I recently bought a SONY WM-3 It works great but every now and then if my headphone jack turns the quality of the sound will change. I tried cleaning it with isopropyl alcohol, but with little to no avail. What should I do to keep from having to turn my headphone's jack to the side to hear the best sound?
Is this the case with every pair of headphones you use on it? It might be your headphone's connector isn't even and doesn't properly make contact unless in a very specific position.
There's usually a little clip that holds the headphones in the unit, a lot of time it gets corroded, sometimes you can see the green on it. Either make a small diameter sanding shaft or buy some DeOxit, I don't think the IPA will remove it. If you can see it and it looks really clean, sometimes the internal wires fray and need to be resoldered, you'll have to open up the unit to repair it. This part of the Walkman gets a lot of use and after 30-40 years these two problems are the most common.
I was using my beats headphones and a pair of sports headphones when I noticed the changing in sound quality. I don't have this issue with my Sony mdr 7506 pair.
Interesting, there might be a very slight diameter change for the male shaft that gives it more contact on the MDR's. Find another unit and see if the headphones are going bad, the wires, especially in the sports headphones, are extremely delicate.
If there’s a hands free mic on the Beats cable that will be the issue. Those hands free require a voltage and it will draw that from the unit, and therefore lose voltage to the cans. Also modern cans are designed for use with mobiles so they have an extra pole, making them fractionally longer in size than the 1980s designed ports
Ok. Both those headphones my sports and the beats haeadphones have that hands free mic. I just plugged my walkman in on a good speaker of mine. I turned the jack and there's no drop in quality. The jack ports are a little loose but don't seem to interefere with the speaker. If I want to take this walkman with me, which non mic headphone pair would be recommended? I already have aSony MDR-7506.
While I can't give you direct on ear models for reference for the most (except for one exception), I can at least give you some pointers what you could check out. You could check out Sennheiser, it's a popular brand that does studio equipments too, so there are lower priced and higher priced models and a fair share without any integrated mics. However, I consider the quality of their casings to be a mixed bag sometimes, especially on the lower end models. A closer look is worth it. Besides some lower end models seem to have some obvious audio flaws, like lacking upper mids or lower quality highs and cushions that fall apart quite easily. Bose has some good headphones, though a major but: They don't like to write down or talk about their specifications (often stating an admittedly slightly snobbish "it's all up to the person", though it does contain some truth it's also like they're using that as an excuse to hide flaws and weaknesses) so it's best to test them in their dedicated shops or in some electronics/hi fi store. For instance I once found a bluetooth model to have worse audio quality in higher notes than the one I ultimately got which lacked the bluetooth feature (seems to be what made most of their price), whereas they claimed it was supposedly the same. In turn some of their headphones let you exchange the cable (default cables usually come with a mic, input for headphone was I believe usually a 2.5mm jack, the other end can be up to what you desire) so you could get a fitting audio cable of the length you want without any mic and if your cushions take damage you can replace them in most models too. Heard their noise cancelling headphones are fantastic. I have Sennheisers for to-go, though I prefer (the non-ear-penetrating) earbuds for walks. I own a pair of Bose too, but for stationary use/equipment. They're the (now) older model of Bose SoundTrue AE2, the cable has a mic though, but as I said, it can be exchanged if you dig for a fitting one. In my opinion they're comfortable and the audio sounds fairly decent. They're not truly low end but also not high end in terms of price. As for Sony headphones, I never truly used any properly, so I can't give any recommendations there.
I agree, a lot of it is down to preference. I only use senn hd26pro but some model walkmans can’t power them (you get dropouts sometimes is all) , and a good friend of mine swears by the Sennhieser Momentum Bluetooth series. Oddly enough earlier models like wm-3 have much louder headphone amps, and the pro series walkmans from Sony like d6c, d3 etc are always fine for this issue. The problem with Bluetooth kit is you have to charge them up, which is annoying. The other thing you can consider is a portable headphone amp which takes the strain off the old amplifier and can add loads of depth to your music. I bought a tiny ray samuels amp last year and it helps with some models but not others.
Just to put my $0.02 in, I'm gonna recommend Blue Lola. I was impressed by the sound, and the cord is exchangeable... which is a good thing, because I can't imagine getting an equivalent performance with anything less than my best heavy coaxial cable.
