You have a greater chance of squeezing 5 amps through a 2N2222 than you do remembering the 1980s and not thinking about the legendary ‘boom box’. They could be seen perched on the shoulders of rockers and rappers alike – many sporting the Members Only or red leather jackets. The boom boxes visual characteristics can best be described as a rectangular box with two very large speakers on each end. It is no accident that The Boominator shares these features.
[Jesse van der Zouw] did a good job of showing how he created The Boominator. It has not two, but four 10 inch woofers that delivers 360 degrees of awesomeness at 115dB. The on board battery can sustain it for up to twenty hours, and the project is topped off with some blue LED rings the encircle each speaker.
We’ve seen boom boxes here before, but this is the first with some nice LED accents. Be sure to check out this build and let us know what you might have done differently.
[via Hackaday.io]
Makes me want to dig up my 1980’s invention called the Smashinator.
Nice build, but it needs a cassette deck. :D
A dual cassette deck, with a digital counter only on the playback only transport and a bass crushing ALC that cannot be turned off. *Then* it’s a 1980’s boom box.
To get a counter on both transports and NOT have automatic level control cost a heck of a lot more. I picked up a nice Radio Shack Optimus boom box with one blown amplifier for next to nothing then had it repaired. I replaced the shoddy and noisy RCA input jacks with a gold plated pair. It made an excellent recorder for dubbing because it had an automatic level control that could be TURNED OFF, and dual channel manual record level controls with analog VU meters. However, the ALC was actually quite good, unlike the can’t turn it off version cheaper boxes had, which would kick in about 0.5 second in and smash the bass down to mumbly mud, making it useless for copying an AC/DC or Guns n Roses tape. The only way it could have been better is if it had a dual transport.
Don’t forget the “metal” button. Which doesn’t mean what the youngesters reading this comment thinks it means.
Soft eject too ;)
Perhaps a usb port “soft eject” sleeve for the youngsters with the drive being a metal tab button as you suggest. Complete with grease goo that has cat hair from another country in it lol. Good times.
My boom box was from before all of these wonderful add-on boombox technologies. I had a single cassette deck, with the “slap your hand harder than a nun” door which I learned to carefully avoid, no Dolby, no VU meter, and an AM/FM radio that was deafer than my great-aunt (and I don’t mean “def”).
Yep, I had a cheapo, but I had about 16 D-cell NiCDs to power it so I was never without my tunes – except when it ate my tapes every other day.
how can you be sure the hair was from a cat ?
I have cats. It was too thin to be a dog hair. I did find a full on dog whisker in a second hand cd player tray. There were teeth marks inside on the tray itself lol. Tug of war. The cat fur was in a new boombox I purchased at Woolworths back in the day. Probably a Soundesign or something hehe. “The more leds the better eh fellas”
+1 to anyone younger than 25 that knows what Jorjbauer was referring to by the “metal” button, without looking it up. And yes, I already know, but I’m way older than 25 so it doesn’t count.
Or “Chrome”…
I won’t get far with that thing on my shoulder …
-Great Scott!
-This is heavy!
Ah, 2N2222! I first read 2N3055 and that didn’t make sense at all…
Yeah, if you can’t get 5 amps out of a 2N3055, you probably have a dead transistor.
I thought [Will] wrote a great opening line…
Two 12’s would give quite a bit more bass for the same power in. Weight would be less than with 4X8″ speakers.
Use that line input. Blurtooth ain’t worth the loss in sound on top of improving player sound that comes from using flac.
That would also require the dimensions of the box to be larger so maybe it was a space constraint that lead to the 8″ units.
Hoffman´s Iron Law. Bass extension is a function of enclosure volume and efficiency.
You can´t get more bass in the same volume by using 12´s.
That said, the four 10´s that are used have a far greater surface area than a double 12´ setup.
Try ABX testing wired vs modern BT technology. I can assure you that you can´t tell the difference.
“The boom boxes visual…” –> “The boom box’s visual…”
Take a look at the Boominator origins here on DIYAudio:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/class-d/104402-boominator-another-stab-ultimate-party-machine.html
That thread is 577 pages+, starting in 2007.
The Boominator original design has woofers mounted back-back to augment each other and provide 360 degree sound.
I’ve read the whole thread twice :). It’s has very interesting discussions in it. Not much has changed about the design since 2007. Only the magnets are now mounted against the centrebrace instead of to each other.
Does it have a “Turbo Bass” button? Will it handle Techmaster P.E.B.?
But…… Can it play Crysis?