Those of us of a certain age will remember this brand and how good their products were, especially their cassette decks in the 1980s. Well, the brand is back, but don't be fooled into thinking it's the original company.
This video explains the history of Aiwa, its demise and how it was revived as a brand owned by many different companies. You'll have to put up with a rather stilted robotic voice narrating this though.
Anyone have any Aiwa gear that they'd like to tell us about?
I had a couple of their products and both were very good. They consisted of a budget cassette deck with a decent sound, especially for the price, and a small 30W per channel amplifier that had original been part of a small separates system that I got in a firesale. The Dynamic Super Loudness feature boosted just the bass and was absolutely epic in how it worked, giving real deep bass, really helping to annoy those neighbours!
The bit I never understood were the results of this test: I fed it a 50Hz sinewave which was also shown on an oscilloscope at the same time as it could be heard through the speakers. It sounded like a pretty deep bass note as you'd imagine and I had to keep the volume quite low to prevent it from becoming overwhelming and also potentially damaging my speakers.
I then switched on DSL and lowered the volume until it showed the same amplitude on the scope, plus it was also clearly the same wave with no visible distortion. However, it actually sounded deeper and more powerful, just the way that DSL makes bass notes sound! I repeated it several times and got the same result, too. How the hell it could achieve that at a single frequency while looking the same on the scope I don't understand to this day. I still have this amp too, although not the scope and signal source, unfortunately, so the test could be repeated in principle with a PC, sound card and the right software.
This video explains the history of Aiwa, its demise and how it was revived as a brand owned by many different companies. You'll have to put up with a rather stilted robotic voice narrating this though.
Anyone have any Aiwa gear that they'd like to tell us about?
I had a couple of their products and both were very good. They consisted of a budget cassette deck with a decent sound, especially for the price, and a small 30W per channel amplifier that had original been part of a small separates system that I got in a firesale. The Dynamic Super Loudness feature boosted just the bass and was absolutely epic in how it worked, giving real deep bass, really helping to annoy those neighbours!
The bit I never understood were the results of this test: I fed it a 50Hz sinewave which was also shown on an oscilloscope at the same time as it could be heard through the speakers. It sounded like a pretty deep bass note as you'd imagine and I had to keep the volume quite low to prevent it from becoming overwhelming and also potentially damaging my speakers.
I then switched on DSL and lowered the volume until it showed the same amplitude on the scope, plus it was also clearly the same wave with no visible distortion. However, it actually sounded deeper and more powerful, just the way that DSL makes bass notes sound! I repeated it several times and got the same result, too. How the hell it could achieve that at a single frequency while looking the same on the scope I don't understand to this day. I still have this amp too, although not the scope and signal source, unfortunately, so the test could be repeated in principle with a PC, sound card and the right software.
