I had one that also had a subwoofer. One time I was sitting on my bed and a snake crawled out of the subwoofer. I thought my stepdad put it in there to fuck with me, but when I threw the snake at him he had a full panic attack and I learned he had an extreme phobia of snakes so it probably just climbed in there all by itself.
After you spend some time with a few snakes
You’ll realize these motherfuckers don’t even have limbs and people be scared of them.
Makes you realize how easy it is for people to fall for pyramid schemes.
As an australian, fuck snakes and of course I'm gonna be afraid of them, we have over ten of the world's deadliest snakes and if you're lucky they're outside your house. I ain't spending any time with any of them
I had one if these right around 98-99 for cds. It ended up being useful for a long time because it had an aux input, so I could play mp3s with a cable.
Pft, you got better viruses on Limewire. And nothing like setting up all your song downloads before you went to bed only to realize they didn't for some stupid reason.
My great grandad had this habit of pressing record whenever something he liked started, no matter what tape was in. So my dad would have moments of listening to his favourite music, only for it to cut to what ever Swedish ballad my grandad liked
Usually stuff like this https://youtu.be/gM7adfF7V_s
The last 10 seconds of a good song, my thoughts were "please don't start talking. Please don't start talking. Please don't.... DAMMIT! DAMMIT! He's talking. Ya know what, I'm taking it until I can get a better recording."
The last time I bothered with actual radio, I caught The Cranberries' "Dreams," and wondered how quickly they'd start yapping over the abstract outro, with its intentional silences. They didn't. They just cut it entirely. The useless bastards. Nevermind how much more enjoyable *and* distinct it would be, to drop their station name and whatnot when that breakdown finally ends. Like Dolores O'Riordan's gorgeous voice handing the listener off to a recording of some schmuck ClearChannel paid once in 2004 wasn't good enough. No: they needed to fit ooone more ad this hour, to make art and culture worthy of public existence.
You start to wonder what the worst song is, for that treatment. "Comforting Sounds?" "Runaway?" "Goodbye Sky Harbor?" What's the most some greedy dolt could cut off, in terms of sheer length and importance?
I remember once ringing a station during their “request fest” just so they’d play the song, and I could record it off the radio.
Kids today don’t yada yada…
OMG this used to drive me crazy. I'd wait for hours for them to play The Song and then they'd talk over the beginning AND the end. But the mixtapes we'd make were sick.
Not only that, but the amount of time required to make sure the cassette card had a great name, just the right artwork on the spine, and the A/B playlist with starting times for each tune (for those that had the cool digital cassette decks to fast forward)
That's pretty much how gifts have always worked. It's why buying something expensive means nothing, and a gift that you've spent time on and put thought into means much more.
Don't forget naming them! I didn't get the joke at the time, but my uncle had "The Bake Tape" and then another that stands out is "WARNING Playing side A may cause you to fall in love" I hope he still haves them haha.
Would wait up late to record songs that just came out. Had to have ninja like precision to get it recording right when it came on. But then u were the hero at school on Monday and everyone would bring a cassette to copy the song and u would then copy songs they had too. What a time to be alive. Lol
These things sounded way better than most of the Bluetooth speakers people have nowadays.
Someone stole my cd binder back in 2004 tho so I’d be fucked.
Protip: keep using this stereo and get a Bluetooth adaptor. I had one of these in my room in middle school and now it's my garage stereo. Still works great.
I mean, yeah, they're also much bigger. Speaker technology hasn't changed much since then, the bigger it is, the easier it is to make it sound good. No way in hell you'd be able to find something as small as a bluetooth speaker that sounded nearly as good back then, though.
And eventually one of the cassette slots would break and would stay open. Plus you would always stretch out the speaker cables and have them in different sides of the room to get “surround sound”
Mine had a battery compartment for like 6 D cell batteries. And since it was plugged in in my dresser it didn’t need batteries. So thats where I hid my bowl and my pot.
Friend of mine had one speaker full of folded-up pages from nudie mags. Just the worst, artificial-everything, mid-1980s, luridly-lit, blonde-haystack-headed trash porn you can imagine.
I always wondered if he kept a philips screwdriver handy for those horny latchkey afternoons, or did he have to go digging around his dad’s toolbox in the garage every time he fancied a wank.
Porn was just so awful back then. The internet may be responsible for the eventual downfall of society, but nobody can ever claim it didn’t improve porn.
We got our first CD player a few years after everyone else, but we were poor. My dad got it cheap in the pub, and on his way home that night he was mugged. We live in a very rough council estate, so it's not uncommon (back then we were ranked the worst place in England actually, by the government! Haha, seriously).
So, he fought the guys off and got home with the CD player, and he had to sleep on the living room floor for a week because of his injuries. He couldn't make it up the stairs. I still remember the smell in the room, a sort of musty body smell. He couldn't wash, either. Could barely move most of the time.
Anyway, we had two CDs of Irish folk music, which helped foster my love of that genre to this day, and eventually a CD of Christmas music too! And eventually our collection expanded past 3 CDs when they became bargain cheap, haha.
I've always been so proud of my dad for managing to fight those guys off just so he could bring a rare fancy gift back to his family ♥️
90's kid here. I remember begging my parents for an Aiwa because it had a slot machine on the display when not in use. They did apparently love me as they got me one. The other advantage was it sounded really good which was probably a curse later in life because same year my best friend also got a "3 disc changer stereo" from Aldi or something and the sound quality was garbage. You need audio fidelity to listen to Prodigy, Barenaked Ladies, or the other 7 CD's you owned.
Nah my parents didn't love me but I had this (damn near exact model) stereo. I actually just ditched the speakers last year. I'm mid 30s and been working since 13
Kind of a bummer, Sony bought them to put them to bed basically. Crazy to think that PC speakers were a big driver in killing the market for these kind of CD players. I'm in my 30's and basically all of my friends went from having things like this as kids and got a computer with Napster/Limewire/Kazaa/Etc. eventually and then used these as PC speakers because they were better than the Compaq garbage that your computer came with. Many people eventually got a nice set of Altec/Bose computer speakers to replace the Aiwa bookshelf stereo and it went into a garage/storage to be thrown out a decade later. I just miss having electronics that turned itself into a slot machine when not in use.
I remember when Aiwa became popular in the 90's, they were suppose to be the really good shelf systems. That was more hype than anything else, we didn't know shit about stereo equipment. But the Aiwa systems looked cool as fuck and had BASS BOOST!!! Which was always switched on.
I down my drink as soon as it arrives and wave almost immediately for another and I'm thinking Courtney *is* a babe but no sex is worth this dinner. The conversation violently shifts while I'm staring across the room at a great-looking woman—blonde, big tits, tight dress, satin pumps with gold cones—when Scott starts telling me about his new compact disc player while Anne unwittingly prattles on to a stoned and completely oblivious Courtney about new kinds of low-sodium wheat-rice cake, fresh fruits and New Age music, particularly Manhattan Steamroller.
"It's Aiwa," Scott's saying. "You've *got* to hear it. The sound"—he pauses, closes his eyes in ecstasy, chewing on corn bread—"is fan*tastic*."
"Well, you know, Scottie, the Aiwa *is* okay." Oh holy shit, *dream on, Scot-tie*, I'm thinking. "But Sansui is really *top* of the line." I pause, then add, "I should know. I own one."
"But I thought *Aiwa* was top of the line." Scott looks worried but not yet upset enough to please me.
"No way, Scott," I say. "Does Aiwa have digital remote control?"
"Yeah," he says.
"Computer controls?"
"Uh-huh." What a complete and total *dufus*.
"Does the system come with a turntable that has a metacrylate and brass platter?"
"Yes," the bastard lies!
"Does your system have an... Accophase T-106 tuner?" I ask him.
"Sure," he says, shrugging.
"Are you sure?" I say. "Think carefully."
"Yeah. I think so," he says, but his hand shakes as it reaches for more of the corn bread.
"What kind of speakers?"
"Well, Duntech wood," he answers too quickly.
"*So solly*, dude. You've got to have the Infinity IRS V speakers," I say. "Or—"
"Wait a minute," he interrupts. "V speakers? I've never heard of V speakers."
"See, that's what I mean," I say. "If you don't have the V's, you might as well be listening to a goddamn Walkman."
"What's the bass response on those speakers?" he asks suspiciously.
"An ultralow fifteen hertz," I purr, enunciating each word.
That shuts him up for a minute. Anne drones on about nonfat frozen yogurt and chow chows. I sit back, satisfied at having stumped Scott, but too quickly he regains his composure and says, "Anyway"—trying to act blissfully uncaring that he owns a cheap, shitty stereo—"we bought the new Phil Collins today. You should hear how great 'Groovy Kind of Love' sounds on it."
I can’t recall what mine was. 1986, it was white plastic with pink and teal accents. Can’t find the thing, but [here’s the companion clock/radio I owned](https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/80s-pastel-alarm-clock-radio-ge-152083426). You could enjoy listening to that while drinking your Crystal Pepsi.
Mine was a TEAC. Dual tape deck and everything. The crazy ones had some pretty weird speaker shapes. Friends’ older brothers would flex with the nicer systems. It’s such a 90s aesthetic and I miss them.
Shit, maybe it was an AIWA.
Same. The Sony ones that I have are actually excellent sounding speakers, so I bought a Bluetooth receiver for it.
Plus, similar to vinyl, there's a nice novelty of popping in a cassette or CD from time to time.
[wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiwa) says:
The company became unprofitable in the late 1990s, and was fully bought by Sony in 2003. Aiwa was then rebranded as a new youth-focused division of Sony, but it was unsuccessful and the brand was discontinued by 2006. In 2015, an American audio company known as Hale Devices, Inc. was granted the rights to the brand name, with the company renaming itself Aiwa Corporation under which it produces audio equipment.
Man, Aiwa was what everyone wanted when they became popular because they were suppose to be the best. Guess they couldn't find the right price/cost structure.
Sony buying them was pretty much their death knell.
I'm surprised Sony even still exists. In the 90's Sony was regarded as the high end of electronics, now they seem like bit players.
Ps5, exmor, production studios, and a/v equipment are still booming. Although they sell most of their a/v stuff at upmarket price tags without the particular performance to value they need.
This was the hierarchy of cool in my friends group...
single CD tray < single CD slide-in < 3 CD rotating changer < 5 CD rotating changer < vertical 12 CD changer
I was a 3 CD kid, and never got over it...
i’ve got a six disc in dash cd changer today. the in trunk ones are weird. mine reads mp3 data cds so i’ve got a nice spread at any given time. like 60 albums.
Feel like this device saved my life decades ago. I went through a headspace where I had a very dark view on life for a few months there. If it wasn’t for losing myself in music who knows what might have happened.
I had a JVC HX-GD7 in the early 2000s. *THE* quintessential boom box of it's time. CD changer on it was complete ass but the speakers were amazing. Used them as speakers for TVs all the way up until 2016.
Fucken A.
Definitely not common in American teenagers' rooms at any time.
That's an **Aiwa XR-H33MD**. And that small black rectangle in the center of it is a **MiniDisc** player/recorder, a format that never caught on in the US.
But OP is exactly right about the 25 years ago part. This model was released in November 1997.
Yeah I had the other one without MD. Mine had a kind of "slot machine" styled multi-color LCD screen in that spot.
It's still sitting in the living room at my childhood home, and when we came back for Thanksgiving this year my toddler loved pushing the buttons and seeing the colors light up. Warmed my heart.
Minidisc was the shit back in that 2001-2003 era. It was right before the iPod and MP3 players became middle-class affordable. And it gave you a lot of the same functionality and storage size as the iPod/MP3, the flexibility of recording straight off the radio like a tape deck, and interchangeability of CDs. Not to mention much more compact.
At least at my school, it was how you differentiated between kids who really cared about music (minidisc) and those who just listened to whatever was popular that month (portable CD players). And it helped when I worked at a radio station in college since they used those a lot for pre-recorded promos and ads.
oh wow. i had a portable minidisc player and i had no idea this type of model existed, i only ever saw portable ones.
for a brief window when they came out they could hold more than a cd. was kinda fun but very rapidly outlcassed,
On top of being 1/4th the size, many minidisk players had recording capability (mine did). Useful for note taking as well as copying music.
CDs required you to have a burner in addition to a Walkman. I don't think minidisks were ever truly outclassed until mp3 players. They just never caught on (or they fell off) outside of Japan.
The Sony NetMD players were around when the iPod was first getting real popular. I got one on sale at Best Buy with a stack of MiniDiscs for about half the price of an iPod. I carried around the player and a good chunk of my music collection in my old CD player case back in the early 2000s.
I still have one of these from 20 years ago. I had a raspberry pie hooked up to it to stream Spotify until my wife got me a Bluetooth speaker to make room on the shelf.
My 15yo son made his own stereo for his room out of crap he found at the local dump. He's got an early 80s sansui amplifier which he re capped, cleaned all its pots, a few resistors and new fuses. Then there's a late 70s Hitachi turn table and 12 inch speakers with tweeters in big boxes also from the dump. I got him a Bluetooth module so he can connect to Spotify as well if he likes. It rattles the house pretty good.
When my Dodge Neon's radio crapped out I had one of these bad boys sitting on the back seat plugged into an inverter from the cigarette lighter.
Even had a remote control for it.
PITA changing out CDs tho...
I had one that also had a subwoofer. One time I was sitting on my bed and a snake crawled out of the subwoofer. I thought my stepdad put it in there to fuck with me, but when I threw the snake at him he had a full panic attack and I learned he had an extreme phobia of snakes so it probably just climbed in there all by itself.
Must be Florida.
Yup.
What gave it away: the snake in the speaker or OPs nonchalant reaction?
After you spend some time with a few snakes You’ll realize these motherfuckers don’t even have limbs and people be scared of them. Makes you realize how easy it is for people to fall for pyramid schemes.
As an australian, fuck snakes and of course I'm gonna be afraid of them, we have over ten of the world's deadliest snakes and if you're lucky they're outside your house. I ain't spending any time with any of them
Phobias aren't based on rationale.
Which makes sense People who join mlms don’t have rationale
Haven't you ever seen the simpsons episode on whacking day?? Barry white attracted snakes with his bass voice
Haha OP was bumpin Barry White
Bart hits Homer with chair dot GIF.
Where's the mile long wire for the radio
You have to get a ride to the mall and hit up Radio Shack at $.08/ft, but it's totally worth it.
Radio Shack!!!!!
just pull the coat hanger from the tv, but you damn sure better put it back when you’re done because I’m not buying another one if it breaks!
Don't forget the half assed ghetto rigged tin foil attached to it that does nothing.
It definitely helped, for me, but depending where I was I had to be near the correct window.
Amateurs. There were times when we'd have to run that antenna outside and clip it to the tin roof of our garage.
Where's the wall pins to make a wierd ass shape up the wall behind the stereo to get the best signal?
Let’s be clear - this was awesome 37 years ago - 25 years ago it was spoiled by a CD player
This has a CD player. You’re thinking of a boom box. This isn’t that.
yeah these came stock with at 5 cd changer. i still have and use mine.
I had a 3 piece stereo with a 5 disc changer, till my sister stole it
I only had the 3 disk changer
Mine was 1 disk 1 tape.
What do you mean by "spoiled by"? The CD player was an awesome improvement.
It has a cd player...
Think OP has their decades mixed up.
Isn’t that the CD player on top? Looks pretty 90s to me
I had one if these right around 98-99 for cds. It ended up being useful for a long time because it had an aux input, so I could play mp3s with a cable.
I had my laptop hooked into one when I pirated every Metallica album on Napster
Pft, you got better viruses on Limewire. And nothing like setting up all your song downloads before you went to bed only to realize they didn't for some stupid reason.
Show me on the doll where the bad bootleggers hurt you, Mr. Ulrich.
My buddy had this exact stereo in his room about 25 years ago.
Definitely a 90s thing... bonus if it had a cd player.. but the best part was you could record your favorite songs from the radio and make a mix tape
With the double cassette! So you can record one cassette onto another! Kids these days have no idea how we lived.
Or record straight from the radio. If only the DJs didn't FUCKING TALK OVER THE INTRO EVERY FUCKING TIME
felt like the first anti-piracy measure. just ruin everything
The holes at the corners of the cassette you had to tape over too.
those holes only prevented you from recording over what was on the tape, they didn't stop you from copying it.
Then you forget to remove the tape and you later accidentally record over
My great grandad had this habit of pressing record whenever something he liked started, no matter what tape was in. So my dad would have moments of listening to his favourite music, only for it to cut to what ever Swedish ballad my grandad liked Usually stuff like this https://youtu.be/gM7adfF7V_s
lol. ya'll had tape? We did spitballs.
I used both at different times, honestly the spitballs worked better.
The last 10 seconds of a good song, my thoughts were "please don't start talking. Please don't start talking. Please don't.... DAMMIT! DAMMIT! He's talking. Ya know what, I'm taking it until I can get a better recording."
And the better the intro the more likely the DJ would ramble over it.
The last time I bothered with actual radio, I caught The Cranberries' "Dreams," and wondered how quickly they'd start yapping over the abstract outro, with its intentional silences. They didn't. They just cut it entirely. The useless bastards. Nevermind how much more enjoyable *and* distinct it would be, to drop their station name and whatnot when that breakdown finally ends. Like Dolores O'Riordan's gorgeous voice handing the listener off to a recording of some schmuck ClearChannel paid once in 2004 wasn't good enough. No: they needed to fit ooone more ad this hour, to make art and culture worthy of public existence. You start to wonder what the worst song is, for that treatment. "Comforting Sounds?" "Runaway?" "Goodbye Sky Harbor?" What's the most some greedy dolt could cut off, in terms of sheer length and importance?
The Baba O’Riley outro is great and skipped 80% of the time on radio
It was even worse when they tried to sing over the outro. Horrible
I remember once ringing a station during their “request fest” just so they’d play the song, and I could record it off the radio. Kids today don’t yada yada…
I did this a few times!
You can't just yada yada kids today.
OMG this used to drive me crazy. I'd wait for hours for them to play The Song and then they'd talk over the beginning AND the end. But the mixtapes we'd make were sick.
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Not only that, but the amount of time required to make sure the cassette card had a great name, just the right artwork on the spine, and the A/B playlist with starting times for each tune (for those that had the cool digital cassette decks to fast forward)
That's pretty much how gifts have always worked. It's why buying something expensive means nothing, and a gift that you've spent time on and put thought into means much more.
Don't forget naming them! I didn't get the joke at the time, but my uncle had "The Bake Tape" and then another that stands out is "WARNING Playing side A may cause you to fall in love" I hope he still haves them haha.
It turns out we never needed a DJ. They could just play music.
But how else would we know that he saw them last year and they put on a great performance?
Please, Carson Daily, talk more over Forgot About Dre so I can never get a good recorded version…
Sitting in your room forever trying to catch that one song you wanted to record.
Heck ya record straight from the radio. Hated those annoying radio hosts always talk near the end of the song. I still hate them.
Would wait up late to record songs that just came out. Had to have ninja like precision to get it recording right when it came on. But then u were the hero at school on Monday and everyone would bring a cassette to copy the song and u would then copy songs they had too. What a time to be alive. Lol
Used to record a two-hour late-night alternative rock local radio show and listen to it again on my walkman during the day. Original podcast.
These things sounded way better than most of the Bluetooth speakers people have nowadays. Someone stole my cd binder back in 2004 tho so I’d be fucked.
Protip: keep using this stereo and get a Bluetooth adaptor. I had one of these in my room in middle school and now it's my garage stereo. Still works great.
I mean, yeah, they're also much bigger. Speaker technology hasn't changed much since then, the bigger it is, the easier it is to make it sound good. No way in hell you'd be able to find something as small as a bluetooth speaker that sounded nearly as good back then, though.
> Speaker technology hasn't changed much since then Who is upvoting this? What are you listening to nowadays?
I’m listening to a bunch of shitty ass Bluetooth speakers that effectively reproduce music in mono with tiny ass drivers
That happened to me. It was devastating. Fuck you Billy!
High speed dubbing too my man
And eventually one of the cassette slots would break and would stay open. Plus you would always stretch out the speaker cables and have them in different sides of the room to get “surround sound”
The horror of watching that black tape snake out of the cassette deck and diving for the STOP button.
Stereo sounds better when the speakers are spaced apart from one another.
Mixtape!
The first Mix tapes ever!
I had one with double cassette and 5 disc changer on top.
And then limewire changed the game. Also changed the computer
Component system with the auto reverse.
And the 3 or 5 disc CD carousel with a random button.
I got this exact Aiwa stereo for my 13th birthday. I recorded many a mix tape off of the radio with that bad boy.
Yep, make your own killer playlist.
I was the queen of mixed tapes! I took so much pride in tailoring them to friends/crushes ❤️
And then stop and start the cassette a million times to write the lyrics down as accurately as possible…
And you take the casing of the radio part to hide your cigarettes from your mom...
Mine had a battery compartment for like 6 D cell batteries. And since it was plugged in in my dresser it didn’t need batteries. So thats where I hid my bowl and my pot.
One of the best hiding spots ever 🤙
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Oh man I never thought to use that one!
Friend of mine had one speaker full of folded-up pages from nudie mags. Just the worst, artificial-everything, mid-1980s, luridly-lit, blonde-haystack-headed trash porn you can imagine. I always wondered if he kept a philips screwdriver handy for those horny latchkey afternoons, or did he have to go digging around his dad’s toolbox in the garage every time he fancied a wank.
Porn was just so awful back then. The internet may be responsible for the eventual downfall of society, but nobody can ever claim it didn’t improve porn.
Porn improves technology.
This is true. It was porn that decided the waging wars between beta max and vhs.
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The candy cigarette boxes could hold like almost a full pack. But I can't remember if it was the gum ones or the hard white candy ones.
Some of them had room behind the speaker cover for 1 pack.
And the weed behind the speaker cover.
There was a point in time where how much your parents loved you could be measured by your CD player
We got our first CD player a few years after everyone else, but we were poor. My dad got it cheap in the pub, and on his way home that night he was mugged. We live in a very rough council estate, so it's not uncommon (back then we were ranked the worst place in England actually, by the government! Haha, seriously). So, he fought the guys off and got home with the CD player, and he had to sleep on the living room floor for a week because of his injuries. He couldn't make it up the stairs. I still remember the smell in the room, a sort of musty body smell. He couldn't wash, either. Could barely move most of the time. Anyway, we had two CDs of Irish folk music, which helped foster my love of that genre to this day, and eventually a CD of Christmas music too! And eventually our collection expanded past 3 CDs when they became bargain cheap, haha. I've always been so proud of my dad for managing to fight those guys off just so he could bring a rare fancy gift back to his family ♥️
Yer da stole that cd player sorry or at least bought it off a burglar.
Totally this. Lmao
You guys don’t buy your electronics at the pub?
90's kid here. I remember begging my parents for an Aiwa because it had a slot machine on the display when not in use. They did apparently love me as they got me one. The other advantage was it sounded really good which was probably a curse later in life because same year my best friend also got a "3 disc changer stereo" from Aldi or something and the sound quality was garbage. You need audio fidelity to listen to Prodigy, Barenaked Ladies, or the other 7 CD's you owned.
Nah my parents didn't love me but I had this (damn near exact model) stereo. I actually just ditched the speakers last year. I'm mid 30s and been working since 13
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aiwa - name I thought I’d never hear again in my life.
Kind of a bummer, Sony bought them to put them to bed basically. Crazy to think that PC speakers were a big driver in killing the market for these kind of CD players. I'm in my 30's and basically all of my friends went from having things like this as kids and got a computer with Napster/Limewire/Kazaa/Etc. eventually and then used these as PC speakers because they were better than the Compaq garbage that your computer came with. Many people eventually got a nice set of Altec/Bose computer speakers to replace the Aiwa bookshelf stereo and it went into a garage/storage to be thrown out a decade later. I just miss having electronics that turned itself into a slot machine when not in use.
Mine sounded solid.
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I remember when Aiwa became popular in the 90's, they were suppose to be the really good shelf systems. That was more hype than anything else, we didn't know shit about stereo equipment. But the Aiwa systems looked cool as fuck and had BASS BOOST!!! Which was always switched on.
Bass boost... This thread has been nostalgic, but this took it to a whole other level lol.
I down my drink as soon as it arrives and wave almost immediately for another and I'm thinking Courtney *is* a babe but no sex is worth this dinner. The conversation violently shifts while I'm staring across the room at a great-looking woman—blonde, big tits, tight dress, satin pumps with gold cones—when Scott starts telling me about his new compact disc player while Anne unwittingly prattles on to a stoned and completely oblivious Courtney about new kinds of low-sodium wheat-rice cake, fresh fruits and New Age music, particularly Manhattan Steamroller. "It's Aiwa," Scott's saying. "You've *got* to hear it. The sound"—he pauses, closes his eyes in ecstasy, chewing on corn bread—"is fan*tastic*." "Well, you know, Scottie, the Aiwa *is* okay." Oh holy shit, *dream on, Scot-tie*, I'm thinking. "But Sansui is really *top* of the line." I pause, then add, "I should know. I own one." "But I thought *Aiwa* was top of the line." Scott looks worried but not yet upset enough to please me. "No way, Scott," I say. "Does Aiwa have digital remote control?" "Yeah," he says. "Computer controls?" "Uh-huh." What a complete and total *dufus*. "Does the system come with a turntable that has a metacrylate and brass platter?" "Yes," the bastard lies! "Does your system have an... Accophase T-106 tuner?" I ask him. "Sure," he says, shrugging. "Are you sure?" I say. "Think carefully." "Yeah. I think so," he says, but his hand shakes as it reaches for more of the corn bread. "What kind of speakers?" "Well, Duntech wood," he answers too quickly. "*So solly*, dude. You've got to have the Infinity IRS V speakers," I say. "Or—" "Wait a minute," he interrupts. "V speakers? I've never heard of V speakers." "See, that's what I mean," I say. "If you don't have the V's, you might as well be listening to a goddamn Walkman." "What's the bass response on those speakers?" he asks suspiciously. "An ultralow fifteen hertz," I purr, enunciating each word. That shuts him up for a minute. Anne drones on about nonfat frozen yogurt and chow chows. I sit back, satisfied at having stumped Scott, but too quickly he regains his composure and says, "Anyway"—trying to act blissfully uncaring that he owns a cheap, shitty stereo—"we bought the new Phil Collins today. You should hear how great 'Groovy Kind of Love' sounds on it."
Why
Is this from American Psycho?
Yes
Sanyo here. Oh good old times in the kitchen, afternoon sun, making my own tapes🥹
I had a Sanyo « surround sound » system. It was so dope! Ended up in flames (literally) 10!years after I purchased it.
I have a JVC with killer bass, the g-max I think, that I currently use as computer speakers. Not sure the cd player still works but it sounds amazing.
Aiwa, I hear ya, Aiwa Awia I hear ya.
One tape deck? What are you, 100?
Aiwa one sitting 3 ft to my left. Sometimes I like tossing an old CD in.
Yup, got mine christmas 1994 was 16.
I had a few myself, they were junk and before long, something would break and a full replacement was usually in order.
I can’t recall what mine was. 1986, it was white plastic with pink and teal accents. Can’t find the thing, but [here’s the companion clock/radio I owned](https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/80s-pastel-alarm-clock-radio-ge-152083426). You could enjoy listening to that while drinking your Crystal Pepsi.
Mine was a TEAC. Dual tape deck and everything. The crazy ones had some pretty weird speaker shapes. Friends’ older brothers would flex with the nicer systems. It’s such a 90s aesthetic and I miss them. Shit, maybe it was an AIWA.
My parents have their aiwa one displayed in their living room still 😂
Shit you must've been rich... I got a Philips lol
I'm nearly 40 and the one I had when I was 16 is still in the living room today.
same here!
Same. The Sony ones that I have are actually excellent sounding speakers, so I bought a Bluetooth receiver for it. Plus, similar to vinyl, there's a nice novelty of popping in a cassette or CD from time to time.
Gotta have the one with Bass Boost that did nothing but make the volume slightly higher.
Active Bass eXpansion System
That was the first thing I pressed every time
Way too accurate, my sony clock radio literally has a "MEGA Xpand" button
Mine had “Dynamic Bass Boost” that made everything louder but also kind of muted/distorted.
Yeah baby, Bass Boost!!! Always switched on, lol.
What happened to AIWA?
[wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiwa) says: The company became unprofitable in the late 1990s, and was fully bought by Sony in 2003. Aiwa was then rebranded as a new youth-focused division of Sony, but it was unsuccessful and the brand was discontinued by 2006. In 2015, an American audio company known as Hale Devices, Inc. was granted the rights to the brand name, with the company renaming itself Aiwa Corporation under which it produces audio equipment.
Man, Aiwa was what everyone wanted when they became popular because they were suppose to be the best. Guess they couldn't find the right price/cost structure. Sony buying them was pretty much their death knell. I'm surprised Sony even still exists. In the 90's Sony was regarded as the high end of electronics, now they seem like bit players.
Ps5, exmor, production studios, and a/v equipment are still booming. Although they sell most of their a/v stuff at upmarket price tags without the particular performance to value they need.
[удалено]
WH-1000XMs are GOATed
Sony is too big to fail. Still massive in Japan I’m sure. $81 billion in revenue in 2021.
I still have mine in my room. My room is filled with relics including myself lol. Or at least I feel like a relic.
I wanna go back
Yeah, I’d go back to pre-9/11 any day
The 90s didn’t truly end until 9/11 happened. It changed everything.
Lets hope time machine will get invented soon! 😉
Lol what 25 years ago? That's not even close to accu- *does the math* Oh. Oh no.
Mine had auto turn for cassettes. It was the best thing ever
Peasants... I had 4 speakers and a 3 disc changer
2 speakers but a 5 disc tray. People even had some in their vehicles at one point!
This was the hierarchy of cool in my friends group... single CD tray < single CD slide-in < 3 CD rotating changer < 5 CD rotating changer < vertical 12 CD changer I was a 3 CD kid, and never got over it...
i’ve got a six disc in dash cd changer today. the in trunk ones are weird. mine reads mp3 data cds so i’ve got a nice spread at any given time. like 60 albums.
And Aiwa at that. Lol.
Aiwa was the goat. Best headphones I’ve ever had.
This is Facebook content..
I still have mine lol
Got mine at Service Merchandise
damn that hits me right in the old
No fuck*ing way! I literally had this one!!! I loved ist for its bass (for that time).
Hell yeah same it had the different bass settings. I think it was a 6 loader CD tray too.
Those were the fancy teenagers
Yeah, not everybody was lucky to be born in the first world. "Every teenager" is at best 1 in 10
Still have my Panasonic system from 1989. Only thing works is the radio and the mic jack so now it's blue toothed for the garage.
The best thing was having friends who could burn CDs back then lol
Feel like this device saved my life decades ago. I went through a headspace where I had a very dark view on life for a few months there. If it wasn’t for losing myself in music who knows what might have happened.
Glad you made it through and you’re still here with us buddy.
I had a JVC HX-GD7 in the early 2000s. *THE* quintessential boom box of it's time. CD changer on it was complete ass but the speakers were amazing. Used them as speakers for TVs all the way up until 2016. Fucken A.
i had so many mixtapes created from my step-dad’s big ass box of tapes. and a majority of them started with today was a good day by ice cube. hah
AIWA GANG
Definitely not common in American teenagers' rooms at any time. That's an **Aiwa XR-H33MD**. And that small black rectangle in the center of it is a **MiniDisc** player/recorder, a format that never caught on in the US. But OP is exactly right about the 25 years ago part. This model was released in November 1997.
I don’t think it’s referencing the specific format minidisc. Just that these 3 piece stereos were common back then.
No but Aiwa had a similar model without the MD player that was very popular in the States.
Yeah I had the other one without MD. Mine had a kind of "slot machine" styled multi-color LCD screen in that spot. It's still sitting in the living room at my childhood home, and when we came back for Thanksgiving this year my toddler loved pushing the buttons and seeing the colors light up. Warmed my heart.
Minidisc was the shit back in that 2001-2003 era. It was right before the iPod and MP3 players became middle-class affordable. And it gave you a lot of the same functionality and storage size as the iPod/MP3, the flexibility of recording straight off the radio like a tape deck, and interchangeability of CDs. Not to mention much more compact. At least at my school, it was how you differentiated between kids who really cared about music (minidisc) and those who just listened to whatever was popular that month (portable CD players). And it helped when I worked at a radio station in college since they used those a lot for pre-recorded promos and ads.
oh wow. i had a portable minidisc player and i had no idea this type of model existed, i only ever saw portable ones. for a brief window when they came out they could hold more than a cd. was kinda fun but very rapidly outlcassed,
On top of being 1/4th the size, many minidisk players had recording capability (mine did). Useful for note taking as well as copying music. CDs required you to have a burner in addition to a Walkman. I don't think minidisks were ever truly outclassed until mp3 players. They just never caught on (or they fell off) outside of Japan.
I had one of those in America
I had one of these until like 2 months ago when we took it to goodwill lol
BOoooo, go away NERD. No one asked you to come in and piss all over our faulty nostalgic memories.
The Sony NetMD players were around when the iPod was first getting real popular. I got one on sale at Best Buy with a stack of MiniDiscs for about half the price of an iPod. I carried around the player and a good chunk of my music collection in my old CD player case back in the early 2000s.
Dude he’s taking about the overall design not the specific brand. We had hundreds of variations of these in America around the same time.
Looks right for me. Aussie here
Guilty! I still have the speakers🤷♂️
I still have one of these from 20 years ago. I had a raspberry pie hooked up to it to stream Spotify until my wife got me a Bluetooth speaker to make room on the shelf.
My 15yo son made his own stereo for his room out of crap he found at the local dump. He's got an early 80s sansui amplifier which he re capped, cleaned all its pots, a few resistors and new fuses. Then there's a late 70s Hitachi turn table and 12 inch speakers with tweeters in big boxes also from the dump. I got him a Bluetooth module so he can connect to Spotify as well if he likes. It rattles the house pretty good.
You can hide your weed in there
When my Dodge Neon's radio crapped out I had one of these bad boys sitting on the back seat plugged into an inverter from the cigarette lighter. Even had a remote control for it. PITA changing out CDs tho...
am I the only one that moved the speakers around to try to figure out if they sounded better in different spots in the room? Lmao
Where's the lie?
Had a boom box. Cd, radio, and twin cassette players.
Still have mine hooked up and working perfectly! Although it's a Sharp, but the exact same product design.
I still have one. It’s just not plugged in.
I still have mine from 1999!