Portable Stereos & Boomboxes

Portable Stereos & Boomboxes

Listening to music has been a favorite hobby for decades; originally, people could only listen to their favorite musicians in person at concerts. Then, when the radio was available for the home, people could listen to melodies that they liked at home or in their car. When the boombox came along, that changed as it provided a portable way of listening to their favorite songs even if they were away from their car or home.

There are many features available on boomboxes. Some of the most notable elements include:

• A handle that you could use to carry your boombox around with you
• One or two cassette tape decks - If there were two, you could record tunes from one cassette tape onto another. You could even record songs from the radio.
• A CD player - Some boomboxes allow for CD-Rs and CD-RWs, which means you can record songs onto a CD from cassette tapes or the radio.
• Two speakers that sound will blast from, usually at high volume, while it is being played
• A headphone jack into which you can plug in headphones and listen to your music without bothering others
• In later versions, a USB port into which you could plug in another portable listening device, like an mp3 player

Audio is delivered through two attached amplified speakers. As a result, the sound quality is usually high. You can increase the acoustic quality from a boombox by adding more speakers. The acoustic quality also depends on the condition of the speakers and how high the volume is. Having the volume too high can affect the acoustic quality.

Most boomboxes offer, in addition to the standard volume controls, balance controls. These balance controls enable you to adjust the balance of the sound output so it comes out one end of the boombox more than the other. That means the acoustic quality coming from one speaker will be higher than the other. With a boombox, the acoustic quality is higher when the sound is balanced between both speakers.

Vintage large boomboxes can weigh up to 26 pounds, but later versions of large boomboxes are lightweight. There is also a variety in size for these devices. The smallest ones that are usually built for wireless audio, weigh two pounds or less.