Sony DD portables genealogy

Given the sheer number, I did not go through the entire list. However, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven are in but only with a few albums. Seems similar to me: a normal Walkman would do fine for playback of non-classical kind of music.
Mechanism remark? The DD9 is a great unit, but it is not exceptional in terms of stamina, frequency response or headphone output. The design, DX100 and DD33 would follow soon, but especially the 2 motor mechanism made it stand out. Even the gold plated jack, does that really make a difference?
Looking at @autoreverser , @kent, @walkman archive , I would not at all consider myself a collector. I buy what I like when I have time, but by no means I can fill a mini museum.

 

I don't have issues with driving my headphones with any of my Walkman, I use headphone amp with every single one of them.

 

Out of curiosity, do you also own a digital media device that you listen to through the headphone amp?
Objectively, what do the DC2 or D6C deliver, that a modern portable setup can’t do? Besides strange model naming/numbering conventions.
My simple iPhone 12 + small inline DAC is good enough, no need for oxygen free cables, speakers with carbon cones etc. to enjoy great quality audio. Nor do I have room for a dedicated audio room.

 

I have an iPod nano with just audio books on, the iPod is only for audio books.
Not sure what you are asking about the DC2 & D6C?

I don't have music on my phone, I keep music and phone separated.

 

I agree with the fact the a particular device should sound good to the ears of the listener. But at the same time, meeasurements (being it distorsion, wow&flutter, frequency response or SNR) should correlate with what we hear.
That's because one can have a subjective opinion about what "sounding good" means and can even enjoy a higher distorsion (like in tube amplifiers). Others can like the tape hiss (low SNR) and enjoy that.
I consider myself that as part of the experience, although I do like Dolby NR systems as well. But that doesn't mean there isn't a significant improvement from a 50-60dB SNR to the 90dB SNR most early digital systems offered.
Modern digital systems offer even better than that, going to 100dB SNR or even higher. And it does make the difference between an audible backround hiss caused by amplifier/DAC and the lack of it or close to it.

It's like the discussion between tube amplifiers and transistor ones. Obectively, solid state are the ones which will get the lowest distorsion (THD + IMD), lowest noise floor and highest power (all at the same time).
On the other hand, those who love the sound of tube amps, will always argue that those "sound better". And I understand their perspective, but their definition of "better" is not necessarily an objective one.

So to me, both measuring and listening are equally important, as they should always correlate with each other. When they don't there is clearly a subjective opinion. What I'm trying to state is there's a difference between "X is better" and "I like X more".
Of course there's nothing wrong if one is just interested in his/her subjective perception, but then it would be hard to make an assesment like: "A THD above x% sounds bad", because one can't have a correlation between how that x% sounds like and what x is.

 

Measurement is important to designers, engineers, repair technicians etc. Designers and engineers need to design things that work well have a measurable spec, repair technicians need to be able to check their work after repair.

For the end user, it does not make a blind bit of difference they just need something that works and sounds good.
Let’s say an end user gets something that works and sounds good to them, so now they find a measuring tool to measure the said device. They find it does not measure well, now what? Do they toss it out because it does not line-up with what their ears tell them?
Like I say it’s irrelevant to the end user, it’s only relevant to the end user as bragging rights.

 

I undertand what you are stating and I agree: doing measurements is not important for the end user. And he/she shouldn't need to do any measurements, because of lack of test equipment and knowledge.
However, what I was trying to say is the devices should have a specification for the consumer to see. Otherwise, how am I going to make a differnce between 2 products, if none has specifications ?
They can both sound good at first glance, but there may be subtleties that will only be heard if one knows what to look for. If I were to judge only by this, the one with better marketing is always going to win.

That's what I was trying to find out in the wow&flutter thread I created: on average, what w&f figure users find acceptable on belt driven units (which don't have a spec, otherwise I would have taken that as the standard).
I wanted to know that in order for me to have standard when repairing walkmans and know I should obtain X% value.
This is also important for the user when I do report where I state the wow&flutter measurement. I mean the user should know that the measurement is within spec, not do the measurement himself/herself.
Of course, I can also think that as long as it is within spec, there's nothing to share, because the user doesn't care as long as it sounds "right". However, in my experience, many people do care about seeing those measurements.

There are 2 perspectives (both are valid), when it comes to this subject. I'll give you an example: SONY never gives any specifications on their DAPs.
They also do a lot of bullshit marketing, like stating the use of lead-free solder (which is required by RoHS regulation, meaning all devices use it) improves sound quality. Do their DAPs sound good ? Yes, they do sound good, but there are better ones out there as well.
On the other hand, there are other brands which have a lot of specifications for the user to see. I personally prefer to compare between devices that have specs, because this way I know better which one to choose.
Of course there are other aspects to consider, like cosmetic design, how ergonomic a device is, etc.

I do agree that designers, engineers and repair technicians should be much more concerned about measurements and how to get those specs right. But the end user should know the end result.
There's also another aspect: a big manufacturer may not want to share specs with users because they're not as good as some competitors which do share specs. Is that good for the end user ? My opinion is no.

 

Still not relevant, as people not knowing much will just choose on specs alone and that does not tell the whole story. Remember the gigahertz race with CPU’s?

When I buy kit, I listen at my dealers then I take home a demo kit to use in my home with my own system over a weekend or week. By living with the kit then I get to learn more about it, I have saved myself many an expensive mistake by doing this.

I run Spectral Audio at home, they don’t publish much of their specs and guess what you will not hear many bad words said about Spectral Audio gear.

Look at McIntosh amps, they publish loads of specs. McIntosh amps just make any music you put through them sound the same and boring.
Specs does not tell you how something will sound, there are many things that measure the same but sound different.

 

I do remember the gigahertz race with CPUs. That is a much more complex matter, as the specific arhitecture of the CPU will matter to a considerable degree and that's too complex to publish as a spec.
That doesn't mean that the clock frequency does not matter at all. It's a spec that is still published today, including in smartphones. Same with megapixels race in cameras, nowadays in smartphones. By far, it doesn't tell the whole story, but it's not like it's totally irrelevant.

To me, the situation seems very simple: there are 2 crowds of people:
1. The ones which do not care at all about specs and go only by how a specific system sounds;
2. The ones that care about specs (some of which also want to find correlation between specs and how it sounds);

Spectral Audio, if they don't publish their specs, they probably do so because they target crowd 1. That doesn't mean the specs are bad or that they sound bad, it just means their "ideal client" profile doesn't care about this.
Looking at McIntosh amps, I can see they don't publish Intermodulation Distorsion (IMD), which is one of the most important parameters (more important than THD), as this will give the separation between different tones in the music.

I have to not agree about the statement that specs do not tell anything. Then what you said about designers and engineers has to be false. Why they bother with measurements and specs (instead of just listening) if they don't tell anything about the end results ?
About the many things that measure exactly the same, but sound different, we need clear examples of that. I can come with only one possible explanation: the measurements were not done in same conditions or were incomplete:
there are some parameters that were not measured, like the IMD mentioned earlier, those making the difference.

Of course, there's another aspect here that I need to mention: sound without coloration is one thing (this will be given by lowest noise, lowest distorsions and flat frequency response), sound that's fun is another thing.
I happened to have listened to a lot of proffesional audio equipment, including in recording studios. Probably what a recording studio would call clean and clear sound, another would call "cold and sterile".
For example, I don't like how some tracks are mastered, because they're done so they sound good on consumer equipment (like headphones with V-shaped frequency response).
That doesn't mean those tracks are inherently good or bad, but I personally don't like the mastering. Others certainly love it.

At the end of the day, I'm not saying that you are wrong and I am right, because it's not about that. For the end consumer it's about personal preference and that can be very different from what is objectively good. That's not a problem and will never be.

 

Almost final update to the first post: table and timeline have been updated, see change log.
@CDV: thanks for the offline check and final review.
Edit:
I’ll be making some more minor changes. For instance the font color of the DD signature line (for lack of a better description): I prefer white because it makes it better readable.

 

I read more than once that SS and tube amps have different types of distortions: 1st, 2nd, etc... harmonics, and I suspect that @Valentin knows more about this that me multiplied. Same with digital vs. analog: jitter vs. W&F. As with music, different people choose different playback devices. It is beyond my comprehension how anyone can enjoy listening to Stravinsky or Dr.Dre or Lady Gaga, but some members of my own family evidently love the tunes.

The reason for my post: there is a chance that "objectively better sound" resides on the same cloud as "The Absolute Sound", meaning that it does not exist down here. And without some specs provided by manufacturers consumers like me would be left with the whims of local dealers or opinions from the people we never met. And, of course, standard bull from the manufacturers who (by definition) want to sell their products to as many people as doable for the prices as high as possible. Doing no ads, as mentioned by @TooCooL4 or going through self-anti-advertisements like Schiit Audio also works sometimes

 

I can buy this argument from someone who has a cheap plastic walkman. But from someone who owns clearly a superior machine it sound the same as "I don't care what other people think, my Bentley is good enough for me" or "my Learjet is good enough for me" or "despite that I control 9 trillion dollars worth of assets I am in no way consider myself a powerful person". Fake modesty.

You are bragging that owning upscale stuff is no big deal for you. You know that others know that your machines are more expensive, less attainable and have better specs, you rely on their knowledge when you list your items in your signature line.

Also, you are bragging that your ears are so great that they can discern that DD9 is "good enough" but something like, I don't know, the FX101 is not enough. You want to make an impression that the FX101 is not good for you not because it is cheap, creaky and plastic, but because you can hear the difference in sound.

Your demonstrable not caring about numbers is in fact sanctimonious hypocrisy.

As to why other people compare numbers: bragging is just one aspect. Buying is another. Whether you buy from a Sears and Roebuck paper catalog or from Amazon, you are buying half-blind. Specs are one way of ensuring that you get what you expect. I hate returning stuff, so I prefer to buy big-ticket items in local stores, even better if they have testing rooms where I can listen to speakers or watch a TV I am thinking of buying. Likewise, when buying on eBay or an internet forum, I want to have some degree of peace of mind that the item I am getting is at least in the ballpark to what I expect. This reduces a lot of extra pain of returning it and getting your money back.

P.S. This all falls flat when you start talking about superior audio quality and preferring cassette over digital. If you want to sell your golden ears, you should not accept anything below 24-bit Hi-Res (even though no one can hear the difference between it and Redbook CD audio in properly controlled tests). I don't know, maybe you have hundreds of unique mixtapes or family recordings that are too bothersome to digitize, so you prefer listening to them in their original form, and nothing less than a DD9 can do justice to them, maybe these are mixtapes of symphonic orchestra recorded on a professional equipment. Otherwise, if you listen to commercially released albums, than a CD or even MP3 is much better than cassette. Sure, some of them have been remastered for CD with compressed DR, so maybe this is the case when cassette is better. Can you hear the difference, especially when working in your garden? I doubt it.

 

CDV take it whatever way you like, as you have worked out I don’t care what others think. I don’t do things to impress other people, I do it for me.
I don’t care if people think what I have is high-end low-end, people can think what they want makes no difference to me.

I bought what I like and like I have said before, I take demo units home for a weekend or week to try in my own setup before I part with my money. That way I am less likely to make a big mistake.
You talk about me possibly looking down on a FX101, where did I say that? In fact when have you ever seen me look down on any ones kit?
I merely stated that I don’t care about specs, which is true I want to enjoy my music and wasting my time on boring stuff like figures gets in the way of me enjoying my music.

Before you start making assumptions, I recommend you get your facts correct and look at yourself first. This is not the first time you have accused me of something and when I challenge you, you never have any evidence to back your claims.

 

Of course, you haven't. Otherwise you would look like an uncultured underclassman, which would be the opposite to the impression you are trying to project. I know the rules of the game.

On the other hand, you may not even know about the FX101 just like an owner of a Rolls-Royce or a Learjet does not know about Trabant 601. They do know that cheap cars exist, but they don't bother learning their makes and models. Why would they? A Rolls-Royce is an enjoyable car for them, and its power is "enough". And whenever it comes down to numbers, they have advisors who do this boring stuff.

Either way, you show that you are above the unwashed masses.

This is true. Me being wrong then does not automatically mean I am wrong now. Although I may be wrong again.

 

Lets keep the exchange constructive

Sharing experiences, based on personal preference or objective findings, is key to learning new capabilities and any social interaction.
We should not mix subjective and objective findings without presenting them in the right context.
This is essential so others, the consumers of the information, can determine the weight they put on the statements and how they use it subsequently.
I hope we keep side discussions alive on this forum, and when possible find an appropriate thread for it if one already exists.

For this thread, please help me finalize the genealogy in November so it can be 'officially' released.
Not for sale, but for everybody to objectively consume

 

I think it has been constructive so far. We've established that DD walkmans are desirable because of rugged metal body, classic style, unique technical features and high performance. The latter is assessed by listening to challenging material and is confirmed by specs and measurements.

The vicious cycle of legendarizing the DD makes even those who did not care for it, thinking that their plastic walkman is good enough, to want it

 

Giles Slade writes in Big Disconnect,

"Because enjoying personal music became a totally exclusionary experience, Sony CEO Akio Morita discontinued the second headphone jack that had been available on the original Walkman (TPS L2) as it had on some of Morita's transistor radios (the Sony TR55, TR7, and TR63) during the 1950s. It was now clear that Sony customers wanted isolation and a comforting respite from the intrusions of the distractions of the noisy city, so the sleeker, all-metal second model of the Walkman (WM 2), which debuted in 1981, no longer had two headphone jacks."

It seems that he did not research Sony's walkmans well enough: the WM-2 has two headphone jacks (and it is not all-metal). Two headphone outputs would throw a spanner in his theory of the walkman being a personal - as in, for a single person - device. The DD has two headphone outputs as well: did Sony still have idealistic hopes at that time for a collective use of the Walkman? Or was it just a re-use of two sockets from the Pressman on the TPS-L2, which their marketing department turned into a sharing story, and Sony felt obliged to continue with this story for some time?

A week ago my wife and I shared a smartphone on a 5-hour flight, we shared earphones, one earphone each (all-plastic, not IEMs, easy to clean). I could use a splitter, I have one, but did not bother. We watched a movie, then I read a book (an ebook off the screen of my phone) for the remainder of the flight. So, I do have books and music on my smartphone. I don't have Facebook.

 

The information is clearly incorrect, because the first walkman that has strong ties with the TPS-L2 is the WM-3. It happens that the WM-3 also has 2 headphone jacks (both generations). If they wanted to remove one, the WM-3 clearly shouldn't have had the second. Of course, the WM-2, DD are just another examples.

There's another question I ask myself (as I never used both jacks) is how good this would work with modern headphones as there is only a single amplifier driving both. There are some 3.9 ohms resistors in series to balance the load in case the 2 headphone don't have the same impedance, but that will limit the output current even more.

My opinion is SONY is one of the companies that is still headphone jack friendly nowadays, when many tech companies consider removing the jack "innovation". Their Xperia 1 III is one example, others being they still manufacture DAPs (which are pretty niche products)
and also their wireless headphones (like the mega popular WH-1000XM4, which appeared even in TechMoan's videos) still have jacks and can be used this way (although optimized to be used wirelessly).

 

When I was doing desk research for the genealogy table and timeline, I concluded that the DD33 was the last Walkman produced with 2 headphone jacks. See DD33 notes.
About the WM-2: I bought it as we consider it a design essential predecessor. I was really surprised by the plasticky exterior and weight.
And by the fact the central gear was broken too..
The WM-5 has nearly the same exterior and weight of the DD units.

 

Valentin it works quite well although I have not done it in a while, I tried it with a friend when I still had the DD33’s.

I have done it recently on a DC2 which actually really worked better. I bumped into a friend on the train home one night, I always have multiple headphones / IEM’s in my bag. Since one headphone was driven by the headphone amp out of the line-out and other was driven directly from the DC2, we both had our own volume controls. So independent volume controls, how cool is that.