A BRIEF DESCRIPTION

The PX101 probably represent AIWA's first try to build a real competitor to the good sounding DD machines from SONY, specially to the DD100 Boodo Khan. With Dolby C, parametric DLS-EX and high quality headphones, this walkman was announced as being the "world's best sounding personal stereo" at the time, back in 1987.

AIWA's DSL explanation, taken from the '88
Headphone Stereo catalogue (page 6).

It's probably one of the best sounding stereos from AIWA (only the PX303 and the PX1000 achieves similar performance, probably) and it's design is very stylish, with feather-touch operation buttons on the door.

The PX101 was also one of the first AIWA to have a remote (first one was the G08, three years before), that it's connected to a second 3.5mm jack, beside the headphones jack. A few years after these two jacks become one.

This model can be powered, like many other AIWAs, from an acid gumstick battery PB-1 (which these days are all dead) or with a pair of AAA.

CONTEXT

In 1987, no other brand had a true competitor to PX101; only the SONY DD100 Boodo Khan, which remained the same for three years could achieve a comparable sound quality (in fact, probably with less wow&flutter), but with worst equalization. So I can say that the PX101 was the absolutely top player in the world that year, with a size only a bit bigger than the WM-101 and a sound quality and equalization options much better.
One year later, SONY released the famous 701C, which was a closer competitor to the PX101, as it has a similar size, logic control, Dolby C and Mega-bass.

The AIWA PX101 and the SONY 701C, closer competitors.		Upper controls	Side controls.

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The standard head of the PX101 gives pretty good performance, even being not Amorphous or HX. Only a slight lack of bass is perceived in this graph.

The parametric DSL offers excellent enhancement for both bass and treble. The Low slider has the maximun effect at 60-70 Hz, and the High, at 10 kHz. Both help so much to modify the response curve until giving a very pleasant sound. The Low slider has a maximum huge effect of about 20dB!

With a good recording, I only needed to set the DSL Low a bit high (about 10dB) and let the High at 0 to enjoy a lot my reference recording in a SONY UX Pro.

The only problem is that the Low slider is poorly distributed, because at 50% it only gives about 10% of the effect. In the last two steps of the scale is concentrated 70% of the bass effect, making it very difficult to set precisely.

Original FRC*	FRC* | No Treble loss	FRC* | 4 dB treble gain
Background noise (-55 dB)	Background noise (-65 dB)	Background noise (-67 dB)

Move your mouse over the buttons to see the animation

*: The original FRC is measured with a recording without Dolby; the ones with Dolby were each measured with recordings made with the same Dolby system measured.

Although the graphs show that there's not so much gain at 15 kHz, the reality is that the sound is excellent: very crisp and detailed, and wide open. Without Dolby, the hiss is clearly heard with classical or soul music. With Dolby B, you gain 10dB (that's a lot!) and the scene changes completely, but only regarding the hiss. The sound is excellent; very clear and crisp. I detected some spatial processing when DSL is activated. Maybe some delay between channels that makes the stereo enphasized... (I'm not sure).

With Dolby C, although it's not under 70dB, it's very close. You can barely hear the background hiss with appropiate music (like soul, jazz, classic). The level of detail is simply excellent and the highs are at the same level than without Dolby (in fact, curves show that they are a bit higher!).

0,156% (RMS)

So finally I combined all data into a single graph, to let us quickly see all the measurements about it:

AIWA HS-PX101 final rating.

Overall score: 8,6/10

Undoubtely, the PX101 is a high-quality player. The design is very elegant and the body, robust. The sound quality has not so low wow&flutter as the SONY alternative, the SONY Boodo Khan, but it has more equalization posibilities and far more features. Remember that, back 1987, it was the most advanced player on earth...