After years of production, making Walkmans smaller or better sounding or better mechanically or electrically, or lasting longer on battery, touch sensitive, or after 1990 cheapening most of them there are still gems in at least one category. What if there was one 'perfect' Walkman for you (maybe there is already)? My would be: Mechanically like Aiwa PC202, it seems really well made Sonically like Aiwa PC202 (though if possible not with electrolitic caps) Electronically like Panasonic RQ S/SX (those with S transport) Size and look wise like Sony WM-501, maybe with touch buttons on top like some Panasonics from series S and bigger clear window to see more of the tape. Powered by 2xAAA battery (3v, more power to the headphone amplifier) If possible with Dolby B/C, with EQ, automatic tape selector but with manual tape selector override.
I would like to add: - direct or disc drive mechanism, auto reverse for low and stable W&F in both directions. Best seems to be DD9, but that is ultra complex and one off. Panasonic had a few great ones too. - Amorphous heads like can be found on the higher end models for maximum frequency range. - Head in rest should not touch tape. - Headphone output power like D6C or better to drive beefier over ears. - USB C or mini USB charging port .
- Relatively heavy to feel like a real thing, but not too heavy. Small and heavy is better than large and lightweight. - Preferably metal body, rigid and that takes scratches and dings with dignity. - Super-robust paint, less important for metal body. For plastic body, only lacquer for shine, but no white paint over black plastic or vice versa. No transparent and then painted plastic parts. No fake aluminum or carbon fiber - either the real deal, or just use paint or normal plastic. - Some nice color, not boring black or silver. (Blue DD33 looks niiiiice! Red DD30 also looks great!) - Tasteful and serious design of a polished brick. No weird snake like shapes. - Counterbalanced springs in the door. Basically, look at any decent portable MiniDisc player. It should make a meaty "clack!" when opened and closed. - Buttons that can be easily pressed when needed, but that do not activate by themselves when the device is in a pocket. - Screwed together, no tabs, latches, "claws" and whatever else that can be easily closed on a factory but cannot be opened without special tools. - I don't care about particularities of the mechanism, but having W&F below 0.15% WRMS is very much preferred (below 0.1% WRMS would be perfect). - Mechanism should be easy to access and easy to service. If things are known to break or wear out, they should be easily replaceable, and spares should be available for reasonable price. - I don't need frequency response beyond 15KHz, but the range before it should be as flat as possible. - Big non-scratch window so I can see reels spinning. - No major controls on the cassette door, so if the door is ripped off, the device would still be functional. - If remote is available, full control should still be available on the main body. - Robust autoreverse. Although I hate Sony's graphics for autoreverse with idiotic triangles. - Tape type selector (I prefer auto-type selector, why walkman manufacturers elected to use stupid manual selectors instead of automatic is beyond me). - Bass/Treble dials or MegaBass with two settings (mild and heavy). - Dolby B (I don't care about other systems, as most pre-recorded cassettes used Dolby B, and Dolby S is compatible with Dolby B). - I don't care about radio, clock, alarm, song search, second headphone output, remote control. - I don't care about built-in clip: they either break, or the walkman unclips and falls... Just a nice pouch would be fine. - I don't care for USB charging port. - I don't care much for Bluetooth, but it would be a nice touch. - No built-in battery. - Ability to charge rechargeable batteries. - Minimal waterproofing, like from splashes and rain. - No noticeable distortion when the device is shaken. - Tasteful typeface, no excessive info or bragging. High-contrast and large enough letters with etching for paint so that the letters would not scratch off. - I don't mind it being expensive, but it must be reliable like a tank, must work for decades. - I prefer precision-made mechanism to various options of fine-tuning. I don't want to fine-tune. I am sure I forgot something
I think you forgot 'if remote is available, headphone jack should be accessible without it'. I would happily take two jacks in every Walkman I have. I love to listen to the same song with somebody. I will tell you why manual selector for tape type is better that automatic - I have metal tapes that have hole for type I only (standard wasn't set yet), type III tapes could be played either on type I or II, some people record better type I tapes with type II setting, some prerecorded tapes are type II, but have hole only for type I. Of course, those are deviations from standard, but there is pretty much no standard for tapes at all. All those Dolby, dbx, bias settings for record, EQ settings for record/play makes manual setting better option. And I have 3 or 4 Sony Walkmans with automatic tape selector which have it broken and don't even engage play. Even if manual selector was broken, I still could use it on wrong setting and play tape with older Walkmans.
A perfect walkman should have the following features from my point of view: - metal case which is resistant to scratching and also can be polished when it gets scracthed without color fading or writings fading; - it should be small, but not to small: something that can eventually fit in a pocket would be rather nice, but not as small as a WM-10; - if I were to design such a walkman, I would use a direct drive system for both capstan/capstans and table reels. It can be made very compact and it can also adjust torque electronically depending on load (at the table reels), it can also adjust backtension automatically, depending on load; - on the system proposed above, the wow&flutter would not be a problem at all and such a device could probably achieve a figure of 0.02% WRMS easily; - it should have no rubber parts, except for the pinch rollers (already solved by direct drive). The pinch rollers should be either made with a standard dimension, so replacements can easily be found, or made from a very durable rubber; - head should be either amorphous or ferrite; I would prefer ferrite, because of better magnetic properties and the fact it will almost never wear; - it should use standard batteries, like AA or AAA, not custom made lithium cells; - it should be full logic, also having a display with backlight to show the main settings (like EQ, Dolby, battery level); - it would be nice to have autoreverse, but for me it's not something critical, as taking the cassette out and reversing it manually adds to to experience; it would also increase the cost significantly to add 2 direct drive motors; - Bluetooth for me is not relevant and I think people which are interested in these kind of devices have at least one pair of wired headphones or IEMs, so it shouldn't be a problem; those people which only have wireless headphones are probably not the ones buying walkmans anyway; - a big window would be nice (as @CDV mentions), maybe having a transparent/semitrasparent LCD on that window as well; - bass, treble enhancing circuit or EQ dials are something that may be nice to have, but I find this feature not useful on good quality headphones or IEMs (with "flat" frequency response); - it should have a decent amount of output voltage swing on the headphone amp, in order to be able to drive higher impedance (let's say between 50 ohms and 100 ohms) and low sensitivity headphones (102 dB/mW or less); - the headphone amp should be designed so that the distorsion does not increase with volume level significantly (device can be used at maximum volume); - head and head preamp should be designed to minimise the noise inherent to the device itself; the SNR should be as high as possible even with Dolby OFF and increase to the point of barely audible with Dolby C; - frequency response should go all the way to 20kHz; - should have Dolby B and Dolby C NR systems; - it should have recording capability with AC bias (for all tape types, or at least type I and type II) and Dolby encoding capability; this would make it very hard or impossible to make it autoreverse, due to the AC erase head necessary for chrome; it should have LINE IN; - ti should come with a nice leather carrying case in order to protect it when carrying outside or storing it; - should use as many discrete circuits as possible, this way making the device way more repairable; Even where ICs are to be used (like motor drive), it would be prefferable to use off-the-shelf ones, not custom designs; - a USB-C port for external power (as @Emiel mentions) would be very nice feature, also eliminating the possiblity of reverse polarity; a standard USB-C connector should be used for repairability, not a custom made one (like some modern laptops use); - the schematics, PCB layouts and microcontroller firmware should all be completely open-source; EDIT: For me, the ideal walkman already exists in the form of SONY TCD-D8. It has most of the features in my list with some exceptions like using a lot of custom ICs and other custom parts. But on the other hand it has zero wow&flutter, SNR in the 90dB range, frequency response goes to 22kHz (at 48kHz sampling), does recording, has line in, has line out, its headphone amp has plenty of power, uses standard AA batteries, has an LCD with a lot on info including VU-meters, it's as smallest as it could be given all the features it has (a lot smaller than a D6C), the cassette door and back cover are made of metal (both can be polished without color fading). EDIT2: There is an even smaller version, the TCD-D100, which will fit into a pocket very nicely.
"It would also increase the cost significantly to add 2 direct drive motors" Why? Wouldn't it be easier to make a change direction drive (aditional gear or two)?
Look at the DD9 service manual and the mechanism. It is amongst the most complicated in portable cassette players And still has 2 belts.
@Raul Because the motors themselves would have to be custom made and specifically tailored to this application: very thin coils and PCB underneath. Stepper motors are a lot more complex and expensive than DC motors that are used in most walkmans. They're also harder to drive, requiring a dedicated microcontroller just to read sensors and make adjustemnts based on load, adjust the backtension, etc. These motors also require dedicated complex circuitry to drive them, besides the microcontroller itself. Of course, if we were to give up all the fancy automatic adjustments I mentioned, the microcontroller could be eliminated. But I thought it would be nice to make a mechanism that has the same speed and wow&flutter, no matter what cassette shell you use. Think about a basic design with the features described already requires 3 of such motors (4 for autoreverse). If we were to eliminate autoreverse and backtension automatic adjustment, we could end up with only 2, but then we need another gear/solenoid mechanism to drive REW. This is something that has actually been done to some professional Hi8 video recorders (if I remember right), DDS tape drives. But those were mass produced and still expensive. In this particular application, the stepper motors were used for fast tape speed and very fast winding speed. In the 2 attached pictures can be seen the table reel drive of a DDS tape machine. This one uses mechanical brake for both braking after FF/REW and backtension. It already uses 2 specialized drive ICs and 2 custom transformers. What I proposed was to do this completely magnetic, which would add a lot of complexity to the driving circuits. Another example would be CD players: most use DC motors for spindle rotation, although a stepper motor would provide much better speed control and will also wear a lot harder. The reason they used DC ones comes down to manufacturing cost. However, optical drives used in computers all use stepper motors for the spindle beacuse of very high rotation speeds necessary.
So far everything ok but I look at the electronic Audio part which makes a difference when you listen to it I wish it were so ... Transistor preamplifier or Fet even better for low background noise ... Dolby BCS encoding (exaggeration) ..... Here are two examples already made by sony and I would say very similar (If not identical ) for audio quality with current chips I would replace that 4558 line amp with another less noisy one and a good output amplifier ...
I've tried to capture this too in the table in the Genealogy thread. For instance, the DD-100's DOL (bass and more expansion) circuit is completely made out of discrete components. Potentially you can retro fit it to any DDII to make a DD-100 out of it, bar 2 resistors. Looking to newer models, the DD9 and DX100 use newer ICs, with only 1 IC proprietary. Not sure if these can still be sourced, or if later iterations are even made.
Some of the custom made SONY ICs can be sourced for repairing the walkmans. But I'll give a simple example, the notorious CX20084 used in many SONY walkmans costs about 70 euros to source as of October 2021. Not to mention not too many are available for sale. However for a new design, that would be something no company would do. Even companies that manufacture ICs, recommend not using parts that are at the end of their liftime in new designs. I attach a picture for reference. Except for Dolby C encoding/decoding, most functions can be achieved with discrete components or off-the-shelf ICs, which can both avhieve better performance and more repairability.
Understood indeed. The quality of the second hand ICs is also a question of course, and spending up to 70 euros on a single used one, not always easy to justify.
Speaking of electronics and such, of course I would like that Walkman to be more like 50h on batteries vs 2h. Of course if it had more power on headphone jack output then I think we would all sacrifice half of that powerimg time with ease. Which brings me to question how it's even possible that in 10 years (WM-701C vs Panasonic RQ-SX75) there was such change that 701C played 2,5h on 1 AA and SX75 close to 50h (They stated 85 hours but I guess its gum battery + AA).
Brushless motors were undoubtably a big help. There is a good reason why every half decent cordless power tool, and similar gadget now uses them. From the number of connections to the motor I am quite certain my Panasonic RQ-E27V does as well
I posted a similar message in another thread but can't find it now. The progress is remarkable to say the least! Look at the WM-EX910 and 921 (2001) - current draw while playing (regardless of direction) is 24mA, ffwd 35 and rew 32. Compared that with the F701c (1989) - current draw while playing is 210mA, ffwd and rew 120! Conclusions: - in 12 years they were able to re-engineer the Walkmans to becomes almost 9 times as power efficient in playback mode! - don't use ffwd and rew too often on the older devices if you are going for battery life, although they were optimized too, only factor 4 though. Even Minidisc players can not meet such a low playback draw, unless they are coasting. With that I mean in playback mode using cached data so the motors are temporarily switched off, it gets them down to 20mA (MZ-N505) in that mode. Not a completely fair comparison though, because in normal playback mode with all gears spinning, current draw is 160mA. I don't know the exact relation to coasting - normal pb mode, but I bet it won't average at 24mA combined. I will post an overview next month with some key attributes of a few of these Walkmans, much easier to compare that way.
Would it be possible to change motor to brushless in older Walkmans? I mean EX9xx motor in F701C for example. I think those are smaller, so at least size would not be a problem.
I don’t believe so @Raul. The size is not the biggest problem if you ask me, but these motors differ quite a bit in terms of how they are driven, how they are stopped (brake), how stalling is detected, etc. The ICs and circuitry are not 1:1 exchangeable either. Forgot to add: it is not just the motor that makes a mechanism energy efficient - it is an important component though. One other factor would be the number of gears engaged in any particular mode that can cause friction.
it is not enough to change the engine to extend the battery life ... all the electronics must be rethought to reduce consumption
