Slashdot Asks: What Do You Remember About the Sony Walkman? (theverge.com) 166
On July 1st, 1979, Sony revolutionized the way we listen to music when it released the iconic Walkman TPS-L2, the first real portable music player. "Boomboxes and portable radios had been around for a while, but the Walkman made portable music private, ushering in a whole new era of people listening to music away from home," writes Chaim Gartenberg for The Verge. The Walkman stood the test of time by continuing to sell well even through the CD era. "[It] would go on to see numerous hardware iterations over the years, including 'Discman' CD models and MiniDisc players, as well as more modern portable media player devices that Sony still sells today," writes Gartenberg. It wasn't until Apple unveiled the iPod in 2001 and digital downloads began to dominate that Walkman sales started to plummet.
What do you remember about the Sony Walkman? Do you have any fond memories of the music player that are worth sharing? Let us know in a comment.
What do you remember about the Sony Walkman? Do you have any fond memories of the music player that are worth sharing? Let us know in a comment.
That I couldn't afford one (Score:3)
Same here (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was a kid we didn't have enough money for a walkman, what I could afford was the same kind of $10 knockoff as you used...
Something really sad was the day someone broke the window of my car to get to the $10 player, which maybe they could sell for a $1 used??? Probably not. But it was something like $60 for a new window, that really sucked.
I don't understand why poor people prey on each other, at the time I drove a really crappy looking car, I thought I'd be fairly safe from crime. Nope, on that day I learned criminals are just assholes to all.
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When I was a kid we had to play our walkman to school uphill. Both ways.
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And we had to record our own music, there was no napster or even itunes, there was just the radio with DJs that yakked for ages before finally playing the charts, and we were sitting there hoping that they'd even play the song that we're looking for, and we didn't know what chart position we'd be aiming at because there was no internet where you could look up what position your song would be, and then they played it and you hit record on the tape, only to find out that you hadn't wound it to the right spot
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We had to sing them ourselves using only the notes A to E. We couldn't afford F and G hadn't been invented yet.
Poor people prey on each other (Score:2, Informative)
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Legalize MJ and you'll suddenly find half of our prisons empty! Now where's the money in that?
Re: Poor people prey on each other (Score:2)
Better if white LA officers streamed into poor minority neighborhoods and fill dozens of buses with hundreds if not thousands of young minority men and carried them off to jail?
If they want to destroy their own neighborhood, let them.
Same logic applied - to lesser extent - in Ferguson, MO and more recently Baltimore, MD.
No, better if they streamed in (Score:2)
Soccer Hooligans should be treated like Soccer Hooligans; minor citation, tell them not to do it again and move in with programs to address poverty.
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Because that would endanger their lives.
It's easy to trash the cops on not going into an active riot, but that's the absolute worst thing you do because you've got an unpredictable crowd that in effect is itching for a fight. Since there are more rioters than police, it's not a winnable situation. And entering the area could also inflame the situation, making it worse.
The best you can do is surround the rioters, let them destroy the area they're in (
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By the 90s the real Walkman wasn't that expensive and my parents surely could've afforded it but not me, so I went through a few shitty Chinese attempts too. Mostly they chewed through batteries and tapes like crazy and sounded bad too (flutter and all kinds of noise). One though had a built-in speaker which was cool as hell as I could blast my music like from a tiny boombox.
Eventually though I did get a real Sony walkman for birthday or another occasion. Unfortunately it was lost or stolen on some vacation
My Grandmother gave me one... (Score:2, Interesting)
I remember listening to music in full stereo with headphones for the first time as a young kid and thinking it was absolutely amazing!
Unfortunately, the thing ate batteries like candy and then the head phone jack just simply broke off. I opened it up to see if I could fix it. Wouldn't you know it, Sony designed the thing to break! There was a printed circuit board inside. Instead of being one big solid square or rectangle like you'd expect, Sony had cut a little finger of a circuit board for the head phone
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Re: My Grandmother gave me one... (Score:2)
Aiwas were the bomb brother. I had probably a half dozen Walkmans before I got an Aiwa and saw the light. Friend from HK showed me the way....
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I has a Panasonic personal stereo auto-reverse cassette player. It had a built in radio but I preferred to listen to tapes I had compiled. I would buy music on cassette and record the best songs onto HiFi videotape then transfer back to cassette
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then transfer back to cassette
I bet that process was interesting. Perhaps the LoFi VCR masked that tape hiss from the original cassette, which was then further corrected by recording back onto another cassette, which I assume was of the Maxell XL-II Chromium Dioxide variety to preserve the fidelity?
No, if it was a stereo VHS, the quality was quite good for the time. Better than the best dolby cassettes. Using a VHS tape as a transfer medium for cassette tapes was fine, as cassettes' noise floors were so high and the dynamic range so low.
I did something similar as the OP, but recorded "7th Day" albums from FM. While FM was not particularly hifi, it was definitely better than prerecorded cassettes.
Re: That I couldn't afford one (Score:2)
VHS Hi-Fi was a very good analog audio recorder,but you couldnâ(TM)t edit/splice the tape. The VHS tape moved fast enough, and the separate recording heads were of high enough quality that it approached reel to reel quality.
Re: That I couldn't afford one (Score:2)
Itâ(TM)s Called a mixtape, cassette players donâ(TM)t have playlists!
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I was still pretty proud of it however. My Grandfather gave me a set of rechargeable batteries and a charger which made it affordable to use.
I wore out my copy of The B-52s on that thing.
Ditto! (Score:2)
My Mum and Dad had to buy me a cheap Chinese knock-off about 18 months aftert the Walkman appeared.
The weirdest thing was that when I got it I had no music of my own, I had no tapes as I had no reason to own my own music 'cos whenever I listend to music I always listened to with my Mum and Dad in the car or at home. When I first got a cassette player of my own I still listened to my parent's 60s collections, mostly guitar rock like The Ventures and The Shadows and a lot of Country and Western ( my parents w
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The early Walkman models were very expensive. Japan is seen as a proving ground for new technology, for some reason they are willing to spend lots of money on new tech that might turn out to suck. The early Walkman had all kinds of features, like a built in mic and dual headphone sockets.
Sony knew that others would come to saturate the low end of the market so they pretty much ignored it. Walkman was always positioned as a premium brand that wouldn't chew up your tape. They were actually quite well engineer
Play button (Score:2)
The play button and how nice to feel physical mechanisms lock into place.
One bad mother (Score:2)
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Whenever I got something cool, bullies took it away and broke it or kept it. I got the "cool" brand of pants one day and they rubbed me against the bricks like a chalkboard eraser and tore them the first day I wore them. My mother wanted to sue them but I told her that would make bullying worse.
I learned to be bland and blend in as a nobody. It's safer. So you didn't get to date super-models; the quirky ladies are plenty of fun. Mainstream is boring anyho
Re: One bad mother (Score:1)
The answer would have been to kill them. No more bully problem.
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You don't leave the corpses behind, of course.
Kids these days are lazy...
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I listened to Gemini launches with my Channel Master AM radio and an earphone, only got caught by my teacher once. She made me report on the launch. Big mistake, I took the entire class period. She hated me.
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'Channel Master AM radio and an earphone'
All you young'ins had it easy compared to having to steal a wisker off the cat and tune a hunk of galena.
Re: One bad mother (Score:2)
Actually, I made crystal sets with razor blades, gum erasers, pins, and oatmeal boxes. Once got a signal just with rusty wire. Making speakers and headphones is stud.
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'Channel Master AM radio and an earphone'
All you young'ins had it easy compared to having to steal a wisker off the cat and tune a hunk of galena.
Huh. I thought back in the olden days that it was cat gut and tuna fish.
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What did the RIAA think of it? (Score:1)
That is what's most important.
Let us pay...
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Re:What did the RIAA think of it? (Score:5, Funny)
Let us pay...
Back in the 70's in the US everyone had a cassette deck, and would tape albums for their friends.
The RIAA came up with an ad campaign screaming, "Home Taping is Killing the Record Industry!"
Then the stoners that I used to hang out with twisted that around into, "Home Fucking is Killing the Prostitution Industry!"
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RIAA got their thirty pieces of silver with every sale of a blank cassette. I believe they originally sued to block the sale of cassettes and/or recorders. Samo with blank video tapes.
This past weekend, Walkman and 13 Y/O (Score:4, Insightful)
Over the weekend I had a birthday gathering for my child. One of the overnight camping guests was a 13 y/o boy. He brought his Walkman and huge collection of vintage tapes that were really my style of music. He gets his tapes from garage sales.
Although he also brought other electronic devices, he gave me hope for the next generation that they can still use other things as we did.
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Re: This past weekend, Walkman and 13 Y/O (Score:2)
I remember the first Jethro Tull album to be remastered for CD (Aqualung?) was remastered from the compressed and oddly-EQâ(TM)d vinyl master tape, and sounded like shit. The record company eventually admitted their mistake.
Professor's comments . . . (Score:3)
One of a more outspoken professor at my university was quoted in the school newspaper as saying:
"The people wearing these things seem to believe that life needs a soundtrack".
. . . and even better:
"I think that they are trying to jump start their brains in the morning".
What I remember (Score:1)
The thing I remember about the Walkman was that hardly anyone could afford the things. They were expensive- or seemed that way at the time- so the people I knew got the knockoffs.
The only person I knew who owned the genuine model was my aunt, who was just the kind of well off, sophisticated consumer who would get the very best. And the were an impressive feat of engineering. Hers would actually retract when you took the tape out so it was barely bigger than the tape was.
Had one in college (Score:2)
Got one just before college and carried it with me most of the time. I was always on foot, and having music as I walked around campus was nice, though the batteries ran out a lot and I'd keep forgetting to replace them.
Summers the Walkman was more important. I had a data-entry job one year, first in a pool with a bunch of middle-aged women and then by myself in the second shift. I invested in rechargeable batteries and made sure they were fresh before every shift. The next few summers I had more interesting
That is was too expensive for young me (Score:4, Informative)
All I could afford was one of those cheap plasticky Candle players that could only play and fast forward the tape; the supply-side spindle was just a plastic post. To rewind I had to flip the cassette over.
I miss that stupid thing, it was the first time I listened to music with headphones which was a strange experience. I remember my Tangerine Dream and Jean Michel Jarre tapes.
Only a few years later I was able to afford the Sony MZ-1 Minidisc Walkman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
That thing was awesome, huge, bulky, heavy, and made the coolest noise when ejecting the disc. People would be intrigued by the thing.
I miss being on the cutting edge.
It ate batteries (Score:2)
It's my primary MP3 player (Score:4, Interesting)
It's my primary DSD player (Score:2)
Why I like the Walkman... (Score:2)
The Piper at the Gates of Sqwawk (Score:5, Interesting)
I was in a band in the early 90's and we spent a fair bit of time on the road. My Walkman was my refuge from the droning sounds of the van and my bandmates. During one leg of a tour, we stopped at a used record shop (they had cassettes too!) and I picked up a used copy of Pink Floyd's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. I had never heard it before, but I knew it was Floyd's debut album, and was excited to hear the psychedelic strains of Syd Barrett. I popped the cassette into my Walkman, pressed play, and we were off to the next destination. The opening track started off with a sort of Hellish squeak - it sounded, conceivably, like those Gates opening into an ever-widening breach. The din persisted through the while song. I couldn't wait for that track to end.
However, the squeak from Hell kept going into track two. And three. By the time I got to the end of the first side, I kind of "got" it - the sound was a thematic element that tied the album together. The tape clicked to a halt, and I opened up the door to flip the cassette over. About that time, the drummer had taken his headphones off (everyone in the van was listening to their own music) and he said to me, "hey man, what the hell is wrong with your Walkman?" I then realized that the new aroma wafting through the van - intermixed with band BO, Dorito fumes, and probably no small measure of auto exhaust - was the smell of my Walkman motor burning up. The screeching noise was the last gasps of my Walkman, not Syd.
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Love it. Syd Barrett, weird noises. Absolutely.
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Not Walkman related, but your anecdote reminded me of the first time I played my new "Wish You Were Here" album (which was, coincidentally, a tribute to Syd).
I placed it on my fine Technics turntable, my Pioneer pumped the music through my Boses, and I was able to drown out the band that was playing downstairs. All was well with the world.
During the party my papa-san chair was moved and placed on top of the speaker cords. My girlfriend comes along and plops into the chair...just at the point before the actu
Walkman Reminiscences (Score:1)
I was blown away, but could not afford it. (Score:2)
For it's time it was a very small gadget, but had a big sound.
I was blown away.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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That it worked very well biking 20 miles (Score:2)
I remember a few things.
Buying the case, because otherwise the dust and snow would get inside.
How recording your own tapes was better than pre-bought tapes, because you could skip past tracks you didn't like and mix in others you liked, especially with the built in Dolby NR. And how different tape media had different sound quality.
How even though buying rechargeable batteries violated the warranty, it was a very very very good idea and saved a lot of money.
And that it worked quite well on long bike trips to
I was in New York City (Score:2)
Being trained on servicing the latest of Sony's cassette-based dictating machines, the BM-12. Sleek and to small. As an aside, there was no domestic market for dictating machines in Japan, just not how they did it. Anyways, I was learnin' these.
I always walked the city when I got there, and especially going by J&R Music World and 47th St Photo, where all the cool stuff I wouldn't see for 6 months or more back home was right in the windows.
And I saw it. The TPS-L2. OMG. O. M. G.
I was skating a lot then,
Sorry can you repeat that (Score:3)
I can't hear...
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What?
It has a headphone socket (Score:2)
Super Walkman (Score:2)
My dad worked for Hitachi ... (Score:2)
... so for my birthday as a kid, I instead got what would better be described as a brick. The audio quality in those light headphones wasn't great either. It was nigh unusable.
I was a little bit jealous of my classmates with Walkmans.
Instead of using that, I grew up listening to gramophone records, and tapes on my boombox.
BTW. My brother had Rick Astley's "Never gonna give you up" original on tape.
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So, the original Rick Roll, then?
God yes, they were the "TSDC Necktie" (Score:2)
They were rare in Minneapolis until two chaps from Toronto showed up wearing their earphones around their necks as a matter of course.
Hi, Drew!
--dave
My mother pulling one headphone to the side (Score:2)
Knowing Slashdot (Score:2)
They would say its a terrible idea and will never sell. Just like when the iPod was released.
My Dad tuning Mom out. (Score:5, Funny)
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Haven't done exactly that, but been there, been there.
When boomboxes had every feature (Score:3)
The walkman did one thing and did it very well.
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Never owned one... (Score:2)
"What do you remember about the Sony Walkman? Do you have any fond memories of the music player that are worth sharing?"
I thought it was pretty dammed expensive for a portable cassette player. But they were pretty popular among other guys on my submarine's crew for listening in their bunks.
Battery Life (Score:2)
kept losing mine (Score:2)
Kept leaving them on the plane or a bus. Couldn't afford anymore and gave up.
Japanese ones were the best (Score:2)
I could never afford a Sony during high school and had to made do with a Sanyo quad-AA-battery-eating "personal stereo". But when I move to Japan after college I went to Osaka's DenDen Town (like Akihabara) and bought some top-of-the-line Sony Walkman's (Walkmen?) for friends and family. The main differences were:
1. Made out of metal instead of plastic
2. Very slick paint jobs - my favorite was the British Racing Green one
3. Inline remote controls on the headset cable - had buttons, an LCD and a volume contr
Other brand (Score:2)
After a while, envying everybody a lot, I finally got a knockof brand. However, while my friends were walking around with headphones on all the time I found that I didn't like blocking out ambient sounds when out and around. I only used it sitting somewhere, etc. and at home I used my stereo. So it was a bit of a disappointment.
I'm still like that. Music is only an occasional pleasure. I also prefer reading to audio books because I concentrate better and miss fewer details.
Warning for posters (Score:2)
This article is a bald-faced attempt by /.'s marketeers to out the boomers.
Remember to click the "Post Anonymously" button.
I had the yellow waterproof one (Score:2)
I took that into the sauna and steam room and it worked just fine.
But my actual first walkman...was a Zenith. Had a little three number rotating numeric display which you could use to find a certain song on a tape.
Biking (Score:2)
I had a 25 mile route that took ~90 minutes, which was perfect for my autoreversing Walkman to play my mix tape.
Before someone bashes me for riding and listening to music, I kept the volume low enough to hear traffic.
Bad memory, and a lesson to companies (Score:2)
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Wait until you spend a ride on a bus with someone who feels the urge to share his taste in music with the rest of the riders and you wish he was a more selfish asshole.
Sony Watchman (Score:2)
I even have a few of those in mint condition, these are the ones that gets as small as they came, and have a CRT tube television inside them, fabulous stuff, high resolution too as they were using Cathode ray tubes, which meant the resolution was as good as the TV transmission at the time, 625 line system. You could read the subtitles back in 1980's with these in your pocket.
Sony wasn't the best at they walkman series, but they were certainly the innovators of the technology. I had a ridiculously expensive
I had two runs at this. (Score:2)
I had a non-Sony knockoff for a while but struggled to adjust my listening habits to cassettes and headphones. I just didn't listen to endless music - like my parents it was either the radio or I would deliberately put an album on.
It was much later than I got it and by then the Walkman of choice was MiniDisc. I had two at different times, one with the original MD format and the other that supported Hi-MD. Both genuine Sony devices. I loved MiniDisc - the best bits of CD combined with the best bits of casset
That it was impossible to get one (Score:2)
In our little backwater corner of Europe (that's what this was back then), it didn't even arrive until the early 80s. And even then it was insanely expensive. You would easily get a "real" cassette player for the price (actually about half that price), good luck convincing your parents to get one for you.
Of course I wanted one. Never got one. And nobody I knew got one. But at least we all were equally poor and didn't have to worry about it. Eventually we all got some cheap knockoffs that would maybe, kinda-
TWO jacks? That couldn't last! (Score:2)
Also, it came with this insane demo tape that had a jet fly through your head. It was pretty sweet.
Wired for Sound (Score:2)
I recall frequently hearing this song about the Walkman in 1981 when I was in 7th Form. On the rare occasions that I hear it nowadays, it brings back memories of that time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Saving up $120 for a year... (Score:2)
And then it being defective right after the 90- warranty.
Then getting a gift of a really nice one. It too being defective. And basically SONY = defective crap to me.
$120 is a lot of money for a 12 year old kid to save in the 80's.
A Walkman the size of a Cassette Tape Case (Score:2)
The best Walkman was the size of a cassette tape case (when empty). Insane design for the times.
To open it, you pulled it slightly apart, then inserted a cassette, closed and played.
The Walkman fit easily in a large multi-cassette-tape holding carrier bag.
Ate Batteries (Score:2)
So whatever (Score:2)
My grandmother had a portable cassette player from the 1960s that had an AM radio "cassette" you could put in to hear AM radio.
Granted it was probably a lot more expensive, but it existed as a retail product people far from rich could afford.
Tough and durable (Score:2)
It was the IN thing - the must have (Score:2)
It took me a year to convince my parents to buy me one. I recall it was the in thing at grade-school. "Everyone" had one.
I listened to so much music after that, copying records to tape. I also remember Sharing music and mix tapes. The biggest accessory was a headphone splitter jack so that you could listen with friends!!! Those long family drives or school trips I'd pack extra batteries and just listen. It was freedom.
Mine was the fancier model that had Auto-Reverse!! Kind of a big honker with room
Dropped Thirty Feet (Score:2)
Slim Whitman, you say? (Score:2)
If you're old enough to remember it you've forgotten.
"Shit?" No. For its time, it was awesome. (Score:3)
I remember the media launch of the Walkman when I was a student in Toronto. The TTC busses and subway cars had picture-ads showing people listening to the Walkman with their eyes as wide as saucers. I went into a store to listen to one. The ads were right. The fidelity was simply unlike anything else that could be carried around in a package that small.
Like others here, I couldn't afford one at the time. But it did strike me as revolutionary, both in terms of technology and in society. Now people could list
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And rechargeables sucked back then, you'd get a few minutes of play time out of them before they dropped too low to get more than a whine out of the walkman.
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Several of us got Sony Walkman (the am/fm radio one, not the cassette player) for christmas one year. Used two AAA batteries, though it would run many hours before needing new batteries. Used the headphone cable as an antenna. Reception was ok but not always sufficient depending on where you were. (worked better outdoors) Got a good amount of use out of them over the years, the unit was incredibly light and thin, and the headphones it came with were so light as to be easy to forget you were wearing them
Re: AA (Score:2)
Sounds very similar to me - got a blue Sony Walkman radio for Christmas one year (my brother got red). A few years later got the CD player. Used that until I got an iPod touch for the software I'm currently consulting on (in fact, my job right now is to supply my former company with an automation framework they can ship with their software).