Hi there.

The answer is yes - the Walkman has a isolation switch on the side which you slide to turn off. The quick start up instructions did not really tell you what this switch did. Fortunately my wife was wise in the way of these things and switched it on and it is working perfectly with very good sound quality. Incidentally I could not open thje full instructions because my IE on Vista does not work properly and it wouldn't open in Firefox od Chrome.

In summary I've no need to return it