Attempt to assemble a modern boombox
While off-road camping it is good to have a boombox to listen to while setting up all your gear, or sitting there doing nothing having a beer or whatever. Especially I enjoy listening to the local FM radio station, baseball games at night over AM, cassette tapes and CDs. Also after dark, having a laptop playing DVDs with sound through a quality system is wonderful.
I’d rather not bring my factory CDs camping with me as they can get beat up quickly, mostly by dropping them on rocks or in the dirt. What I did was copy all my CDs to CD-Rs so that what happens to the fakes really won’t matter much.
In 2007 I bought a Sony CFD-758 boombox that plays FM, AM, Tape and CDs. It has five sound settings and a bass boost button. It sounds real good with plenty of undistorted volume to rock your camp. The problem is the copied CDs skip!! I tried disconnecting the speakers so there are no vibrations on the player, still the dam thing skips, it’s unbearable and I can’t stand it.
I was thinking, maybe it’s just this particular unit that won’t play the CDs very well. I bought not one but two more of the same units off eBay for reasonable prices. Same crap, all three sound good but the CDs skip. Two of the boomboxes ended up being my everyday radios in the garage and bedroom, so at least I still get some use out of’em.
The reason I got two more of the same unit is because it took a week out of my life to design and manufacture a plywood carrying case with a custom fit and I was hoping one out of three Sonys would play CDs perfectly so I could keep using the same case. I recon not.
It is now time for a months-long study, the objective being a modernized version of the boombox for my no-skip listening pleasure. Pretty much the way to go is an iPod with some sort of docking unit.
To be ready I used my HTPC (home theatre personal computer) to rip all my CDs. I have a 1TB hard drive dedicated to music and music related videos. What was handy, as you know already, my HTPC is loaded with movies I recorded and edited without commercials. I was able to copy all of my 100-something CDs to the highest quality MP3 files using Windows Media Player in the time it took me to view two of those pre-recorded flicks. The process was painless. You set the WMP options to the output file type and size you want and give it a default folder to write to – in this case my F drive – and keep feeding CDs into the computer’s disk reader. It opens automatically, you put in a CD, it rips to F, the CD drive opens, you take it out and put another CD in, close the drive and that one rips all without any manual intercourse.
Next thing was to find the perfect boombox. I surfed all the major manufacturer’s web sites, then on the JVC page something caught my eye; the Kaboom. The current model RV-NB70B has 40 watts output into 4 speakers, FM radio, CD drive, USB input for MP3 and WMA files (no WAV), 3.5 mm stereo auxiliary input, 12-volt round input jack and the king of them all, an iPod / iPhone dock with a clear door. Along with the volume knob there’s a six-level bass boost knob. The negatives (if you can call’em that) are: there is no cassette or AM radio and the speakers do not detach.
Of course by looking at the unit online you can’t tell what it sounds like. I was thinking I should go somewhere like Fry’s for a test drive. At work I bumped up a picture of it on my computer, my nextcube neighbor says, hey that looks like my boombox. I asked how it sounds. He said it’s the best sounding boombox he ever heard, loud and undistorted. I said, SOLD!
I looked around and found the best deal for a brand new model on eBay for $280 no shipping and no tax. It was $350 plus tax everywhere else like Amazon and Fry’s. I sent the order at midnight-thirty on a Monday morning; it showed up at the house Tuesday afternoon via Fedex Ground at 14:00. That was fast.
First thing I did after plugging it in was to hook up my laptop out the headphone jack and into the Kaboom’s rear aux in. I inserted my famous The Who Live at Isle of Wight 1970 DVD into the laptop’s disk drive, I was awestruck. It sounds perfect, better than any other boombox I ever owned and the picture on the 17-inch laptop screen looks like HDTV. YES!!
For my next trick I hooked it up to my desktop via the same aux in. Over my home network I accessed my HTPC F drive to play those recently created MP3 files. They didn’t sound good at all. Hmm, time for some tweaking. I opened the desktop’s sound drivers and redid all the settings I used for my computer speakers. That was the trick. Using flat settings coming out of the onboard sound card made all the MP3s sound perfect through the Kaboom. YES!!
I ended up throwing away my computer speakers, as they were relics that came with the first PC I ever bought back in 1995, my IBM Aptiva. I now use the Kaboom as my everyday computer speakers for TV, streaming and podcasts and man what a difference. Every little WAV I have set up on my PC sounds 1,000% better. I didn’t even realize the files were of such fine quality.
Along with the aux in from PC and laptop, the onboard FM radio and CD player function flawlessly. I even played a couple of those copied CDs without skips.
The toughest decision of the whole assemblage was which iPod to get. I thought I could narrow it down in a few days but the various iPod generations and pricing for new or used was mind boggling. Meantime, in order to play cassette and AM radio, I bought from eBay someone’s slightly used yellow Sony walkman. It’s the same set-up as the laptop. You plug the 3.5 mm jack into the earphone hole and put the other end into the Kaboom aux in. Both tape and AM radio sound perfect. YES!!
The Kaboom instructions suggest using USB drives of 4GB or lower. I copied some MP3s to a USB drive and plugged in the front jack. Sounds great. Also I picked up a USB dongle that plays SD cards. I recorded some MP3s onto a 1GB SD card that I use in my camera, plugged it into the dongle then plugged the dongle into the USB jack. Perfection. The only issue is by using the Kaboom front panel controls or the remote, you can go forward or backward through folders and files but there are no names on the display, only folder and file sequence numbers. If you were to carry all your music on USB or SD cards, you’d need a written catalog reference to find what songs you want. This is where the iPod helps greatly.
The Kaboom instructions list all the iPods that are compatible with the unit. You basically open a clear door on the front and plug in the iPod onto the standard Apple docking receptacle. After a month of study I decided upon the iPod Photo Classic 4th Gen 60GB. I figure this will be enough space since my whole CD collection fills only 13GB of space using the highest quality largest size MP3 files.
Although there are many suitable iPods for sale, trying to find the correct dock adapter that fits over the Kaboom’s Apple receptacle wasn’t easy. I searched for weeks, the only one I saw for the 4th Gen Classic 60 was in England and it was $13 for just a teensy piece of plastic. Dam.
Once I zeroed in on which iPod I wanted, it took another month to find the right one for a good price. Since it is a 4th gen, they are not made anymore. For a brand new overstock 4th gen with no box, instructions or cable they are $300 with shipping, just as much as the dam Kaboom. Even a used one all scratched up with nothing but the sync cable is going for $100 with 20+ bids. I bid on several for $85, finally winning a used one with the original box, manuals, cable, leather case and new battery.
I received the iPod in a few days. Opening the box I found the previous owner kept it in perfect shape with only a few minute scratches from normal use. This is all new to me so I had to read the instruction booklet to get going. Ah ha, you hook up the USB cable to the bottom of the iPod then plug it into your computer. From there the iTunes program opens automagically and attempts to sync the iPod with the music folder on your HTPC. I installed iTunes on my Win7 PC last year. At the time I wasn’t sure why I needed it but now I know. The sync process took about 30 minutes.
I plugged the iPod into the Kaboom dock, fired it up and played some tunes. Sounds crazy good and no skips. It took about an hour for me to figure out all the iPod controls but now it’s so easy to find what you want as all artists’ names and song titles display on the iPod screen. You can even see what’s playing through the clear Kaboom iPod dock door.
Now for the 12v business. The Kaboom uses not 8 but 10 D-cells and also it can be run by a car cig lighter adapter cable. I looked on the JVC site to see if they have one but couldn’t find it. I sent them an email asking for suggestions on which 12v adapter cable to use. All they told me was, we don’t have one.
I hauled the Kaboom over to Radio Shack where they have a display of examples of all the round DC power plug sizes, each designated by a letter. The 15th one I tried snapped right in, letter D. Also they have the 12v power cord to which you attach the D-plug. The cord is only 12 feet so I picked up a 25-foot extension cord off eBay. Now I can set up the Kaboom 37 feet away from my truck, maybe in a tree, but that can be dangerous because someone will inevitably trip over the cord and the whole Kaboom will fall down and go kaboom... in a bad way.
Two more gadgets, one being a plug that fits into your cig lighter that has a USB output so that you can insert your iPod or iPhone cable to charge either. The other is a cig lighter outlet that clips right on to your car’s battery. This comes in handy when the in-dash lighter outlet fails, like what happened to me on our summer Baja ’08 run. I had to use a clip-on-to-the-battery AC power inverter, which causes a buzz sound coming from the boombox. If you run the Kaboom off of an AC wall outlet or 12v car adapter cable, the iPod charges when it is connected to the dock. The iPod will not charge if you run the Kaboom using D-cells.
All that is left to do is to construct a plywood carrying case with space for the walkman, power cords, remote and iPod. The second the case is done I’m throwing the whole thing in the back of my truck and heading to North Main Divide Road near a stand of Coulter pines with a lawn chair and some brewskies for the real test.
I constructed a plywood carying case for my Kaboom with a storage cubby to hold the iPod and all the other gadgets and cords:
UPDATE 2/13/2013
I screwed up and bought a car this past October. One of the features is a USB port in the center console box into which one can plug an iPod and control it with the radio buttons and knobs. Bummer for me the iPod 4 I bought last year for my Kaboom is incompatible. I can plug it into the aux input on the radio face, it sounds really good, but it is too difficult to operate the iPod while driving. The screen is too small to read when motoring along at 90.
After a brief study, I found a brand new open box iPod 7th Generation 120gb on eBay for $185. Once it arrived at the house, I plugged it into my HTPC to synch it with iTunes. 15 minutes later all 13gb of my music was loaded and ready for testing. It works and sounds perfect in the Kaboom. Yay!
Out in the garage, I turned on the car radio, plugged the iPod into the USB port, pressed the disk button on the radio face; the iPod screen turned into the Dodge logo and just like that the information appeared on the radio screen! I am now compatible!
In my car I can operate the iPod using the radio display screen, with the skip button advancing to the next song and FF and RW working as if I were playing a CD.
Also the numbered radio pre-set buttons can do this:
1. List your pre-assembled iPod playlists.
2. List of artists in alphabetical order.
3. List of albums in alphabetical order
4. List of genres.
Pretty cool, man. The way the lists work, let's say you push button 3 to get a list of albums, you use the right radio knob to scroll up and down to see the list of albums in alphabetical order, then once you see the album you want, push the knob to dislay the list of songs for that album. From there you can scroll again to the song you want and push the knob to play it. from there push skip, FF or RW.
I tested it out today sitting in the garage. I am loving it a lot. You can leave the iPod plugged into the center console USB full time and slip it into the holder slot right below the port. Also I bought a hard plastic leather coated protector case for the iPod; the whole assemblage slides snugly into the holder.
When playing the iPod and you turn off the radio, then turn it back on, the song that was playing picks up where it left off.
When you turn off the radio or turn off the Acc and the radio powers down, the iPod powers off a few minutes later. When you start the car and the radio turns on, the iPod turns on and resumes the current tune where it left off. Crazy.
So far I have found 2 drawbacks. If you have 100 albums on your iPod, the scrolling is rather slow, so it takes a while to get to the records starting with M. Secondly, between tunes with the amp up loud, you hear a lot of junk noise. It is not absolutely quiet like playing a CD. Neither is a dealbreaker. I dig this whole setup.