's why (IMHO)...

There are 2 main reasons why fakes are produced:

1. The genuine item is popular & has a high price tag when compared to the intrinsic value of the product, such as perfume, designer label clothes, etc.

This isn't ther case with a large b-box. The cost of reproducing a believable facsimile of a b-box, even with the very cheapest components is not going to be cheap unless you make 1,000s & the demand simply isn't there.


2. The genuine item was produced in a very limited quantity & world demand for it is high, such as special edition trainers (grr).

Almost every b-box model we chase, grails or otherwise, was mass produced for a number of years. Also despite our best efforts, overall world demand for classic b-boxes is not high.


The fake Panasonics shown above are small & comparitively simple - mono, with one cassette deck & an analog radio.
I'll bet the genuine Panasonic is prohibitively expensive in China (or wherever), so enter the fakes.
Also, if Panasonic are having the genuine radios produced in China (taking advantage of the cheap labour), there's nothing to stop the Chinese copying the tooling & technology to make their own. Then, slap on a fake label & sell it for so much more - it's a no brainer.
There's much evidence to suggest this goes on in many manufacturing industries...