Panasonic Boombox Review
My last review of a Portable Stereo Radio Cassette CD MP3 Player (aka Boombox) has proven to be surprisingly popular.
Perhaps there really are some people out there who want to play their old cassettes after all ;-)
This is an opportune follow up, in which I take a look at the most requested ‘new‘ model that I’d yet to try, the Panasonic RX-D55.
I’ve not been mentally or physically firing on all cylinders this week - so please excuse the rather slapdash nature of some sections of this video, it’s the best I could do under the circumstances.
Hopefully by the time I start on the next video I’ll be feeling a bit more chipper, as I’m planning on showcasing some retro Karaoke tech.
Have a pleasant weekend and take care of yourself and others.
UPDATE - A few seconds that were creating a sticking point have been deleted - video above is the new edit.
Comments (61)
An alkaline LR16 has an advertised capacity of around 7500mAh - that's 7.5AH - times 12V gives 90 Watt-hours (since watts=volts x amps). If it runs for 3.2 hours, the average power consumption is 90 divided by 3.2 or approximately 28W. Assuming the tape/radio/USB decoder circuitry consumes 4W, that leaves 24W between the 2 speaker amplifiers or 12W a channel. Allowing for losses in the amplifiers, this gives an audio output of maybe 8W per channel at high volume - which explains why it sounds so good. It all seems to tally with the spec sheet. Makes you appreciate the amazing charge density of lithium batteries though..
Yea, that radio reception is a bit of a disappointment. Matt it seems everything old is new again. This just arrived in my mailbox. You can purchase this album on 8 track. No world of a lie :-) https://www.sacredbonesrecords.com/products/sbr239-jeremiah-sand-lift-it-down?mc_cid=b1573a7100&mc_eid=ba1928f1d7
Yes it’s being done by Kate’s 8-Track shop - so most likely reusing old carts similar to the ones in this video https://youtu.be/f7Li03ALNG8
Great review! Here's an interesting thing though, I have a Panasonic RX-DT55 boombox (very similar model number! from 1991) and the spec sheet for that also lists Wow and Flutter in the disc section (unmeasurable) with no mention of it in the tape section, so maybe that's just a Panasonic thing!
Nice video. Hope it will get a lot of views. The thumbnail is hilarious, so hope the algorithm will pick it up.
Say, speaking of cassettes - what happened to your neon cassette sign? 🤔
I didn't like the way it looked on camera - the mirrored back ruined the effect. If I ever get a better 'studio' I'll reinstate it.
I missed that. I miss a lot. I was confused by the following bit. I get confused a lot. It did seem very bizarre and I was thinking I would buy one to record hockey games on Canadian radio and be very disappointed when the thing showed up and didn't work... turns out I'd be disappointed anyway, the way the radio works, if AM is as bad. That might be a good question, is the AM performance as bad as FM?
Unfortunately there aren’t really any broadcasts on AM that I could pick up - AM died here a long time ago. Some might disagree, but in all my years on the planet I’ve never listened to anything on AM and whenever I’ve had a look there’s nothing there to hear other than static and very faint broadcasts that are also available on FM in much better quality.
The thing won't record the radio onto tape? I use my old boombox to record hockey games when I'm too busy to pay attention or something, it seems like a very odd thing to not record the radio. Probably be a bad choice anyway since the radio is so crap
Not sure where you picked that up, but it will record any and all sources to cassette. See 19:20
I love the blips at the end. Trying to hedge your bets on comments is near impossible but its very fun to hear your take on all of it. Who in the world would tell you (Techmoan) to buy a classic cassette player? Must not be watching your channel very much.
Sounds like I enjoyed the video more than you enjoyed making it, Mat. Hopefully you'll get a chance to chill and recover for a bit.
Wow that Sharp boombox costs a fortune!!! I want one!
It cost a fortune when new. In fact so much that I never saw one for sale. In contrast the record playing VZ2500 was readily available in Dixons for £200 (about £700 in 2019 money).
Hey Mat - thanks for the joyous vid as always! Especially enjoyed the rather testy errata and "clarifications" end section. Do hope you feel better soon, all the best.
Oh yes, that radio (trying to be a receiver) remembers me of my old Panasonic Boombox from the nineties. I always put it in mono mode, so you could actually listen to it. Most of the Sony devices had decent radio receivers.
When I was researching the Prison tech video, one thing that was mentioned was the reason the Sony radios were so prized inside was because they were great at picking up weak signals. It was down to some circuit or whatever that Sony had designed. I can’t remember the details but perhaps they have a patent on this tech, a bit like the Trinitron...or at least had.
Not sure why I enjoy watching a half hour video on something I'll not be buying :) Keep it up! What do you do with all these boomboxes?
Hoard them unnecessarily.
Hi Mat, I think with popular artists releasing tapes maybe there is some new interest.....I run a Plex server so I am not ignorant of the benefits of file/cloud based music, but for sure playing a cassette, MD or a piece of vinyl is something special. I find a daily walk helps. Hope you feel better soon, take care
I wonder what's motivating the resurgence of cassettes. The format seems to stand apart from vinyl, reel-to-reel, and CD in that there's no arguable advantage to them over modern distribution formats. Is it simple nostalgia, I wonder? I'm not faulting people for enjoying what they enjoy but I do find it surprising.
I think that compact cassette and VHS were both the only universally available and affordable, single button, what you see(hear) is what you get recording solution to exist, I suppose to those of us who missed on minidisc. The MS Word of recording formats. There was a time where you'd be seen as a bit slow in not being able to give someone a copy of a WGN talk show they would miss that night; now people act like you are a techie for pulling such minor feats off.
Nobody plays tapes any more because they're rubbish and also, we used to call them ghetto blasters because we were closet racists. Lol! I love that you are as annoyed with people who "just don't get it" as I am. Not sure that lived up to the cheese sandwich billing - it was pretty thorough! Hope you get to feeling better. We both live in countries that aren't handling the virus very well and it's reaaaaallyy starting to grate.
Have you considered a havana hat and perhaps getting a cool cane to complete your Richard-Attenborough-Jurassic-Park-look? Only joking lol Entertaining video, hopefully you’ll feel better soon, looking forward to your karaoke tech. Maybe we can get another ‘Get Lucky’ type rendition out of you
Just the other day I was thinking it was all a bit John Hammond.
Yeah, now that you pointed it out, you did seem a tiny bit “off” on this video. But that’s ok, in these “challenging times” (or whatever the euphemism du jour is for the pandemic), we’re allowed some days where we’re not 100% (today I had a day like that). I definitely don’t think I could shoot, light and edit a 36-minute tech review even in the best of times, so at least you’re ahead of me. We appreciate what you do for us, though, so thanks for pushing through and helping keep us all entertained regardless. Hope you’re doing better. Thanks for the video!
Mat, great as always. You always bring a little joy to my life. Stay safe, and I hope you feel better soon.
Hard to believe it needs 4 batteries just to save digital information. a CR2032 should suffice.
There are lots of things about this Panasonic that are basically unchanged from their 1990s models. My Sony ZS-D55 also has exactly the same arrangement. Probably a combination of 5V electronics, and the fact that AAs were available in every supermarket.
Hi Mat, sorry to read you had a bad week. Can imagine it must be very difficult for you! Hope you will feel better soon. I really liked the video gave me the same vibe as the leisurely look at a Sony reel to reel, really nice and certainly looking forward to the karaoke stuff. Take care!
haha looking forward to a chart topping signal from DJ Mat
"Multi pole magnet" is one of the more amusing pieces of marketing bullshit that I've come across. I guess the implication is that someone out there has discovered magnetic monopoles and is using this breakthrough in theoretical physics to manufacture cassette recorders?
I guess it's probably some magnets layered to create a changing N-S-N-S-N-S field, it's not complete bullshit. Erasing goes better with an AC field, usually the erase head is part of the AC bias circuitry. Using a stack of magnets creates an alternating field that erases much better than just a north- or south pole. I was surprised to see that they mention a 84 kHz AC bias recording system, but using the permanent magnet erase head. The noisy recording though makes me wonder if they really use AC bias...
Thank you for another enjoyable review - as one fellow commented earlier, you create many interesting videos about products that have no personal interest. Hope you get well without contracting that nasty COVID bug.
If I get that I'm a guaranteed fatality - things might get very quiet here if that's the case.
That seemed fine to me, Mat. Nobody could accuse you of not offering a thorough review of a product! Personally, I'm not into Boom Boxes or cassettes that much, but your deep dives into these products always bring up interesting facts. I hope you feel better soon; take care of yourself. SB
Friday evening Techmoan is the sweetest Techmoan; my perfect time for viewing, and a great video Mat. I have no interest in tapes myself, but always a good watch - thanks.
Hope you are feeling better very soon! The switch that only turns on the amp when using the cassette player while the unit is actually off is something I thought was common in boomboxes. As a kid I had one that worked exactly like that. But it had a slider switch with label "OFF/Cassette | FM | AM | Phono Input"
It looks like I'll have to re-edit that section as I can see it causing problems.
Hope you're feeling better soon. I enjoyed the video, as always. (Whatever flaws you feel it might have are below my detection threshold!) Thinking of cassette mechanisms, a few years ago our hi-fi tape-deck died (at this point, maybe we should be emboldened enough to repair it!) and we bought a TEAC AD-800. I don't think it's as high quality as the machine it replaced but it had dolby and an auto-reverse mechanism, as well as speed adjustment. It's discontinued now, replaced with the AD-850 (also apparently sold as the Tascam CD-A580), which lost dolby and auto-reverse, but is at least still being sold (I've no idea what mechanism that one is). In any case, although I don't recall when we bought it, the AD-800 was still on sale in 2015. I don't think I fully appreciated when we got it that it was really the last of its kind.
The new Teac Tascam models use the same old Tanashin budget mech as the £30 boomboxes. It’s a real shame, but it’s all they’re able to source nowadays. It’s one of those cases of a landscape shifting under your feet without you realising. But one day you look back and suddenly everything you remember is no longer there.
Half an hour of cheese sandwich - that's a chunky sandwich! 😃 Not in the market for a device like this, to say the least, but always enjoy a Techmoan review of anything. Very educational. About the boom box: had I been sold a black unit, and then found it was silvery plastic, I'd be deeply disappointed! At least the anthracite isn't quite as bad as some lighter shades of silver plastic... 😒 And the 'ghetto blaster' thing - here's a Swedish colloquialism for boom box you might not have heard before: "bergsprängare", literally "rock blaster". Wonder how they came up with that. Probably has to do with the infamous inflated Watt numbers (PMPO?)... 🙄 Edit: Forgot the most important bit. Get well soon! 😳👍
You really dug into the details of operating it, so that was very useful for those of us who sometimes consider buying a "new" boombox for relatives that still rely on tapes and radio. Who would have thought that there would be so many quirks? Thanks for making it!
Thanks for this. I couldn't tell lowering of quality, so don't be too hard on yourself. Removing the tape from it's wrapping reminded me of the power of nostalgia. Like the 70's Pioneer deck you featured a while ago, such small things can bring a flood of great memories back.
I still enjoy unwrapping a cassette - It reminds me of the days when I could just barely afford a three pack of TDK SA90s to record all my music off the radio for the month. Given the current collectors prices of SA90s now, at the time I was living large and didn’t realise it.
First of all, your stereo test tape sounds like a US political debate, and is just slightly less annoying. I remember reading a story about someone taking over at Ford somewhere around WWII, and they discovered one of their plants still making parts for their Tri-Motor biplane, even though they hadn't been built in years. Perhaps the folks in Indonesia will build these until someone finds out. I have to wonder about the battery times you mentioned. Why would radio recording times be longer, when I assume the tape mechanism would be in operation? Maybe you'd be using some other device to record? Weird. Output power ratings are kind of a joke. When I used to sell hifi, car stereos were rated at maybe 4 watts RMS, but at less that 1% THD. Now car stereos are 1000 watts, but probably at 20% THD. I have a Harman Kardon receiver rated at about 22 watts per channel that can power most of the speakers I own at acceptable volume, and I like to listen to some music at a pretty high volume.
There’s a lower third overlay on the screen when the battery life information is shown. They’ll have measured it with the volume off - so it’s just like a home HiFi with the amp turned off, it‘ll use a lot less power.
Nice beard 🙂
Thanks a lot! Listening to you is a good start into the weekend. Get well soon.
I wonder are we ripe for someone to kick-start a new high end cassette player? Probably not, but there is a new ZX Spectrum that has raised almost €1.5 million so stranger things have happened. Get well soon!
Definitely not (In my opinion) - I don’t believe there would be enough people that would be prepared to pay the real price of making a good one now. Imagine if it cost £1000 (a fair price in my mind for re-starting a complicated and dead manufacturing process) - most people would just say that they’d rather spend that on a refurbished classic model. I’d certainly be one of the people in that second camp.
The function switch that only turns on the cassette player when the device is turned off is something I thought was common in boomboxes. Of course my own old boombox, a GE that I bought in 1986 (it still works) has only 2 functions anyway: TAPE (radio off) and RADIO.
It probably was - it’s not been a great week for remembering things. It’s just this is the only Boombox I’ve used where if the radio or CD is on and you press play on the tape, absolutely nothing happens until you switch the power off. There seems to be far less interaction between the components on this than on my other devices.
Sorry you're not feeling well. I don't think I would have noticed. Professional and friendly as always.
The intro (approx 2 mins) took me a day and a half to shoot. It was tortuous progress, but I tried to keep as much oddness off the screen as possible, but there are far too many errs, umms, and arrs in this one for my liking.
Hey Mat. Firstly, hope you feel better soon. And secondly, do you ever think that there is a chance in the future that you might made a short video on your experience with rap music? I've noticed over the years watching your stuff that you seem to have a deep and genuine love for 80s and 90s rap music. I know a video is probably not in the cards so can I ask, any specific reason you got so into hip hop and how closely does it relate to your love of cassettes? I know some music I love, I tie it strongly to a certain media.
It’d take a very long time to type out a proper answer, so perhaps it’s something that I should cover in a future Patreon update.
"It's an older model, sir, but it checks out." Great video. I really enjoyed the commentary at the end, thank you! Rest up and take care!
Hope you're feeling better soon. Regards Mark
Thanks - so do I, it’s like I’ve had a lobotomy this week.