Features:
- 52 watts total power
- Two 3.25-inch full-range speakers
- Two 6.5-inch side-firing subwoofers
- Independent subwoofer volume control
- Switchable guitar/microphone input
Description:
The appearance of JVC's RV-B99 Kaboom! boombox is striking enough that you might be tempted to dismiss it as a gimmicky showpiece. Don't. Rugged build was definitely a priority in JVC's design, but when it comes to sound quality and quantity, the RV-B99 is far and away the best value going in portable music systems. The RV-B99 sounded terrific on our full range of program material, from rock and rap to classical and acoustic world music. The unit delivered clear, balanced sound from two 6.5-inch woofers, two 3.25-inch drivers, and no tweeters, underscoring the fact that simpler is often better, especially when striving for cost-efficiency. JVC quite obviously put its money into amplification (26 watts per high-powered channel) and subwoofers, resulting in a combination of effortless power and deep, giving bass previously unheard of at this price. The obvious benefit of a high-powered amplifier is being able to play it loudly. The RV-B99 exhibited an almost unnerving ability to play louder and louder, forcing us to rest our ears long before we encountered limits in the RV-B99's performance. There was no distortion in the highs and not a hint of compression (or loss of dynamics) in the bass. The less-obvious benefits of heavy-duty amplifiers show up during low-level listening. Lower-powered systems might muster the loudness of the RV-B99, but they'd never match it for putting out easy, full-bodied sound at very low volumes (which is where we found the RV-B99's separate bass-adjust knob the most useful). The six-level subwoofers worked well enough that we had to roll them back to two or three at high listening levels. But when playing music quietly, it was nice to crank the bass up to five or six and hear lower tones that would otherwise be inaudible. What kind of bass are we talking about? By our measurements, the RV-B99 "kabooms" down to about 50 Hz at its loudest, which is low for a portable system. (It takes loudspeakers of substantial size to get good bass in the remaining octave or so below this). The bass-adjust knob works in conjunction with three equalized presets (Clear, Pop, and Beat) to give you several different ways to tailor the sound for whatever music you're playing. A defeatable JVC feature called Active Clear Sound (ACS) kicks in to emphasize highs when frequencies above a preset threshold are present, the thinking being that the overall audio signal will be cleaner if this is only active when it needs to be. In practice, the "pumping" from the on-off action of the circuit proved irritating on more delicate music, but on complex rock material, it brought a pleasing presence to the treble region. The RV-B99 has a great remote: small and responsive (with fast search and scan times), letting you select tracks directly from a numbered key pad. We noticed, however, that when skipping tracks the player clipped the first half-second or so of the desired song. If you're skipping around or making a cassette from a programmed sequence, this could be highly inconvenient. The auto-reverse tape player sounds far better than average. (There's no Dolby, but the tape hiss wasn't intrusive.) A host of features--one-touch record, a microphone or guitar input (you can blend either one with CD sound, making it perfect for karaoke), a back-lit LCD screen, a clock/timer, and a thick shoulder strap with a pouch for the remote control--round out the unit's flexibility. For a feature-packed portable system that plays with equal ease at high and low volumes, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better unit than the JVC RV-B99. Pros:
- Great sound
- High power
- Tons of features
Cons:
- Cuts in late when skipping to specific tracks
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