Eagle_Driver
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2001
- Posts
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I ordered this low-end Sony WM-EX190 cassette Walkman a little while ago from SonyStyle USA, for $17.95 plus tax and shipping (the total worked out to be about equal to what I would have paid at the local Osco Drug store, which charges $24.99 plus tax). Here are my impressions of this unit:
The operation of this player is one of utter simplicity! There is no auto-reverse, no tape-type selector (well, it's designed to properly play back only Type I tapes - and Type II/IV tapes will sound somewhat bright on this player), no Dolby noise reduction, no LCD display, no feather-touch controls, no menus! There are the basic Play/Stop/FF/REW buttons [well, at least there is a true REW button on this Sony, unlike so many other cheap cassette players, which have no REW button at all (and thus force you to flip the tape over and use FF to rewind the tape)], a rather large Mega Bass switch, and a tiny AVLS switch. That's all.
The suppiled belt clip came already attached to the player. And the headphones are the okay-but-nothing-special MDR-026 headphones (since supplanted as stock on newer Walkmans by the utterly craptacular MDR-027 headphones). For the best sound quality, though, you may want to replace those stock headphones with a relatively efficient pair of great-sounding portable headphones (Grado SR-60, SR-80 and the Koss 60-ohm Porta/KSC-series of headphones work well with this player). It is rated to run for about 25 hours on two AA alkaline batteries, but there is no provision whatsoever for an AC adaptor. But even with such a relatively long battery life, the headphone output is significantly more powerful than what you'll find in the latest portable CD players, MD portables and many MP3 players.
Okay, I've talked about the features. But how does it sound? Well, given a properly recorded, good-quality Type I tape (and I'm not talking about the cheap, crappy stuff that you'll see at the dollar stores and on most pre-recorded cassettes), this cheap cassette player sounds surprisingly good.
In fact, I've found this cassette-only player to sound noticeably better than its with-radio counterpart, due to its rated frequency response of 20-18,000 Hz (the cheap with-radio Sonys are rated for only 40-15,000 Hz response). The tape transport is rock stable, unlike some previous Walkmans that I've owned (including the expensive pre-S2 "Sports" WM-FS593
that I still own, whose output distorts at above half-loudness. Bleh!) Here is an example that less is sometimes more: The addition of digital radio tuners, auto-reverse and gee-whiz features actually causes a sacrifice in the quality of the player's sound and mechanics. (Unless you're willing to pay well over $100 for a cassette Walkman, such as those old classics that we've talked about previously.
)
So, if you can still find the WM-EX190, give it a try, especially if you have a lot of already recorded high-quality Type I tapes (such as the famous Sony HF-ES and TDK AR-X).
The operation of this player is one of utter simplicity! There is no auto-reverse, no tape-type selector (well, it's designed to properly play back only Type I tapes - and Type II/IV tapes will sound somewhat bright on this player), no Dolby noise reduction, no LCD display, no feather-touch controls, no menus! There are the basic Play/Stop/FF/REW buttons [well, at least there is a true REW button on this Sony, unlike so many other cheap cassette players, which have no REW button at all (and thus force you to flip the tape over and use FF to rewind the tape)], a rather large Mega Bass switch, and a tiny AVLS switch. That's all.
The suppiled belt clip came already attached to the player. And the headphones are the okay-but-nothing-special MDR-026 headphones (since supplanted as stock on newer Walkmans by the utterly craptacular MDR-027 headphones). For the best sound quality, though, you may want to replace those stock headphones with a relatively efficient pair of great-sounding portable headphones (Grado SR-60, SR-80 and the Koss 60-ohm Porta/KSC-series of headphones work well with this player). It is rated to run for about 25 hours on two AA alkaline batteries, but there is no provision whatsoever for an AC adaptor. But even with such a relatively long battery life, the headphone output is significantly more powerful than what you'll find in the latest portable CD players, MD portables and many MP3 players.
Okay, I've talked about the features. But how does it sound? Well, given a properly recorded, good-quality Type I tape (and I'm not talking about the cheap, crappy stuff that you'll see at the dollar stores and on most pre-recorded cassettes), this cheap cassette player sounds surprisingly good.
So, if you can still find the WM-EX190, give it a try, especially if you have a lot of already recorded high-quality Type I tapes (such as the famous Sony HF-ES and TDK AR-X).
