# Walkman for Older (or not-so-old) Ears



## YaReMi (Mar 9, 2006)

My 2020 idea, and lets call it pandemic-driven (sounds cool), was to go back to listening to music on a walkman. Years ago I enjoyed copying records and CDs to tape and I missed it. 
I managed to find a decent used walkman (it wasn't easy!), purchased a TASCAM 122MK3 that I was dreaming of owning many years ago (still lots of money now!) and started looking for new cassettes (a bit tricky).
I decided to use this new-old setup to copy some of my vinyl to cassettes, analog to analog. The results are very rewarding - music that is not subjected to mp3 algorithms sounds so much better. Tape hiss, to me, is not a problem (I avoid using any noise reduction) and frequency response is not an issue when your ears are my age. Apparently, by the time we hit middle-age, we can expect to hear only up to around 14,000Hz. Old age is the best noise reduction!
Anyone else into cassettes?


----------



## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

YaReMi said:


> copying records and CDs to tape


Tape decks were a godsend when they came out, when trying to learn a guitar phrase/lick and having to lift the needle back a smidgen over and over.


----------



## guitarman2 (Aug 25, 2006)

I bought my self a high end pair of blue tooth headphones, that with spotify why would I ever go back to a walkman. I had a walkman in the 80's and then on to a discman. It was great at the time but would never go back.


----------



## Hammerhands (Dec 19, 2016)

I agree that MP3s are terrible, but I decided to go lossless, in fact I’m setup for high-resolution audio.

Most music players that will do MP3 will also do lossless, you just need a bigger drive or more cards.


----------



## jb welder (Sep 14, 2010)

YaReMi said:


> Anyone else into cassettes?


& 8 track


----------



## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

jb welder said:


> & 8 track


I had that same unit. And the Fostex as well.


----------



## jb welder (Sep 14, 2010)

laristotle said:


> I had that same unit. And the Fostex as well.


And that's a Teac V-900x in there, was a seriously good machine in it's time (still is).


----------



## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

jb welder said:


> And that's a Teac V-900x in there, was a seriously good machine in it's time (still is).


It was tough to tell the the difference and I was going by memory. lol


----------



## jb welder (Sep 14, 2010)

laristotle said:


> It was tough to tell the the difference and I was going by memory. lol
> View attachment 359822


No, you were right, that's definitely a X-18 in my pic. The V-900x is the black one behind it, under the TR-801 8-Track cartridge recorder.


----------



## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

Aye. Thanks for the clarification.


----------



## Kenmac (Jan 24, 2007)

Wow, talk about thinking alike. Early last week I was thinking about my old Sony Network Walkman MP3 player that I used quite extensively on my way to and from work for about three years and I was thinking of getting it out again and ripping some new music from CDs and converting them into MP3s and moving them over. I dug it out and surprisingly it still charged up. It didn't take that long either. The only thing is this player isn't a "drag & drop" type as Sony, at that time, was really trying to sell people on their ATRAC format which they claimed was superior to MP3. Not surprisingly it didn't sell all that well but luckily Sony saw the error of their ways and offered the owners of these units a chance to send them in and for $20.00 they'd upgrade the firmware so it would recognize MP3s natively. (Which I did.) But you still have to use Sonys software to move the files over. I did some searching and found a copy and I'll probably be trying it out next week. I also found a video on YouTube where the owner talks about the player, a bit of its history and he also does a teardown of it. Here's the video:


----------



## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

A tape cassette... I haven't gotten back into that yet, but I think I might be getting close. I've been back into vinyl for years. I even hooked up my 5-disc CD changer that has been boxed for years. I have some great 90's CD's!! 
A few weeks ago I used my TEAC cassette deck tied into my DAW to digitize some 4 Track recordings for a buddy. Certainly got me thinking about all those cassettes I had. Literally hundreds. I walked away from them in the divorce, but I still ended up with some. 

Great nostalgia piece.


----------

