Tell me about your stereo or boombox

[Joe Nerve]

Every now and then I come across a boombox or stereo that freaks me out becasue the basslines in songs jump out more clearly and articulately than I ever hear on any of my stuff. I can hear every nuance of the bassline in songs I may have heard hundreds of times and think, "Damn! Never heard that before!!!"

I ssem to have no luck in this kinda thing - I EQ my mp3s to death, have a house stereo, boombox, and car stereo - yet not a single one of them put out truly clear basslines. I always have to struggle, and then I'll hear a song somewhere else and the bass is clear as day.

Any suggestions for a boom box or stereo btwn $200 and $400 that will put out really clear articulat basslines? It lies somewhere in a perfect balance of lows, mids and highs - not in a bass heavy box. Me thinks it has more to do with the speakers than amp too.

What kinda boom box do you have? How do you hear the bass? Thanks.

[Musiclogic]

Sony CDF-G50...$80+ at Circuit City, 3 stage Sub that really helps, along with multiple EQ profiles to help tailor it more to your taste. It's in my shop, and sounds pretty good. I have about $10,000 into my home stereo, and that just buries anything I have ever heard except my stereo in my truck.

MP3's are never going to sound as good as a CD, as they are only 75% to 80% resolution in the music, which for a digital format, is poor at best. But Apple and the iPod made them a staple for today's selfabsorbed society....LMAO

Good Luck with your search......check out some of the Aiwa and Sony boxes

[Jezz8me]

FLAC!!!! use those files, lossless compression. Each file is HUGE but it is great quality so if you have an mp3 that can play them use them.

I use a SHARP mid range, pretty standard player. f you use the X-bass funcion it rings out great bass definition!

[T-Bird]

Hi.

Being a hopelessly vintage kinda guy, I'd say vinyl + quality turntable and cartiridge + any decent preamp and poweramp + any stone cabs.

That didn't help much I know , but I haven't found a way to make standard mp3 (or mp4) sound natural in a home environment. Those are great in background situations.
I finally kicked my GF out and was able to set my "better" sound system where I wanted it and the sound from iPod was OK, but lacked the bass and the highs, no matter what EQ settings I used. CDs sound good and vinyls sound great, so it's the data compression and other AD and DD conversion problems that kick in.
WAVs sound quite the same as the CDs. (10 times bigger files though)

As I don't use subs that much I can't recommend any particular ones but as always You get what You pay for (within reason), so any servo amp driven will work if You want it small.

Oddly enough my Altec Lansing home theatre/computer cheapo has quite good overall sound and bass that amazed even a techno fan, he just couldn't believe the amount of noise and bass coming from four small satelites and a box that was smaller than his computer box at that moment.

So the first thing IMO/IME and as several others have stated, is to have better quality media. As well as with the bass rigs, it's hard to create something that's not there in the first place, no matter how good or expensive the system.

Just my 0.02€
Sam

[Joe Nerve]

I'm not looking to make mp3s sound great, going to use it mostly with CDs. Looking for something that really puts out clean and defined basslines. Everything I get winds up sounding bassy or boomy. I hear other stereos (and sometimes they're not even expensive ones, just EQed differently) that really bring the basslines, not bass frequencies, up front. The $80 sony sounds promising.

Any other suggestions...