Building a boom box

jefm

I had a big rant here about the woeful state of portable consumer audio, but suffice to say what I consider the industry of worthwhile portable audio reproduction died out in the early nineties. So I was kicking around the idea of building my own boom-box style stereo, but with capacity for modern digital players. I was wondering if anyone has done or seen it done?

It seems straight forward enough: craft a box, fit in a boat/car stereo and power source(s), then stick pre-made outdoor/marine speaker pods on either side of it. By using a car/boat stereo, you would not need to mess with an amplifier, and could out-of-the-box include any myriad of features: CD-MP3, iPod/aux connection, Bluetooth, remote, the long forgotten AM/FM bands, hey why not play DVD movies while you are at it, just have an output to video on the back. By using prefab speaker pods, I could bypass learning the art of acoustic cabinetry. Death is in the details, but the basics themselves seem attainable. This is not a system for the true audiophile, with the kind of music I like the quality of the stereo is of pretty low importance.

I've seen a couple DIY portable MP3 speakers but nothing quite in a timeless boom box style. There is actually a modern MP3-retro "boombox" (Lasonic?) but the reviews are not impressing. There are rugged hardware store stereos, but they are usually typed to run off whatever battery the founding company makes, which never plussed me and they don't have the functionality of a car stereo. Actually I own the Bosch stereo and while useful, it's very disappointing.

Also before anyone gets into the obvious statements of stereos being loud and annoying, my interest in this is having something cool to listen to around the house, at music festivals and for performance art gigs, most of which are all safely away from the general public.

IRobot2

Not a bad idea and I like where you are going with it. Seems like that could be a really neat project. As for it dieing back in the nineties though, no so much. Quick google search showed the "Lasonic I931 Boombox" two 12 watt speakers, AM/FM, IPod dock and video out to TV among other things. Kind of summed up what you wanted and even comes in classic boom box form.

Still, never hurts to "build a better boom box". Would even be MORE interesting if you made it kind of a DIY project so other people could easily follow your steps and make their own. Now you throw in a wiFi connection so I can connect it to my music server and I'll get real excited [noparse];)[/noparse] .

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Alex Burke
"It is not how smart you are rather, it is how you are smart." -Jon Campbell

jefm

Hi Alex,
Actually I did mention the Lasonic rig, although the full name escaped me at the time. Supposedly, it's AM/FM receiver is less then desirable and the inbuilt SD player has a clunky, minimal display interface. No CD or Bluetooth either. And it's not like everyone is building stuff like this, the Lasonic is the industries best/only offering: two decades ago you could have gotten any good stereo anywhere by any number of manufacturers... not anymore...

Not to dis the Lasonic too much, what do I know, all I have to go from are internet reviews. It could be great. But it will always be what it was several months ago, and these are digital players. In a modular system, the stereo section could be swapped out as technologies come and go.

Wifi would be cool! Imagine if it could be part of a PulseAudio system, or similar :} Or get a minimal USB-boot Linux system and listen to Rhapsody.... ok, getting to complicated for today, but still cool...

IRobot2

Ahhh, I do like the idea of interchangeability. Maybe have FM/AM standard, then two decks that you could swap in and out?

Now I am sure that by the time it is built, it will cost as much as any high end custom unit... but would be a great thing to show off a few of the Prop' capabilities. It might be better just to stick with the tech side of things with some of the formats you mentioned and leave the CD/tape/FM off all together. That would greatly simplify your integration problems. And to be honest, having a boom box style rig I could put outside that would connect with my inside tunes sounds like something I would even purchase. Even something that would take the songs off my phone via blue tooth (in an easy package) would be really handy.

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Alex Burke
"It is not how smart you are rather, it is how you are smart." -Jon Campbell

jefm

The beauty is that it's even simpler then that: There are any number of car/boat decks that have AM/FM, CD/R, DVD, Bluetooth, satillite, theft deterrent, etc, all in one deck... no need for more then one. Most typically have amps or preamps that would drive modest speakers, no work there either. Some even have a panel display that you can watch DVD's on, wow talk about full circle, I remember the old school boom boxes that had a B/W television in them, or could at least pick up the television audio signal.

Yeah I'm sure the whole unit will be pricey... but it will be what I want... plus I've never built a stereo so it will be a whole set of experiences to learn. The Bluetooth itself will be worth it. Why Bluetooth hasn't blown up the whole audio scene I'll never know, the Droid and my Sony BT headphones are the best wearable audio combo I've owned. Sony did make some kind of 'blue tooth player' box, but it's either dead now or hard to find.

Peter KG6LSE

I had a home made ghetto blaster from a old Car radio back in 2003 . and it ran on a 7 AH AGM . I used it in the garage ( lab)

sadly it did not servive a Direct tesla hit so I dumped it ..


IRobot2: If you can find a way to DC power a Apple air port express I know it has a Audio out jack on it ...
Peter KG6LSE

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"Carpe Ducktum" "seize the tape!!"
peterthethinker.com/tesla/Venom/Venom.html
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. —Tanenbaum, Andrew S.
LOL

HollyMinkowski

This sounds like a noisy but fun idea!

I wonder how it would go if you just used a car stereo and
build it into a home made portable housing? I suppose you
could get one of those smallish sub woofer speakers and
take it apart and add that to your portable player...if it would
not shake it apart that is.

Hey!!
Get one of those cheap LED projectors and build it in so you
could project music videos onto a wall... I bet that people might
actually buy such a strange thing.

jefm

Hehe, yeah the car/boat stereo header was mentioned in the first post and three times after.... ;}

I hope to just stick two pre-made enclosures on either side of the header. I'd rather not delve too deep into speaker cabinet fabrication for a one-off project.

For watching things... i think a big display in-dash would be cool, like this
http://www.crutchfield.com/p_110V8013HD/Jensen-VM8013HD.html?tp=20217

IRobot2

If you are going to watch video on this thing, you need one of the fancy flip out ones. Plus it will protected when not in use (being a mobile unit and all). But I have got to say, including one of those little LED projectors like Holly said would be the berries. Anyone can have a boom box... but how many can become a mobile theater? If that won't 'one up' the other kids on the block, I don't know what will. [noparse]:)[/noparse]

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Alex Burke
"It is not how smart you are rather, it is how you are smart." -Jon Campbell

jefm

The problem I have with my (very limited) experience of the flop-out screens is that they have minimal display (or none at all) except for the flop-out. Even if you just want to note the time you have to flop it out. Somebody realized a $500 radio with no display is stupid, and they have started putting a little backlit LCD on the visible edge of the flop so you don't need to watch it gyrate for ten seconds just to flip through tracks on Brown Album. But that's a one by twenty line of B/W text which gets spanked by the thing I linked above.
"But jefm! just leave it flopped out all the time, you will be constantly rad and not have to wait on it to open!"
I ride to work in construction machinery that has a flop out. The thing rolls like a box of rocks and the flop-out flaps like a duck's wing. Surprisingly, it still works. Just not sure if I want to put anything I own through that (I baby my gear).

Are these the projectors you guys are talking about?
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/650809-REG/3M_78_9236_7713_8.html#specifications
That's pretty sweet. I thought it was too power heavy to take seriously until I realized the projector has it's own batteries. Why deal with a flop out in your face while shoulder-mounted if you can have a full on DLP going in less then a minute? Ponders!!!!

edit: doh! animated AOL emoticons :}

Post Edited (jefm) : 6/4/2010 5:54:35 AM GMT

WBA Consulting

Excellent idea! I have always wanted to do the same thing, but never got around to it.

An ideal would be a a fully capable head unit (MP3, iPOD, USB, DVD, XM, and bluetooth) with built in amp, but those are a bit pricey. If you wanted DVD, just add a portable DVD player later to make it cheaper.
Anyhow, match a vehicle head unit like you said with a pair of weatherproof speakers (these would rock! ) and a 12 volt SLA or gel battery.in a semi-seamless package.


Adding a small projector would be an unreal add-on and would make it a portable movie theater as well. (power would be an issue though.)

Here's an instructable with the same concept on a little bit larger scale for a portable "off-grid party system"

If you make something like this and it turns out decent, I'll gladly give you some space on my site to show it off since it could actually fit my domain name (aesthetic acoustics). I got the name because I was doing customer care stereo, speaker, and alarm installs in which the goal was to have the installs look much better than stock by making the components invisible. My best install included 3 amps and 12 speakers of which none of it could be seen (but the sound was unreal)

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Andrew Williams
WBA Consulting
WBA-TH1M Sensirion SHT11 Module
My Prop projects: Reverse Geo-Cache Box, Custom Metronome, Micro Plunge Logger