Games - Walkman

	Games - Walkman

The Walkman is a popular Sony brand used by the company to market its portable audio players, and is synonymously used to refer to the original Walkman portable personal stereo player. The original Walkman became famous for bringing about a change in the listening of music, allowing people to carry their own choice of music with them.

The first Walkman was a transistorized miniature portable cassette tape player invented by a German inventor. The first Sony Walkman stereo was sold in 1979 as the Soundabout. Akio Morita created the name Walkman, and until recently he was also credited with the invention of the personal stereo. However Sony has recently acknowledged the claims of Andreas Pavel, who created and patented a similar device, the stereobelt, in 1977. After 30 years of highly financed court battles against Pavel, Sony came to an out-of-court settlement in 2003.

The names "Walkman", "Pressman", "Watchman", "Scoopman", and "Discman" are trademarks of Sony, and have been applied to a wide range of portable entertainment devices manufactured by the company. Sony continues to use the "Walkman" brand name for all of these kinds of portable audio devices as well, after the "Discman" name for CD players was dropped in the late 1990s. The plural form is usually "Walkmans" rather than "Walkmen."

Cassette-based Walkman

The original blue-and-silver Walkman model TPS-L2 went on sale in Japan on July 1, 1979. In the UK, it was with stereo playback and two mini headphone jacks so two people could listen at the same time (though it came with only one pair of headphones). Where the Pressman had the recording button, the Walkman had a "hotline" button which activated a small built-in microphone (the Pressman), partially overriding the sound from the cassette, and allowing one user to talk to the other over the music. The dual jacks and "hotline" button were phased out in the follow-up Walkman II model, which was more purpose-designed.

Some devices were also capable of recording. The highest quality Sony Walkman recording cassette deck was the Walkman Professional WM-D6C, which was comparable in audio quality with the best non-portable cassette decks. Unusual for a portable device, it had recording level meters and manual control of the left and right recording levels. Powered by the mains or by 4 AA batteries (compared with 2 for most Walkman models), it was widely used by journalists and developed a following among hi-fi enthusiasts; unusually for a consumer-electronics product, it was in production, unchanged, for almost 20 years.

Amid fierce competition, primarily from Toshiba (the Walky), Aiwa (the CassetteBoy) and Panasonic, by the late 80's, Sony upped the ante once again by creating the playback only WM-DD9, launched in 1989 during the 10th Anniversary of the Walkman (five years after the WM-D6C) and became the holy grail for a niche group of cassette Walkman collectors. It is the only auto reverse Walkman in history to utilize a two motor, quartz locked, disc drive system similar to high-end home cassette decks to ensure accurate tape speed for both sides of playback (only one motor operates at a time depending on the side of the tape being played). Power consumption was improved by requiring only either one AA battery or one gumstick-type rechargeable, with optional AC adaptor input. It is also equipped with a tight gap amorphous tape head capable of reproducing the full 20-20,000 Hz frequency range, a gold plated headphone jack, and a 2mm thick aluminum body. Sony made this model with only sound quality in mind, therefore it contains no gimmick features such as in-line remote control, music search, or LCD readout. Its only features are Dolby B/C noise reduction decoding, Mega Bass/DBB bass boost, tape type select, and two auto reverse modes.

By the late 1990s, the cassette-based Walkman was generally passed over in favor of the emerging digital technologies of CD, DAT and MiniDisc. After 2000, cassette-based Walkman products (and their clones) were approaching technological obsolescence as the cassette format was gradually phased out. However, Sony still continues to make cassette-based Walkmans today.

Every five years since the Walkman was born in 1979 until 1999, Sony would celebrate by coming out with an anniversary cassette model on July 1st with unprecedented breakthroughs in technology and features. Each anniversary model carries a different theme while retaining some characteristics of previous anniversary models: WM-701S (user friendliness theme with remote control and slim sterling silver plated body - 1989), WM-EX1HG (efficiency theme with long battery life and pop-up eject - 1994), WM-WE01 (wireless theme with cordless remote control and cordless earphones - 1999). Sadly, cassette Walkman innovation would come to an end as during its 25th Anniversary, Sony chose to not introduce another limited run cassette model but instead, brought out the hard disk based NW-HD1 in 2004 to officially announce the death of the compact cassette.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Walkman ]

Games - Walkman

Cassette-based Walkman

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