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SONY Pro Walkman cassette player

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Posted on September 16, 2020 at 03:58:14
geoffkait
 My current setup is the pro Walkman + vintage SONY MDR-V700 headphones, I spent an entire stimulus check on cassettes recently including a boatload of Grateful Dead soundboard cassettes. I might be the only one here who isolates his cassette player and uses damping on the cassette body. Better safe than sorry. I should add there are quite a few advantages to going battery powered, including but not limited to, avoidance of noise and distortion related to AC power and power supplies, noise and distortion from power cords, speaker cables, interconnects, avoidance of big honking transformers, capacitors, a mile of internal wiring, room treatments, fuses, I could go on...

 

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RE: SONY Pro Walkman cassette player, posted on September 17, 2020 at 11:38:45
John Elison
Audiophile

Posts: 23900
Location: Central Kentucky
Joined: December 20, 2000
Contributor
  Since: January 29, 2004
 I really like portable players, too. The main difference is that I like digital best of all. I own the top-of-the-line FiiO M15 portable DSD player and it is noticeably better than cassette tape. Check it out. I think you'll be impressed.

 

RE: SONY Pro Walkman cassette player, posted on September 17, 2020 at 14:16:14
geoffkait
 Sounds interesting, have any experience with DAT players like the Sony DAT Walkman portable players? My Pro Walkman is head and shoulders above regular Walkmen.

 

RE: SONY Pro Walkman cassette player, posted on September 18, 2020 at 07:36:44
John Elison
Audiophile

Posts: 23900
Location: Central Kentucky
Joined: December 20, 2000
Contributor
  Since: January 29, 2004
 Yes, my first introduction to digital recording in 1991 was with a Sony TCD-D3 DAT Walkman. Later I bought a Sony component DAT recorder and I ended up with a TASCAM DAT recorder, which I still have in storage out in the garage. I currently use a TASCAM DA-3000 DSD recorder for copying vinyl records to DSD128. I can listen to these on my FiiO M15 DSD player.

Best Regards,
John Elison

 

RE: SONY Pro Walkman cassette player, posted on September 20, 2020 at 06:24:14
geoffkait
 I have concluded that the (sonic) problems with CD are in the player not the CD per se. Thus, digital LPs and digital cassettes often sound superior to their silvery brethren. Fuller, more information, more dynamic, better tone, more air. I would like to experiment with DAT Walkman but there aren't many prerecorded DAT cassettes around any more, even counting Grateful Dead. :-)

 

RE: SONY Pro Walkman cassette player, posted on September 21, 2020 at 02:19:38
John Elison
Audiophile

Posts: 23900
Location: Central Kentucky
Joined: December 20, 2000
Contributor
  Since: January 29, 2004
 Well, you're too late for DAT. It's basically obsolete. You can rip all your CDs to your computer hard drive and then put them onto a micro SD memory card and play them in a FiiO digital player.

 

RE: SONY Pro Walkman cassette player, posted on September 21, 2020 at 13:28:50
geoffkait
 That's what they said about cassettes and LPs. Lol.

 

RE: SONY Pro Walkman cassette player, posted on September 24, 2020 at 01:03:34
John Elison
Audiophile

Posts: 23900
Location: Central Kentucky
Joined: December 20, 2000
Contributor
  Since: January 29, 2004
 > That's what they said about cassettes and LPs. Lol.

Well, I think that's basically true, for me at least. Until two days ago I hadn't played an LP in over a year. A friend sent me five LPs he wanted me to copy to digital.

With regard to analog cassette tape, I used to love it. I owned two Nakamichi Dragons, which were the finest cassette tape recorders I've ever encountered. However, in 1991 I bought my first DAT recorder and it replaced my two Dragons almost immediately.

Now that we have high-resolution digital recorders, DAT has basically gone by the wayside. I still have an old TASCAM DAT recorder just in case I want to listen to all those old DATs I made years ago, but nowadays I do all my recording with a TASCAM DA-3000 DSD recorder.

Good luck,
John Elison

 

RE: SONY Pro Walkman cassette player, posted on September 24, 2020 at 18:51:32
jusbe
Audiophile

Posts: 5950
Location: North Island
Joined: April 4, 2000
 It's a great deck, and a lot of fun. I had mine professionally serviced a couple of years ago (one I found NOS). Having a lot of fun with old recordings, new releases and my own with a mountain of great blank tapes of the past.

In fact, I just ordered some new headphones to listen through (SONY MDR-CD900ST), with my iFi xCAN amp.

Big J

"... only a very few individuals understand as yet that personal salvation is a contradiction in terms."


 

RE: SONY Pro Walkman cassette player, posted on December 5, 2020 at 08:25:25
jaydacus
 I owned many "Walkmans" when I was younger and none of them came close to the detail, lack of artifacts, and lack of wear of CDs.

The early CD players, particularly the portable ones definitely had issues with harshness, skip protection, and overall reliability. Portable digital has come a LONG ways since then. Modern units have no moving parts and much better DACs then those early CD players.

I would bet my last dollar that in a blind test between the most high tech portable tape player on the planet and even something simple like the Xduoo x2 playing lossless files almost no one would would prefer the portable tape player.

 

RE: SONY Pro Walkman cassette player, posted on December 13, 2020 at 14:48:53
geoffkait
 Ah, the old blind test rears its ugly head. How convenient of you to guess the outcome without even doing the test. Smooth.

 

RE: SONY Pro Walkman cassette player, posted on December 13, 2020 at 19:31:33
jaydacus
 I lived with cassettes for the first 15 years of my life. They were not not the key to analog sonic bliss. They got stretched, magnetized, demagnetized, full of drop outs, worn out and dull sounding, and that all happens in 10-15 playbacks. Having to keep the heads clean for optimal sound quality and the pinch roller clean so it won't eat your tapes. Always loved playing through a garbled section of previously eaten tape. Warm smooth analog sound there.

Cassettes produce the equivalent of 8 bit sound even on a well recorded and never before played cassette. It only goes downhill from there. Measurable things like wow, flutter, and signal to noise ratio are abysmal.

 

RE: SONY Pro Walkman cassette player, posted on December 14, 2020 at 09:35:05
geoffkait
 Sorry to hear you had such bad luck. Better luck next time!

 

RE: SONY Pro Walkman cassette player, posted on December 23, 2020 at 13:11:44
jaydacus
 Had nothing to do with luck. It was just the limitations of the technology.

There won't be a next time now that I have access to digital playback that is technology superior in every way and even offers what some people refer to as "analog warmth".

 

RE: SONY Pro Walkman cassette player, posted on December 23, 2020 at 15:51:54
geoffkait
 Analog warmth? Shirley you jest. You must not have got the memo, as a general rule digital sounds thin, threadbare, rolled off, boomy, two dimensional, congealed, bland, synthetic, and like papier-m

 

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