John Spahr

Hi, everyone! Lately, I've been exploring tapes and the hardware used to play them. This has led me down a rabbit hole involving the Sony Walkman. You see, in the 90s, Sony made several budget Walkmans with virtually the same internal mechanism and layout. They were constructed out of black plastic to meet a price point, with detachable belt clips on the back. All of these models are held together with plastic clips, with no screws to be found. Looking inside, they're pretty simple, with a single belt found in my two units. This belt is easily accessible, making repairs incredibly quick and painless. Given that these belts tend to deteriorate over time, this is definitely a major plus to these models. From what I can tell, all of these black plastic 90s Walkmans have a selector switch for Type 1 and 2/4 tapes. My smaller and more basic Walkman, the WM-EX102, has a switch on the front for the "Mega Bass" bass boost system. Conversely, my WM-FX21 features a radio tuner ...

     I have Spotify Premium. I like it; it's fast, its catalog is huge, and it's a great place to discover new music. However, in today's digital world, there has been a resurgence in the tangible, physical media that came before Spotify and Apple Music. Nowadays, you can find vinyl records, tapes, and CDs for sale at all sorts of places. To me, CDs stand out especially due to their easily archivable nature (e.g. throwing them on an iPod Classic) but also their impressive audio fidelity. They sound great!     I have a shelf of CDs that I use in my Technics 5 disc changer (SL-PD887) and my 2009 Honda Accord. They're very compact compared to vinyl, while also making a lot more practical sense than tapes. Granted, each of these formats is unique and deserves a place in your tower of power. However, if you too are tight on money, CDs have one final trick up their sleeve: They're cheap. Seldom will you buy a new CD for more than $20, excluding box sets and rare relea...

Hi, everyone. This summer, I have primarily been focusing on two of my hobbies: experimenting with Pebble watches and collecting vinyl records. The latter came about after I upgraded from my extremely mediocre Victrola turntable, now known as “The Troll,” and was also encouraged to by a friend. So, with that in mind, I decided to finally share my modest audio setup on this blog. So, let’s begin! Speakers/Micro System: Philips BTM630 At the heart of my setup is a Philips BTM630 micro hi-fi system. It features some pretty decent speakers, a CD reader, an iPod dock, AUX input, and USB and SD card ports. It’s over a decade old, but it’s still an excellent system that’s quite compact. Given its aforementioned good sound quality and wide variety of features, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it is one my favorite parts of my setup. MP3 Player: iPod 5th Gen Moving on, I recently got another 5th generation iPod for free, and it’s become my primary portable music player for my setup. It stil...