My son (21) just bought a Sony Walkman cassette player and he loves it

[LightninBoy]

It is just so weird. Certainly my son is not the typical 20 something music consumer. He is a musician and listens and enjoys many different genres of music. He has Spotify, but still bought CDs from the bands he loved. But now he's raiding my stash of cassettes tapes and going to 2nd hand music stores to pick up used cassettes for dirt cheap.

Regarding the Walkman, he says:
* The sound quality is great (? how bad is spotify if he things this ?)
* He likes that there is no direct track access; it encourages him to listen to the entire album
* He likes the tactile feel of flipping the tape and rewinding

Its interesting to me how some people desire the tactile physical connection to their music format, while others (most?) don't give a shit.

 

[theREALdotnet]

I got the Sony WM-2 back in ‘81 with the orange MDR-4L1S headphones, and I was blown away by the sound quality. I had never head anything like it before. I vividly remember Grieg’s Op.16 piano concerto on the demo cassette that came with the Walkman.

The WM-2 was the first “real” Walkman, after the original model, which was quite a bit chunkier and called “SoundAbout” initially. I had several more Walkman models after this, but none knocked me off my feet like the WM-2.

 

[DonR]

The shine dulls once maintenance is required. New belts, worn heads, sticky capstans.

 

[escape2]

Its interesting to me how some people desire the tactile physical connection to their music format, while others (most?) don't give a shit.

Yes, there certainly was something magical about handling physical media, something that brought the listener closer and made it more personal.

But there are downsides, too - tapes wear out over time, they get stuck and crumpled, heads and rollers get dirty, etc. I don't miss these hassles.

 

[theREALdotnet]

The shine dulls once maintenance is required. New belts, worn heads, sticky capstans.

Getting good sound out of cassettes was a nightmare. Not only did you have to fastidiously clean capstan wheels and rollers, you also had to carry a pencil on you at all times to respool tape salad, and a small screw driver for adjusting the head azimuth on the go.

 

[JeffS7444]

I once owned an amazing Sony Walkman which was only the size of a cassette case. But head azimuth issues, wow and flutter drove me nuts. I consider my first good Walkman to be the TCD-D3 DAT Walkman.

 

[LightninBoy]

Getting good sound out of cassettes was a nightmare. Not only did you have to fastidiously clean capstan wheels and rollers, you also had to carry a pencil on you at all times to respool tape salad, and a small screw driver for adjusting the head azimuth on the go.

I don't think I ever did any of that. Which is probably why I remember cassettes sounding pretty bad.

 

[DavidMcRoy]

Non-physical media eliminates the "ritual" involved with playing records, tapes and CDs. I suspect a lot of people take pleasure in that, even if only subliminally.

 

[MattHooper]

Hey, I’m happy for the cassette weirdos to take some of the heat off us vinyl fans. “You think I’m weird?”….

 

[DonH56]

This article hit my inbox this morning: https://www.designnews.com/automati...9a455c2418c68d53ac69572ad9fb27e7148357cffe4cc

Looks like another nostalgic fad...

 

[Fregly]

I am not impressed until he gets an 8 track.

 

[odarg64]

Cool. I also started with a Walkman II in 1981. Probably the nicest give I've ever received, I used it all through college. I spent a lot of time with cassettes in the early to mid-80s, borrowing records for taping. Dolby B and C (but not dbx). Good times until CD players and discs became somewhat affordable. I dumped my cassettes ca. 1990 and never looked back.

The inventor of the cassette died last year:

Lou Ottens, Inventor Of The Cassette Tape, Has Died

"Next time you make that perfect playlist on Spotify or send a link to share a song, you can thank Lou Ottens," documentary filmmaker Zack Taylor told NPR.

www.npr.org

"Ottens was famously unsentimental about the invention that has accounted for some 100 billion sales, according to NRC. In a career devoted to seeking higher fidelity and advancing technology, he dismissed tapes as primitive and prone to noise and distortion."

"Nearly 20 years after Philips introduced cassette tapes, Ottens helped the company to develop compact disc technology for the consumer market and, with Sony, to settle on a format that would become the industry standard.

"From now on, the conventional record player is obsolete," Ottens declared when production CD players emerged, as the BBC reported."

 

[LightninBoy]

I am not impressed until he gets an 8 track.

I started to discuss 8 track with him, but then realized I didn't have the words to describe what an odd experience that was.

 

[Joe Smith]

I'm always pleased to see the cassette format given its due. I still use 'em - in the 70s, it was just "part of the system" for most of us, and how music got shared. Alas, I no longer have a working Walkman and my last mono Sony TC-56 player/recorder (the compact one all the 70s news reporters used to shove in the faces of politicians) gave up the ghost. I can repair many things that go wrong with full size decks, but the compact units are pretty hard to service. I think the current vinyl comeback and the lesser "dabbling" occurring in tape is all tied to the experience, and "ownership" of music - which is the same feeling that a lot of us brought to this back when we were young, and building a music library. There are certainly lots of cheap pleasures to be had these days collecting well-treated cassettes compared to vinyl pricing. Not as permanent as vinyl, yes: but I still have cassettes I went off to college with in '76 that play just fine.

 

[Neddy]

I had the TPS-L2 (blue metal one), and loved it. The sheer mechanically 'rightness' of it was a joy to use.
And remember, compared to the competitors out there (Advent decks, etc) the thing had stunning quality - for the time.
Also had (still have!) the MD-R7 headphones which were even more impressive (still are).
But, after 5 ? years it started having 'mecanically bits' problems (belts, etc) and my dealer - a straight shooter rarity - told me it wasn't worth repairing esp with new tech on the horizon. ("Back then" it took years and years and years for new tech to make it to the consumer!).
IRCC, I replaced it with a small CD player, tho it didn't get nearly the portable use the walkman did.
Still have the CD player, too.

 

[Dxnc]

I still have nightmares about favorite cassettes getting eaten and trying to wind a mess of tape back in and fix the broken pieces - which of course happened for real back in the day.

 

[Thomas savage]

It is just so weird. Certainly my son is not the typical 20 something music consumer. He is a musician and listens and enjoys many different genres of music. He has Spotify, but still bought CDs from the bands he loved. But now he's raiding my stash of cassettes tapes and going to 2nd hand music stores to pick up used cassettes for dirt cheap.

Regarding the Walkman, he says:
* The sound quality is great (? how bad is spotify if he things this ?)
* He likes that there is no direct track access; it encourages him to listen to the entire album
* He likes the tactile feel of flipping the tape and rewinding

Its interesting to me how some people desire the tactile physical connection to their music format, while others (most?) don't give a shit.

My cd player broke in my car , reconnecting with tape had bought me joy plus the tape player in my 350z is quite good. Can't belive how revealing of source it is.. its all about the music , then the recording... long long after that comes everything we get obsessed with .

And those obsessions disappear when there people to share the music with ime .

 

[LightninBoy]

This article hit my inbox this morning: https://www.designnews.com/automation/cassette-tapes-are-making-comeback?ADTRK=InformaMarkets&utm_source=eloqua&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=15_NL_DN_Daily_Edit_Sub_20220810&sp_cid=12919&utm_content=15_NL_DN_Daily B_Edit_Sub_20220810&sp_aid=23013&sp_rid=159513&sp_eh=4fd96b3af2f6eccaeea9a455c2418c68d53ac69572ad9fb27e7148357cffe4cc

Looks like another nostalgic fad...

I told my son to buy up the cheap cassettes while they are still cheap. Once the hipsters jump on board, the price will skyrocket.

 

[odarg64]

I told my son to buy up the cheap cassettes while they are still cheap. Once the hipsters jump on board, the price will skyrocket.

Oh, I bet hipsters 'discovered' that market a while ago.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/09/09/apparently-not-content-with-vinyl-hipsters-are-also-bringing-back-the-cassette/

"bringing back the cassette"

Right...

 

[MRC01]

Funny you mention this. Last year I resurrected my late brother's GE walkman from the early-mid 1980s. The only new part it needed was the rubber belt (it has a serpentine belt). The rest was just demagnetizing, cleaning, and tuning azimuth & speed with a test tone tape. And spraying electrical cleaner into the switches & volume sliders. It was/is surprisingly well made and easy to resurrect.

While I was at it, I also resurrected my old Sony walkman from the 1990s. This one was harder to tune properly because it uses the most el-cheapo crapola adjustment pot for tuning the speed. Even after spraying contact cleaner in it and swirling it back and forth through its range several times, it's still jerky. Surprising how much better the old GE was.

Either way, they both work like new, though the sound quality is definitely vintage 1980s. I don't see the attraction or reason for any hype around it. Your average phone has FAR superior sound quality. And with pretty much all popular music squashed/compressed to death in production these days, sound quality doesn't matter anyway (says the grouchy old man).