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The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

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Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#121

Post by tomhoward »

A mid-80s Walkman is central to one of my earliest vivid memories.

Among the gifts I received for my 9th birthday in 1986 were (1) An AM/FM radio Walkman (replete with the classic orange-padded on-ear headphones), and (2) a plastic kite with an eagle on it.

The following day, I walked over to the park nearest our house, stood in the middle of an open sports field, tuned my Walkman to the relatively new Australian rock music station EON-FM, and launched my eagle kite.

Fairly soon, as I stood there proudly flying my kite on what was a solidly windy day, the radio playlist transitioned into the intro to Money for Nothing by Dire Straits.

To this day, I can still feel the visceral sensation of the buildup of that intro and the sound explosion of that opening guitar riff, and in that moment I knew what rock'n'roll music was all about.

I sometimes think back to that just-turned-9-years-old kid in the middle of that field, flying that kite and having his mind blown by rock'n'roll blasted through his brand new Walkman, and think "you're doin OK kid."

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#122

Post by NeedMoreTea »

lm28469 wrote: post #73
agumonkey wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not the name it's how and why it was on a tape

> how and why it was on a tape I think you're overthinking the whole thing, it's not really "on" a tape. It's the default operation of a tape, they didn't have to come up with the idea, it's a side effect of the medium. You need a motor to move the tape, no motor = no movement = the tape stays in its current position. To automatically rewind the tape you'd need some sort of mechanism under tension in it which would p…

Motor or Bic biro. Essential for those times the car player (it was always the car player) mangled or despooled half the tape.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#123

Post by johnnycab »

kd5bjo wrote: post #92
lm28469 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how and why it was on a tape I think you're overthinking the whole thing, it's not really "on" a tape. It's the default operation of a tape, they didn't have to come up with the idea, it's a side effect of the medium. You need a motor to move the tape, no motor = no movement = the tape stays in its current position. To automatically rewind the tape you'd need some sort of mechanism under tension in it which would p…

What I really want to know is whether the fact that a standard pencil could be used to manually wind a cassette was an intended feature or a happy accident.

I would wager it was the latter as Philips missed a trick in rebranding it as an accessory/dongle and monetising it. Now, if it was Apple..

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#124

Post by slantyyz »

FabHK wrote: post #119

One super useful feature was "Auto Reverse", allowing you to listen to both sides of a tape without having to take the cassette out and flipping it. It came out 3 years later, eg in the Sony WM-7. One thing I learned while looking into this now is that Music Cassettes (MC) have the magnetic recording tape, and then at both ends a "leader", which is much stronger than the thin magnetic tape, so it doesn't break when t…

I used to buy leaderless cassettes and I had no issue with auto reverse on my portable cassette players.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#125

Post by NeedMoreTea »

livatlantis wrote: post #58
ekianjo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a lot of metal and classical music I find this part of your comment interesting because I have noticed such an overlap among a number of people versed in music. I wonder if there is a good way to explain this.

It is indeed interesting. I'd say that it has to do with: - complex structures (not necessarily always 4/4 or 3/4) - variations in dynamic range (loud parts vs. quiet parts) - storytelling / philosophical themes (the human condition, freedom, suffering, literature) - intense "solos" (Mendelssohn insanely fast yet moving segments on the piano vs. Petrucci going crazy on the guitar) - mastery of musical instruments (pa…

A surprising, or maybe not so surprising, number of metal bands, and song writers have borrowed heavily from classical. No end of interviews with rock guitarists where they talk of listening to some violin piece and wanting to honour or duplicate in on the guitar. No end of albums with a rock cover of some classical piece, from The Agonist's a capella of Swan Lake through several Pachelbel's Canon in D, etc.

Not forgetting a good few borrowing from the folk canon, and I don't just mean late era Rainbow after Ritchie got his new girlfriend. :)

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#126

Post by nicky0 »

khazhou wrote: post #59

I feel it's time for boomboxes to come back. Not purple medicine-pill bluetooth players, but big ol' boxes you can put on your shoulder and Fight the Power with 8" speakers. There was a whole movement around playing music out , now we just inject it into our ear canals. Nostalgia... or genius?

They are back. At least, in my neighbourhood, the kids are walking around with giant bluetooth shoulder-size boomboxes.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#127

Post by acheron »

khazhou wrote: post #59

I feel it's time for boomboxes to come back. Not purple medicine-pill bluetooth players, but big ol' boxes you can put on your shoulder and Fight the Power with 8" speakers. There was a whole movement around playing music out , now we just inject it into our ear canals. Nostalgia... or genius?

My opinion on that is about the same as Kirk and Spock's: https://www.wired.com/2016/09/punk-star-trek-iv-vulcan-nerve...

edit: while searching for that, I discovered that Kirk Thatcher is reprising the role in a cameo in the new Spider-man movie: https://www.startrek.com/article/trek-ivs-punk-on-bus-return...

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#128

Post by crikli »

> There were ways to bring music with you — on transistor radios, on boom boxes, on car stereos — but they forced you to subject everyone around you to that music, as well.

...and thanks to the Bluetooth speaker that era is back. Can't tell you how often I'm hiking or running in the mountains and some group's dreadful taste in music precedes them by a half mile.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#129

Post by opencl »

zeristor wrote: post #81

What is the current state of the art for music? DVD-Audio was barely a thing ten or so years ago. After buying a B&W Zeppelin Air I was signed me up for their Society of Sound with very high quality 5Gb audio files for an album. My Zeppelin has since died. Is audio quality still improving binaural tracks? The only time I’ve been really aware of audio quality was playing a Blu-Ray of an episode of Madmen.

Everything since CD audio has been either the same quality or worse. Increasing the sampling rate does nothing but encode ultrasonics which are at best inaudible and at worst introduce additional harmonic distortion into the audible frequencies. 16 bit samples with dithering are well beyond the dynamic range limits of human hearing.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#130

Post by hanniabu »

joncrane wrote: post #114
simonh wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a student I worked up a mix tape for a girl I was into. I spun the tape to the start of the second track then gave it to her. Next time I saw her I (casually) asked her something she could only answer if she'd heard the first track. That meant I knew she'd played it through, then rewound it and played it again.

Well? Did she play it all the way through?

Seriously, can't just leave us hanging with suspense like that
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