With the advancement in the technologies in the Electronics industry today, we now have everything portable starting from Audio CD players to Mp3 Players. But one thing that still finds a separate place in all these advancements is the ?Walkman?.
The whole purpose of Portability started from the ?Walkman? thing where in a person could listen to music at probably all places without any need of electricity to run the equipment. It was invented in 1980?s by Sony Corporation of Japan. Since then a ?Walkman? became what I would say a necessity for the people and it still is..
I found this piece of info about history of walkman on the internet: According to Sony, ’’In 1979, an empire in personal portable entertainment was created with the ingenious foresight of Sony Founder and Chief Advisor, the late Masaru Ibuka, and Sony Founder and Honorary Chairman Akio Morita. It began with the invention of the first cassette Walkman TPS-L2 that forever changed the way consumers listen to music.
The developers of the first Sony Walkman were Kozo Ohsone, general manager of the Sony Tape Recorder Business Division, and his staff, under the auspices and suggestions of Ibuka and Morita.
My rvu is on such a Walkman of Sony make and the model is WM-FX195. I don?t think its available now but I thought that it needs a mention becoz it has performed well since the last two years so am writing on it. I received it as a gift from someone special so never bothered to ask its price but I think it was available in the 800-900 Indian rupees range.
SONY WM-FX195:
Consists of Cassette Playback and an Integrated Radio. The scale to set the desired station is on the front panel and all the adjustments are on the middle left side.
At the top u find all the controls of the tape. i.e. Start, Stop, Rewind, Forward, Battery Indicator and the on-off switch wherein if u want to switch off of the radio and tape just keep it in the tape position and remove the cassette.
The walky also has a feature known as Mega-Bass which is given as a separate control. Turning on will induce and increase the Bass effect in the playback. U exactly get the effect of the sound as if u r hearing it in a CD system with the Headphone on. Of course as it is a Sony u don?t need to worry about its output. Crystal clear sound where in u can hear all the instruments being played in the song which I can say u would never hear in the Audio System.
Coming to the side, here the controls for the Radio Tuning and Volume control are there.
The walky has a feature known as AVLS (Advanced Volume Limit Set- I m not sure about the full form maybe rite-maybe wrong.). It has two settings-On or Off. What AVLS does is-as soon as u turn the setting on and listen to the song at a particular volume, it keeps track of all the Volume changes that occur when u r listening. This means the next time u turn on this setting the volume will not increase beyond a particular limit even though u set the Volume control to its maximum limit. As soon as u turn it off u get the full output.
P.S.: When any of my friends?s asked about my walkman and I didn?t want to give it sometime, what I used to do is I used to set the AVLS on and tell my friend to listen to the output. They would say oh the sound is very less and I said I know but what can we do?and so I had to never part with my companion (and have still not..)
Coming to the Radio, it has two stations available AM and FM. Mostly I listen to FM because of Radio Mirchi. It has also has a setting known as FM Mode wherein u can set the station for Local or DX Mode. My assumption is the DX Mode involves fewer disturbances in reception since the FM channel is limited to a particular distance. So with the DX mode u would get say FM reception at some places where it is about to die. i.e. when u r leaving the city or something like some fringe areas. Else if u r in the city doesn?t make a difference whether is it set to Local mode or DX mode.
Runs on two AA cells and using normal cheap cells runs for about 6-7 hours using less rewind and Fast Forward.
One major advantage the Walky has that consider u r listening to a Cassette and u suddenly switch on the Radio (maybe inadvertently or intentionally) so now the cassette would stop where it was and the Radio would start on. Therefore after listening the Radio if u turn back to listen to the cassette just change the control to the Tape and start listening the cassette where u stopped.
Coming to the flipside there some of the negatives in the Walky as well (Only a few of them though):
No adapter support: This means it won?t run on electricity as an alternate. Of course as I am saying means I am contradicting the word ?Portability? but well when u are at a place where electricity is available there still u would have to run it on battery which is costlier.
The scale of Radio is slightly not properly calibrated: Suppose I m listening to 91.9 FM Radio Mirchi so on the scale it should show 91.9 or may be 92 MHz but it indicates the setting to 95 Mhz?
No sound settings other than Megabass: Well except Megabass u won?t find the equalizer of say treble, rock etc settings in it.
No Autostop after rewind: This annoys me the most. The tape won?t stop after completely rewinding. We have to manually stop it. And if u forget that u have kept the tape on rewind then well be ready for a couple of fresh cells becoz it would absorb all the power.
Alrite I have written all I could on my Walky. Hope u all like my rvu?please do RRC it.
And last but not the least??.? It?s a SONY?