Why no Dolby in '90s Walkmen?

I've always wondered why manufacturers didn't offer Dolby on Walkmen during the '90s. The license couldn't have cost that much. For example, in 1997 Sony only offered one model with Dolby B, the FX355; the most expensive model with a tuner. Without a tuner, Sony didn't offer any with Dolby B except for $200+ professional models. Were they angling for people to buy portable CD or minidisc players instead?

Stores were still selling pre-recorded cassettes and a lot of them had Dolby. Car decks and home decks had Dolby. That makes most brand new Walkmen sold then incompatible with 90% of store-bought cassettes?

 

I'd like to add to that, with the question of why new cassettes are being manufactured without Dolby now. The Guardians of the Galaxy cassettes, from Disney, no less, don't have any NR on them. From where I'm sitting, it looks like they are still treating the return of cassette as a gimmick. Many people still seem to be waiting for someone to release a new, decent, cassette walkman. Units from China for USB sampling, etc. don't have Dolby on them either, which makes a joke of converting old cassettes that are Dolby B encoded.

 

I seem to remember reading somewhere that Dolby Labs no longer licenses their analog noise reduction technology, so I don't think it's possible for companies to use it even if they wanted to.

 

I had a brief e-mail correspondence with NAC a month or so ago. Dolby is still available if customers (the Disneys of this world) request it.

 

Is it not the case that pro walkmans were all Dolby in the 90s? It seems to me that cheap decks which most people had were never for people who would appreciate noise reduction, use cheap proprietary headphones and generally never maintain or repair the units. If you take the explosion in sales of iPods in 2002 the quality of playback was abysmal, but it allowed you to make use of the ludicrous amount of free music from torrent websites, Napster and limewire etc.

I don’t think Dolby went away, but the mass market definitely went away from tape because it was too expensive in comparison. At least that’s how I remember it

 

Steve Stepp said on 17th Jan, "We still apply Dolby when music labels specify it. " so they still do it.

I'm currently doing a small experiment. More to come once I can tear myself away from some of this music

 

A quick, unscientific, subjective experiment...

Tapes played on a Sony K222ESJ, amp Teac AI-101DA, headphones Sen HD-600

Shanaia Twain - 1999 - Dolby B
Joe Loss Party Hits - 1971 - Dolby B
Venice In Peril - 1988 - No Dolby
Awesome Mix Vol 1 - 2014 - No Dolby
Glen Miller Collection - 1985 - No Dolby
Thrush Metal (indie small batch production) - 2017 - No Dolby

Quick conclusion - Without Dolby B, the recordings had obvious hiss from the start. The modern recordings overcame the hiss by being recorded louder, but it was still obvious between tracks. With Dolby B, even the 1971 recording sounded technically on a par with the modern non-Dolby, despite its 47 years of age (it wasn't quite as crisp as modern recordings) and being played on the cassette players of the time - ie. the mono, portable battery units that most households had. (I'm surprised it sounded that good) - As for the Indie tape recording, I actually preferred it to the modern commercial recording. If I was to take a stab in the dark guess, this might be down to slower duplication speed.

I could forgive an older recording or an indie with no dolby, but a modern, comemrcial recording even with a louder signal, should have at least Dolby B in my personal opinion; not to do so, comes over as cheap. I am quite happy with the small run indie tape recording that I have, and I'll be seeking more in the future.

 

Michelle, I think your question warrants its own thread, especially because it is so open-ended.

Walkman archive, you bring up a good point about Dolby in the ‘80s but the difference from my perspective is that most tapes sold then didn’t have Dolby, while almost all tapes sold in the ‘90s did have Dolby. That’s why it’s so strange to me that Sony and others would sell component systems and portable stereos without the capability to properly decode these pre-recorded tapes. Was it simply assumed that these mechanisms were so poor they rolled off the high end anyway?

Sure, these models were cheap but they were still tape players. Some of them even had the same mechanisms as more expensive models.

 

I disagree to an extent. Lets look at the 1999 Argos Catalogue.



Four of the 6 personal cassette players on this page have Dolby including the £20 Aiwa.
I bought a similar Aiwa at the time, being surprised how cheap Dolby had become

 

plenty walkmans with dolby b/c, in the 90's but there were also lots of mickey mouse ones without, just like in the 80's

 

Thanks for the information everyone. I'm curious about the cheaper models. For example, the Sony WM-FX101. Was it designed to only play home-dubbed tapes, or was it still expected to be able to play store-bought tapes (probably with Dolby)? Why have a tape type switch but no Dolby?

I'll post some scans from a 1994 Sony catalog showing what I mean. I think Sony was guilty of dropping Dolby more than others (such as Aiwa).

 

Here's the 1997 online catalog for Walkman with tuner.



And for Walkman without tuner.



Only one model sub-$100 has Dolby (The FX355), all the others do not.




Was it implied that store-bought Dolby tapes were acceptable in non-Dolby players? I always thought that was a myth (because the difference is pretty large).

 

I never got into Dolby much......The first generation Dolby B was garbage, it just smothered the treble.

IMO, Type IV tapes were a more important improvement in sound quality.