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A BRIEF DESCRIPTION
When AIWA released
the HS-P08 in 1985 it was a revolution because
of the many advanced features that they achieved
to fit in a small player. No other player from
SONY or other brands could offer such a huge
amount of features at the time; it was far more
advanced than any other player in the world,
except for it's bigger brother, the G08 and the J08 (this
one was the most advanced walkman on 1985).
Features like feather-touch buttons, remote control and
music sensor put it on a superior
step over the rest, and the auto-reverse, Dolby
B, hard case, new small earphones that doesn't
have upper band and a body made almost full from
metal, complete an incredible set of features
for a player at the time.
AIWA released their players in the asian market under the "CassetteBoy" brand, which they are basically the same, except that they don't have the "0" before the "8". So in Asia they are called "P8" and in the rest of the world, "P08". All my units are from Asia, so you'll see the CassetteBoy logo in the gallery, below.
CONTEXT
80's was a very particular
years and at 1985 many manufacturers were trying
to offer an idea of breaking the old rules, to bring fresh
ideas. And walkmans helped so much the idea to let
the user to listen to music everywhere, but with
not so much quality and comodity. The P08 was AIWA's first player with a
remote control, to allow the user to take the
player inside (for example in a very cold environment)
and fully control it. The autoreverse brought
the user the ability to not to take it outside to flip the tape, so I think it was a huge step ahead that set
a new level of quality and sophistication, although the SONY WM-7 was the first to have autoreverse, feather touch and a remote, but in a pretty bigger size.
At that time SONY had the WM-101 that focuses
in size, as it was a very small player, a succesor
of the ground-breaking WM-20 released two years
before. The WM-101 and the G08 have some common features, like: auto
reverse, Dolby B and small earphones. The WM-101 also
has an external compartment for an AA battery.
But it didn't have IC logic control, remote
control, music sensor or two outputs...
SOUND QUALITY
In terms of sound,
it has a pretty good quality, although my unit
has a bit high hiss. As many other players, with Dolby on,
highs are strongly cut.
For rating the sound quality, we use a pair of
high quality Sennheiser HD 280 Pro headphones,
and a test tape (Maxell XL-II) with a high quality
recording made with a SONY D6C portable deck.
However, this is a personal opinion and it's
not intended to be a precision rating.
Before testing it, it was taken to a
professional technician for examine, repair and
fine adjusting. Remember these are old machines
and internal belts stops working properly after
some time. Of course, head and rollers have been
carefully cleaned before testing.
NOTE: If you have any useful
info about this model, you can collaborate with
us if you want to. Please send us an email and
share your info. We will update the page with
it.
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