I’m only three years younger then the Walkman…SHUTTER.
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I’ve still got one of the later recording models (marketed as broadcsat quality). It was a nice, solid bit of kit; built like a little tank. I used it as my main tape deck for years.strong text
And what is Apple adding to iOS 13 this year?
The ability to play to two sets of AirPods and easier access to Live Listen.
Also keeping it supplied with AA cells was cheaper than keeping a boom box full of D-cells
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This is no joke - unless it is.
But I credit the fact that I never really used one of these when I was young - and I still don’t really listen to music through headphones unless I’m on a plane - to the fact that in my 50’s my hearing is still fine. Especially when I conservatively figure I’ve been to at least 1000 loud rock shows.
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Nope. No joke. About 15 years ago, I noticed a high pitched whine when I was going to sleep that I attributed to an old television monitor going bad. Now I have a symphony of hums and whistles everywhere I go, which I have thankfully learned to tune out most of the time, but a large chunk of my hearing is gone.
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Don’t forget Cliffie getting behind the marketing effort.
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Interesting. Whereas I can almost chronologically trace the development of my tinnitus through a number of specific very loud rock shows, but never really used headphones that much. (Though a regular gig DJing a very loud rock ‘disco’ probably had too much of both for a while.)
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Yea, I mean who knows what will happen when I get older, but I’m definitely going to start wearing ear plugs. Particularly for indoor shows in small venues which tend to be worse.
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I do get a little bit of that at times - but I can’t imagine having it all the time.
My mother in law used to work in a factory in the midwest when she was younger and back then they were not very good about providing hearing protection - particularly in non-union factories.
From what my wife has told me, she has really bad tinnitus off and on.
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The fact that “The Walkman” is now a digital appliance for listening to recorded music, is a much better solution for such a neanderthal activity than the iPod, and has a very high resolution version that costs $3500 makes me feel old. I too had an early tape model for use in the darkroom.
Ditto. (I’m looking at you, Motörhead, and the 1984 post-“Ace of Spades” tour.)
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Do it. I even wear them for lawn mowing and other ‘motor’ chores that are prolonged (hedge trimming, strimming, using any workshop power tools, etc.). I see builders using jackhammers and brick saws with zero ear protection and I wince, and sometimes have a quiet, polite word - some of the younger guys take the message better than older ones, I have found.
While mine is mostly just low background white noise/hiss, it also comes and goes with louder whistles from time to time. Explaining what it 's like and how I got it (telling them about excess exposure, to excess noise, during my youth - and it took 20-30 years for the effects to really occur) seems to make a better argument than simply saying ‘health and safety - you should wear ear defenders’.
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Mine emanates from about a decade earlier and started with the alleged loudest rock group in the world at the time. My ears rang for 2-3 days afterwards.
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I first noticed my own tinnitus when I was about five years old, but I didn’t know it had a name until I was grown up. Playing around with a signal generator, I’ve determined it to be an approximately 9 kHz whistle that reminds me of a flyback transformer or one of those 1960s-era sonar-type burglar alarms. Its intensity is highly variable, and I once in a great while get a lower tone that lasts 5-30 seconds or so. Down in the piano range, I have absolute pitch; I can tell not just what note, but what octave as well. That can be both a blessing and a curse, especially in choral singing.
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By the time I could afford a portable music device (I’m one year younger than the Walkman), they’d all introduced AVLS, which prevented you from turning the volume up so high you gave yourself tinnitus.
Most kids I knew hated it, but my ears still work ok so I guess it did something.
I think my first music device was a Minidisc player rather than a cassette player though.
But is there a real precedence for this?
Wakman’s small and stereo. Before that, you coukd get stereo cassette decks, put portable casette recorders were generally mono. And using headphines provided much better sound, and stereo, than the tiny speaker in.the cassette recorders of the day.
When Greenpeace went to Amchitka in the fall of 1971, there’ a story about got ng off course onr night, someine, maybe Rid Marrining putting his cassette recorder to close to the compass and that causing misdirection. I think he had headphones connected to the cassette recorder too.
Headphones were a way to get good sound in small places. I used a good pair of headphones with a stereo tuner, and then my turntable, before I eventually got speajers.
I.firget whe " Roller Boogie" came out, but some in that film has a boombox that has headphines plugged in.
So inventions aside, various people proably did it their o wn.
Sony took out the apspeaker, npmace ut stereo and sold it with a good set of headphone.
I wouod loint out thst Sony had a cassette recorder around the same size, a friend ad ine. But mono, and a tiny speaker built in.
Who?
I mean “The Who”.
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