Aiwa hi-fi audio walkmans

AIWA Portables always had a great reputation in the early days. Sony had some ownership dating back to the late 60's but I've never really heard if they shared technology. Around 92 I think Sony took controlling ownership and turned it into a budget line, we used to scratch our heads over that decision. Sony always had "budget" models and AIWA seemed to be a lot better but they flip-flopped it for some unknown reason.

 

I think hifi used to mean something but now that we can record and evaluate higher and lower freqencies much easier and how these "unheard" sounds actually do affect the overall sound, the name doesn't work as well. I wouldn't consider most of the equipment on this forum to be hifi but there's a few exceptions. I love looking back at hifi Tom's threads where he was chasing the best sounding boomboxes and he used to get interesting responses to what I thought was a straight forward question.

In the early 80's, 90% of the buying public didn't care or know what tape equipment could do, it was put a tape in listen and if you liked it buy it. Wow and flutter, frequency, that was for the guys with the Trams Ams with Blaupunkt Stereos, the rest of us didnt' know but just liked the way a little cassette player was almost as cool as a big stereo system. Having some Van Halen blistering through those headphones was bliss enough as long as you had a decent tape player. Sure we could have moved up to better players but this stuff was pretty expensive back then and it was hard to justify better sound when you were the only one that could hear it.

 

I was re-living some of the old forum, check out the threads from Walkman Archive and The Lion in regards to AIWA Portables, great information and photos!
http://www.stereo2go.com/topic/index.php?content_oid=234208499240486633&board_oid=522740502721869426
http://www.stereo2go.com/topic/inde...92314111653425&content_oid=215770785222165810