Modern Walkmans(walkman.land)
walkman.land
Modern Walkmans
https://walkman.land/modern
141 comments
> The only downside of CDs was that you couldn’t record from the radio and Napster eventually solved that better than radio ever did.
This was far from the only drawback with CDs especially early on, at least in mobile applications: the media (and thus player) is bulky, cases are fragile (in part through increased leverage), it has low resilience to physical damage, and before memory prices hit low enough for significant buffering the slightest g forces would lead to skips.
MDs were real progress on that front. Shame it was quite expensive and the digital models were hobbled by horrendous software. And obviously flash-based pmps then smartphones are their lunch entirely.
This was far from the only drawback with CDs especially early on, at least in mobile applications: the media (and thus player) is bulky, cases are fragile (in part through increased leverage), it has low resilience to physical damage, and before memory prices hit low enough for significant buffering the slightest g forces would lead to skips.
MDs were real progress on that front. Shame it was quite expensive and the digital models were hobbled by horrendous software. And obviously flash-based pmps then smartphones are their lunch entirely.
I remember my first “portable” was so bulky it came with its own carry case like a hand bag.
You had to step very lightly when using it as it was just itching to skip.
It would also eat through batteries like no one’s business.
You had to step very lightly when using it as it was just itching to skip.
It would also eat through batteries like no one’s business.
MDs are just another example of Sony screwing it up by making things proprietary and keeping it to themselves instead of creating an ecosystem (memory sticks were another example, although they didn't offer quite the same advantages). It's really a shame, I think if Sony would have gone about this differently they likely would have put off the emergence of MP3 players for a long time.
It’s a funny comment because those formats only existed to be proprietary. Sony learnt the wrong lessons from CD, which they co developed with Phillips. They saw the success of that format and wished they were getting royalties on the underlying tech.
They then wasted billions and decades in formats other companies wouldn’t touch because they had fees attached. Minidisc being a prime example. Sounded worse than CDs, cost the same. Had a recording feature people already had with cassette.
They then wasted billions and decades in formats other companies wouldn’t touch because they had fees attached. Minidisc being a prime example. Sounded worse than CDs, cost the same. Had a recording feature people already had with cassette.
MD was quite conventient for recording (interviews, ambient ...) and with random access much better than cassettes.
And it could have been the successor to the floppy
There were already plenty of “successors to the floppy” in the dustbin of history (floptical, Iomega zip, LS120, …). None of them was competitive as a distribution format, or at all once CD-R became widely available.
Yeah, and the MiniDisc was the only one that could have come close. Sony already had computer MiniDisc readers/writers, mass production with pre-recorded content, (fairly) large volumes.
They just never connected these things to each other. It could have been a great standard and we would have been plagued to this day with them. :)
In some ways it's even better than USB flash. There are no read-only flash drives, for instance. It's also a problem that you mosh "data" in the same port you mosh "keyboard" or "spy device". We gained a lot with the USB paradigm but we lost some things, too.
They just never connected these things to each other. It could have been a great standard and we would have been plagued to this day with them. :)
In some ways it's even better than USB flash. There are no read-only flash drives, for instance. It's also a problem that you mosh "data" in the same port you mosh "keyboard" or "spy device". We gained a lot with the USB paradigm but we lost some things, too.
MiniDisk! I loved that format. Great physical size. I suspect my love is all about nostalgia for the future, because when they came out they were foreign (at least in the US) and fly.
After using minidisk I was sure that LS120 would succeed. The formats of cartridged optical disks mostly removed the annoyance of scratched disks. Now the only place I see optical disks in a cartridge is at the library where they put some CDs in a cartridge to use in a special drive.
I was in college during the time, but I remember all of these digital art students had iMacs and these clear+blue FireWire zip drives they used to carry around between classes and home.
You mean like the Zip drive? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive
In principle, maybe, but Zip disks were errorprone, didn't store music for portable players, and were rather large and cumbersome. Minidiscs were even smaller than floppies and more robust.
> has low resilience to physical damage
No it doesn't. As a child, one time I tried to make a CD unplayable and literally couldn't do it. (Sandpaper didn't do the trick.)
The real issue was the skipping when you tried to use a portable CD player.
No it doesn't. As a child, one time I tried to make a CD unplayable and literally couldn't do it. (Sandpaper didn't do the trick.)
The real issue was the skipping when you tried to use a portable CD player.
> No it doesn't.
Yes it does.
> As a child, one time I tried to make a CD unplayable and literally couldn't do it. (Sandpaper didn't do the trick.)
Either child you was incompetent or your player was very good at error recovery, because I personally saw a number of car CDs thrown out as the car’s stereo was unable to read them anymore.
Yes it does.
> As a child, one time I tried to make a CD unplayable and literally couldn't do it. (Sandpaper didn't do the trick.)
Either child you was incompetent or your player was very good at error recovery, because I personally saw a number of car CDs thrown out as the car’s stereo was unable to read them anymore.
you were probably scraping the thick transparent side, not the side with the label? the data is immediately under the label. the clear side can be surprisingly scraped up and still read properly, though I'm not sure how!! I have some CDs that I thought were ruined because of how scratched up the underside is, and they play just fine. Pretty sweet! Then I have one or two where the label side got a scratch taken out of it, and indeed, you can see right through the disc at those points - unrecoverable damage. Conversely a scratched up underside can simply be buffed/polished smooth and the disc will read good as new. I actually have one disc that cracked in half (a singular crack from the center to the outside edge, not spanning the total diameter of the disc)... and it actually plays without any skips (though surely depending on quality of the player and its resilience to read errors). I couldn't believe it at the time. A single piece of masking tape to hold the edge together was a sufficient "repair".
I worked in a CD foundry in the early 1990s. Scratches that were not tangential (perpendicular to the radius) were irrelevant, as the basic CD encoding scheme provide something like (IIRC) 30+ bytes of data parity protection. If the scratch width along the track wasn't longer than that, it didn't exist.
If it did exist, some toothpaste rubbed tangentially around the CD on your fingertips was often enough to buff it out, at least as far as the 30-byte limit cared.
It was a phenomenal jump in data integrity, built in at the recording level. Sure, you could encode even floppies with that scheme... but your computer didn't, natively.
If it did exist, some toothpaste rubbed tangentially around the CD on your fingertips was often enough to buff it out, at least as far as the 30-byte limit cared.
It was a phenomenal jump in data integrity, built in at the recording level. Sure, you could encode even floppies with that scheme... but your computer didn't, natively.
CD pickup detects changes in the reflected light due to the reflective pits. As long as the scratches are significantly bigger than pits they will create lower frequency attenuation to the reflected light which won't affect the high frequency signal coming off pits. You will get occasional errors when crossing into and out of a scratch but that's just a few samples, likely those won't even make it through through the speakers. I have not tried but I imagine a very fine sandpaper could create the scratches at high enough frequency to interfere with the pickup.
But the label side is indeed very fragile as you can easily damage the reflective pits, only covered by a layer of paint. It's as same as a simple mirror, where the thin layer of reflective metal is very well protected from the front but is only covered with paint in the back.
But the label side is indeed very fragile as you can easily damage the reflective pits, only covered by a layer of paint. It's as same as a simple mirror, where the thin layer of reflective metal is very well protected from the front but is only covered with paint in the back.
They must’ve had a really robust kind of CDs wherever you lived, then. Like everyone else, I wore out a lot of discs simply by storing them outside their case.
Do you mean the OG audio CD's made at the audio CD factory, or those newfangled CD-R's?
CD goes in the microwave
Vinyl is populair, inconvenient and doesn't have crisp audio quality. Cassettes are also inconvenient and have poor audio quality, plus they are cheap and portable. So I definitely also see them stick around. I also see plenty cassettes being issued on e.g. bandcamp for years already.
The poor audio quality can be seen as desired feature btw. It brings a certain lofi or warmth with it.
The poor audio quality can be seen as desired feature btw. It brings a certain lofi or warmth with it.
“The two things that really drew me to vinyl were the expense and the inconvenience”
https://cartoonstockart.com/featured/the-two-things-that-rea...
https://cartoonstockart.com/featured/the-two-things-that-rea...
The sad thing is that's pretty accurate.
I do value the inconvenience. When I put an album on, I put an album on. I don't hit next, random, go wandering off down rabbitholes. I put the album on.
And I do see the cost as a feature, somewhat. It feels like I got something for my money, in a way that paying for a zip doesn't.
I do value the inconvenience. When I put an album on, I put an album on. I don't hit next, random, go wandering off down rabbitholes. I put the album on.
And I do see the cost as a feature, somewhat. It feels like I got something for my money, in a way that paying for a zip doesn't.
That is what still draws me to the movie theater. I'm stuck there for a 2+ hour experience I can't push pause on.
Vinyl is big, which makes for a nice display of album art. 50% of vinyl buyers don’t own a record player. People play their convenience and high quality digital music, while displaying the vinyl albums as decorations.
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/50-of-vinyl-buyers-do...
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/50-of-vinyl-buyers-do...
I just released an album on cassette and definitely has _not_ poor audio quality. Anyway I remember a lot of releases with poor audio quality too, but this is more the problem of the production and not the cassette itself. All studio recordings back in the days were made with the same tape material, ferro oxid, sames as a Type I cassette.
Vinyl is nowhere near as inconvenient as tapes and sounds way better. And I say this as someone who used to lug around big bags of 12" records as a DJ! It's pretty annoying, but it's still better than having to rewind, and deal with the appalling durability of cassettes!
> Vinyl is nowhere near as inconvenient as tapes
Bringing your own mixtape to a party or a bar or a friend’s car was a thing. Bringing a stack of records seems much less convenient.
Bringing your own mixtape to a party or a bar or a friend’s car was a thing. Bringing a stack of records seems much less convenient.
I don't do either, but, on the face of it, actually DJing and bringing a random mixtape to a party seem to have very different requirements.
Digital seems to have solved both, though.
Digital seems to have solved both, though.
Nothing has managed to capture the mixtape model. A tangible object made with care you could give as a gift and was unique and valuable. CDs got close but people didn’t have the gear to make them until mp3s had arrived and overshadowed them. Plus CDs with handwritten tracklists didn’t feel as nice as tapes and blank CDs were invariably ugly.
Music as an object is a thing and playlists are in no way the same. You can’t even control the music on a playlist as it’s in the gift of the streamer.
Music as an object is a thing and playlists are in no way the same. You can’t even control the music on a playlist as it’s in the gift of the streamer.
I think the qualities of a cassette mentioned have clearly helped with the mixtape model. But I can't help but wonder if it wasn't also a product of that particular era.
It certainly depends on geographical zones, too, but I remember people burning audio cds for quite a while, and taking them on the go with portable players. This was quite widespread before portable mp3 players became common.
Hell, where I grew up, cassettes were still in regular use until the end of the 90s, and mixtapes had grown increasingly rare.
It certainly depends on geographical zones, too, but I remember people burning audio cds for quite a while, and taking them on the go with portable players. This was quite widespread before portable mp3 players became common.
Hell, where I grew up, cassettes were still in regular use until the end of the 90s, and mixtapes had grown increasingly rare.
I kind of regard physical media, and especially analog media, as merch these days. And to be honest, they're a great kind of merch.
Tapes are exceptionally durable when cared for properly. Here's a video of a guy that tests for loss of quality after 1,000 plays.
https://youtu.be/_dgJ4hRHBiw?si=IpjzdgAHJ4Q9yvb5
Quality is indistinguishable from the first playback. Tapes have a bad reputation because most people used them in the cars, which is the equivalent of storing them in an oven on a daily basis. A lot of car stereos were very cheap, and that lead to a lot of cassettes being damaged when they would have been fine otherwise.
Regarding the quality argument. Again, it's going to depend on the media and the equipment. I have a very nice Marantz tape deck, and I use chrome tapes with it. When recorded and played back with dolby noise reduction, it sounds pretty damn good!
https://youtu.be/jVoSQP2yUYA?si=db7QjRt37ENiLMFX
I say this as someone that also owns a very nice turntable and has a digital FLAC media collection, so I'm not married to tapes in any way. They're just something fun to goof around with (and mostly to give my kid a more tangible experience with playing music at home).
Regarding convenience, I can't argue that they're the least convenient media. That said, I'm an album guy, so I like to listen to recordings in their entirety most of the time.
https://youtu.be/_dgJ4hRHBiw?si=IpjzdgAHJ4Q9yvb5
Quality is indistinguishable from the first playback. Tapes have a bad reputation because most people used them in the cars, which is the equivalent of storing them in an oven on a daily basis. A lot of car stereos were very cheap, and that lead to a lot of cassettes being damaged when they would have been fine otherwise.
Regarding the quality argument. Again, it's going to depend on the media and the equipment. I have a very nice Marantz tape deck, and I use chrome tapes with it. When recorded and played back with dolby noise reduction, it sounds pretty damn good!
https://youtu.be/jVoSQP2yUYA?si=db7QjRt37ENiLMFX
I say this as someone that also owns a very nice turntable and has a digital FLAC media collection, so I'm not married to tapes in any way. They're just something fun to goof around with (and mostly to give my kid a more tangible experience with playing music at home).
Regarding convenience, I can't argue that they're the least convenient media. That said, I'm an album guy, so I like to listen to recordings in their entirety most of the time.
You speak from my heart. And btw it hasn't to be chrome. Ferro oxid also can sound damn good if it is high quality tape and the production is good.
Cassettes and their cases had a really nice size and shape, fit right in the hand. And it was cool that you could see it moving, unlike (most) cd players. Also the recording paradigm was pretty easy to grasp, just 1:1. And they kinda degraded gracefully, with sound getting weird but still playing, at least until the tape actually came out in a big catastrophic mess and we’d try to rewind it with a pencil.
My last album release made 10x more money with selling the physical cassette then with digital sales! I think people want something in their hands. And by the way, the tape sounds really good. Definitely not lo fi, the opposite actually. Overall better then the compressed Spotify release with in comparison muddy bass and less saturation.
> I think people want something in their hands.
I can understand that, and I like it, too. But, personally, I dont want to fill my home with random artefacts if it's not strictly required, and I don't know of anything "in my hands" that doesn't come with this issue.
To your compressed Spotify point, I do recognize this as a general issue for modern music distribution, which had already started with CDs (and to which cassettes aren't technically immune either).
So, as a musician, do you know of places selling digital media mastered as the artists intended? I've had good luck with Bandcamp, but they don't have most of the music I'm into.
I can understand that, and I like it, too. But, personally, I dont want to fill my home with random artefacts if it's not strictly required, and I don't know of anything "in my hands" that doesn't come with this issue.
To your compressed Spotify point, I do recognize this as a general issue for modern music distribution, which had already started with CDs (and to which cassettes aren't technically immune either).
So, as a musician, do you know of places selling digital media mastered as the artists intended? I've had good luck with Bandcamp, but they don't have most of the music I'm into.
Really the only place where you can sell HQ audio on your own and that has an audience is Bandcamp. But to your question, you could try Qobuz, that's were my distributor uploaded the original master flacs to.
The reason is that rich hipsters have more expendable income.
Jealous or poor hipster?
Cassette tapes were more practical for portable devices. The last high-end Walkmans were beautifully crafted and barely bigger than the cassette inside whereas portable CD player were always bulkier if only because of the size of CDs themselves.
Minidisc tried to play in that space since minidisc players are very small.
Minidisc tried to play in that space since minidisc players are very small.
I largely share your sentiment, I had a tape player as a kid, and the second I could get a CD player and burn my own CDs I never looked back. One thing that I don't see mentioned often is how battery-hungry these players were as well.
I think the ‘warmth’ people attribute to older media has been shown to have to do with processing.
Modern audio has been mastered for loudness, with the corresponding loss of details and instrument separation. Tape media suffers less from this issue, and old vinyl even less so (but not modern releases).
It's an understandable response to the feeling of having lost ‘something’ in the era of digital audio (which is arguably just a matter of processing, not the media itself).
Modern audio has been mastered for loudness, with the corresponding loss of details and instrument separation. Tape media suffers less from this issue, and old vinyl even less so (but not modern releases).
It's an understandable response to the feeling of having lost ‘something’ in the era of digital audio (which is arguably just a matter of processing, not the media itself).
There's also the factor that the last 20 years of music have been marketed towards BT MP3 players. Intrinsically low-fi, mono playback devices, so why care about things like deep bass and channel?
What do you mean by "fad"?
It's not like metal, dungeon synth and PE/noise artists have just now started publishing on cassette. They've done it for years and years, and you'll find a lot of them on Bandcamp, e.g. https://duckpropaganda.bandcamp.com/album/auditory-chokehold .
It's not like metal, dungeon synth and PE/noise artists have just now started publishing on cassette. They've done it for years and years, and you'll find a lot of them on Bandcamp, e.g. https://duckpropaganda.bandcamp.com/album/auditory-chokehold .
OK. "Niche".
minidisc has a lot going for it. you can easily carry a few around with you. you dont really need to carry the outer cases. you can put some album art directly onto them. if your player has netMD support then you can just use a web browser to manage the tracks on a disc.
the only downside i can think of is the loud screeching every once in a while when the disc is seeking. but that could just be the player that i have maybe
the only downside i can think of is the loud screeching every once in a while when the disc is seeking. but that could just be the player that i have maybe
I wish somebody would make minidiscs and minidisc players. Can (optionally) replace atrac with opus. Fast transfers but 'slow playback' and more durability than cassette or CD.
I'd like to see the minidisc come back but the sheer cost of the units is bonkers today :)
Those were the days and gone they have.
Those were the days and gone they have.
I was recently surprised to sell an old portable MiniDisc player on fb for close to $100. (FWIW, it was mint). I’m still nostalgic for them, and have another portable player and recording deck, but I’m left scratching my head at how much folks are willing to pay to pick up their first player. Shrug
eventually I bet someone'll put a sd cassette in one and we'll be back to square one. I enjoy my atrac discman with writable disks, fits a lot of music but I'm not going to pretend I use it more than my phone
Minidiscs proved that people were comfortable with lossy compression. It was to be many years before lossless audio became a thing again.
It always amused me how we were told the difference between lossless and lossy compression was undetectable to the human ear up until the big streaming services started providing lossless and even high res, at which point it was suddenly the best thing since sliced bread. However you feel about the audio, one way or another it's gaslighting.
Personally, on most music I can't tell decent quality lossy from lossless, but I listen to a lot of choral polyphony and also perform it so I have a good ear for it. When you're listening to 16 or in some cases up to 40 voices and can follow individual lines (single voices recognisable as particular people) you can hear it, and I disliked minidisc and mp3 players for that reason. High res, though, makes no difference at all as far as I can tell.
It always amused me how we were told the difference between lossless and lossy compression was undetectable to the human ear up until the big streaming services started providing lossless and even high res, at which point it was suddenly the best thing since sliced bread. However you feel about the audio, one way or another it's gaslighting.
Personally, on most music I can't tell decent quality lossy from lossless, but I listen to a lot of choral polyphony and also perform it so I have a good ear for it. When you're listening to 16 or in some cases up to 40 voices and can follow individual lines (single voices recognisable as particular people) you can hear it, and I disliked minidisc and mp3 players for that reason. High res, though, makes no difference at all as far as I can tell.
They did no such thing. Sales numbers were tiny outside Japan. People only tolerate lossy compression when that’s all they are offered. Hence the streamers introducing lossless options years after launch due to demand.
Minidiscs were briefly widely available here in the UK and were only short-lived because they were almost immediately replaced by iPods and other mp3 players, also with lossy audio only. Nearly two decades went by during which the only portable music options not widely considered obsolete were lossily compressed, despite the fact you could still buy CDs and listen to them on the move. It's disappointing (and I certainly don't agree with it) but the vast majority of people do tolerate lossy compression even when there are lossless alternatives that are only marginally less convenient. Minidiscs and iPods proved it comprehensively and Bluetooth earbuds have done so again.
Edit: I'm very glad lossless is finally mainstream again but I'd be more inclined to believe it's due to "demand" if I weren't routinely the only person on the train wearing wired earphones.
Edit: I'm very glad lossless is finally mainstream again but I'd be more inclined to believe it's due to "demand" if I weren't routinely the only person on the train wearing wired earphones.
> They were very inconvenient.
They were also very affordable!
They were also very affordable!
All these suck so badly compared to the last Panasonic I had. Japanese portable cassette players were incredible pieces of engineering. They were more a wrapper around the cassette than a player that you inserted the cassette into, with elaborate mechanical designs for bi-directional playback, auto skipping, etc.
All these devices use the same exact mechanism from the last factory in the world making cassette mechanism. Of course, the last factory is not the one that was making the high quality stuff with all the noise reduction technology; the last holdout is the cheapest mechanism there ever was. It's bulky and can't even take advantage of any noise reduction tech.
A banged up old cassette player from Sony will produce higher quality sound than a brand new mechanism.
A banged up old cassette player from Sony will produce higher quality sound than a brand new mechanism.
I had this one, black
https://walkman.land/panasonic/rq-s55
The design was amazing, Apple designs of that time. Extremely slim and I can still recollect the tactile feeling of closing the lid.
I felt like a king owning one.
https://walkman.land/panasonic/rq-s55
The design was amazing, Apple designs of that time. Extremely slim and I can still recollect the tactile feeling of closing the lid.
I felt like a king owning one.
Oh, that's a great website! I found the model I last used: https://walkman.land/panasonic/rq-sx55
I preferred my Japanese Mini-Disc player. 240hrs of play time on one charge
I love this site. Earlier this year I was working to revive my sister's old WM-EX170 and was able to find a service manual for it here.
It made me appreciate how these devices are like pieces of beautiful clockwork!
I only had to replace the belt so it wasn't a complicated repair. But, in comparison to the level of documentation manufacturers of any modern electronics offer today, looking at that service manual was a reminder of what we've lost.
It made me appreciate how these devices are like pieces of beautiful clockwork!
I only had to replace the belt so it wasn't a complicated repair. But, in comparison to the level of documentation manufacturers of any modern electronics offer today, looking at that service manual was a reminder of what we've lost.
That's a service manual, any reasonable manufacturer still produces those
they have become harder and harder to obtain through the years.
I would argue they've become easier to obtain, it's hard to imagine the general public getting hold of service manuals for consumer electronics devices pre–internet.
Other than the bluetooth capability - are modern walkmans as good as they were at the peak of portable tape use?
I had one of these in black - https://walkman.land/panasonic/rq-s30
Gorgeous little machine, not much bigger than a cassette in its box, all metal. It felt about as well designed and built as apple stuff does now. It wasn't long after that we got minidiscs (and we know how that went), and then mp3 players conquered the world.
I had one of these in black - https://walkman.land/panasonic/rq-s30
Gorgeous little machine, not much bigger than a cassette in its box, all metal. It felt about as well designed and built as apple stuff does now. It wasn't long after that we got minidiscs (and we know how that went), and then mp3 players conquered the world.
There was a good video on YouTube that talked about the Walkman resurgence, and why they're so large these days. Almost all of these walkmans are using the same internal mechanism because there was only one place to source them. I don't know if that's still the case now.
https://youtu.be/2DWtkSVNvTg
https://youtu.be/2DWtkSVNvTg
Tbh, i loved my minidisc player, robust and shock resistant (I guess it buffered ?) rewritable media. Compared to even CD players it was ahead of the game.
Mine was great too, but it just never took off quite the same, maybe because of price. 'originals' were expensive, and so were recordable discs.
There was also (IIRC) built-in DRM, so you could record digitally from a CD or read-only minidisc to a writeable minidisc, but not then from writeable minidisc->minidisc. Even recording from analogue to minidisc resulted in something that would be restricted.
But this is all just rehashing things that have been talked about many times over the intervening years. They were great, but they never quite made it and then mp3 ate its lunch.
There was also (IIRC) built-in DRM, so you could record digitally from a CD or read-only minidisc to a writeable minidisc, but not then from writeable minidisc->minidisc. Even recording from analogue to minidisc resulted in something that would be restricted.
But this is all just rehashing things that have been talked about many times over the intervening years. They were great, but they never quite made it and then mp3 ate its lunch.
I wonder why in every movie about Steve Jobs, he is somehow "inventing" the mp3 player / iPod as a better alternative to the walkman, only to find ourselves in 2025 wanting to buy a walkman and not even knowing what iPod is?
Same for vinyls and CDs btw. Maybe music is more than just a fancy animation of album arts.
Same for vinyls and CDs btw. Maybe music is more than just a fancy animation of album arts.
Believe it or not the iPod community is alive and well! There are plenty of people buying them, replacing the battery and hard drive, performing some cosmetic mods, and daily driving them (me included)
It's popular enough that if you look on eBay, the price of an old iPod has become majorly inflated
It's popular enough that if you look on eBay, the price of an old iPod has become majorly inflated
isn't that just because it's an Apple device? I mean, there are people buying those old Macs that shipped with System 7 or 9... it's a fun hobby I guess.
But there again, fast forward to 2025, you download a 17GB OS update so it can tell you which apps you can and can't run on your computer (in a barely readable messages because transparent backgrounds are a thing now)
it has nothing to do with the brand and everything to do with the fact they are still a damn good mp3 player, especially when you swap in a brand new battery and a gigantic-capacity SD card (which also greatly reduces the weight of the device). The click wheel is still one of the most slick controls for a handheld electronic device I've ever seen. Plus there's even an open source replacement firmware for most iPods (among other mp3 players), adding plenty of neat features: https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/WhyRockbox
Also probably because the iPods are very sturdy devices, which many competitors were not; my 2nd gen iPod Nano has suffered extreme abuse yet was perfectly usable. I somewhat regret throwing it away in a recycling bin some years ago.
A good explanation for their maintained prices is the high level of support they still receive from Apple.
Apple gets excoriated here for its backward compatibility, when the company takes very good care of its devices' backward compatibility. In Fall 2025 was the first time that any iPod lost support when macOS lost its Firewire drivers. Any USB iPod still completely works with the current version of macOS.
Apple gets excoriated here for its backward compatibility, when the company takes very good care of its devices' backward compatibility. In Fall 2025 was the first time that any iPod lost support when macOS lost its Firewire drivers. Any USB iPod still completely works with the current version of macOS.
The problem with all of these is they use the same components because only one factory makes them any longer, they're quite bulky, and relatively low quality, for anyone interested in this you're better off getting an old used player.
I love the aesthetic of cassette tapes and players -- there's just something really satisfying about the size and tactility of putting in a cassette. Beyond that, it feels better to choose to listen to a particular album rather than putting endless playlists on shuffle.
There's definitely space for tape to persist as a medium, even if quality and longevity is lower -- not everything has to be audiophile level, and the listening experience is far more than just sound quality.
There's definitely space for tape to persist as a medium, even if quality and longevity is lower -- not everything has to be audiophile level, and the listening experience is far more than just sound quality.
> it feels better to choose to listen to a particular album rather than putting endless playlists on shuffle.
Isn't that something you can do with streaming services as well?
I understand that many people choose to go with playlists, but it's not like the choice of listening to full albums has been taken away (yet).
Sure, the implementation is lackluster, with gaps between tracks when there shouldn't be one (really annoying on ambient/atmospheric/drone tracks), but still better than nothing.
Isn't that something you can do with streaming services as well?
I understand that many people choose to go with playlists, but it's not like the choice of listening to full albums has been taken away (yet).
Sure, the implementation is lackluster, with gaps between tracks when there shouldn't be one (really annoying on ambient/atmospheric/drone tracks), but still better than nothing.
> Isn't that something you can do with streaming services as well?
There's a number of differences.
- While yes you can play albums, streamers have decided for us that giving us an album-oriented playlist is out of the question. Try it: make a playlist of 12 favorite albums, maybe with some double albums in there -- now quickly, play the Miles Davis album in the middle. Compare this to leaving 12 albums in the front of your drawer because it's what you're into now: no way to recreate this on streamers, and even if there was, they could change their mind and take that feature away anytime.
- As for picking something out of the blue, browsing a 120-album collection is easy IRL, a modest collection. On a screen it's annoying at best. It's like trying to page through a book on kindle, IRL books are vastly superior because of the combination of visual and sensory/touch.
- Finally there's the commitment of having to fire up the medium and the pleasure of considering the jacket art etc. With streaming there is no "dropping a needle" pleasure, no resistance to abandon the stream once that one not-amazing song comes up, and the album art experience is garbage.
Streaming is good for discovery of single songs, and a good radio experience (but only if there's a human behind the playlist, or the AI isn't total garbage which it usually is). It's also unbeatable for quickly assembling a party-length playlist. But for an enjoyable, artist-focused listening session, it's kind of crap.
There's a number of differences.
- While yes you can play albums, streamers have decided for us that giving us an album-oriented playlist is out of the question. Try it: make a playlist of 12 favorite albums, maybe with some double albums in there -- now quickly, play the Miles Davis album in the middle. Compare this to leaving 12 albums in the front of your drawer because it's what you're into now: no way to recreate this on streamers, and even if there was, they could change their mind and take that feature away anytime.
- As for picking something out of the blue, browsing a 120-album collection is easy IRL, a modest collection. On a screen it's annoying at best. It's like trying to page through a book on kindle, IRL books are vastly superior because of the combination of visual and sensory/touch.
- Finally there's the commitment of having to fire up the medium and the pleasure of considering the jacket art etc. With streaming there is no "dropping a needle" pleasure, no resistance to abandon the stream once that one not-amazing song comes up, and the album art experience is garbage.
Streaming is good for discovery of single songs, and a good radio experience (but only if there's a human behind the playlist, or the AI isn't total garbage which it usually is). It's also unbeatable for quickly assembling a party-length playlist. But for an enjoyable, artist-focused listening session, it's kind of crap.
This thread is dripping from nostalgia, in a good way.
I wonder how things are going to be in 25 or 50 years, what will today's kids look back with the same kind of devotion and nostalgia.
A lot of things are intangible/immaterial now (for non-geeks/non-hoarders, their inbox, online playlist and photos will likely be gone, they won't have any paper letters or plastic-framed holiday slide photographs or anything like that).
I wonder how things are going to be in 25 or 50 years, what will today's kids look back with the same kind of devotion and nostalgia.
A lot of things are intangible/immaterial now (for non-geeks/non-hoarders, their inbox, online playlist and photos will likely be gone, they won't have any paper letters or plastic-framed holiday slide photographs or anything like that).
"I miss having to actually click on a website to get there. These neural implants don't have the feel of old-time web buttons..."
Don't these all use the same crappy internals, because there's only one company left making those, to satisfy the remaining hipster crowd?
Yes, pretty much:
https://www.theverge.com/24295971/we-are-rewind-fiio-cassett...
https://www.theverge.com/24295971/we-are-rewind-fiio-cassett...
I was in the market for my kid who is going through a hipster phase
A review of one unit said that it didn’t honor the cutout tab so if you accidentally pressed record with any tape you would dub over your music
I shopped for a while and came to the conclusion that these are mostly kitsch.
A review of one unit said that it didn’t honor the cutout tab so if you accidentally pressed record with any tape you would dub over your music
I shopped for a while and came to the conclusion that these are mostly kitsch.
From what I've heard, that seems to be the case. I suppose that's part of why legit Walkmans are going for so much now. I love cassettes and it would be cool to have a good portable tape player again, but it really can't compete with my phone. Unless we go back to carrying around all the individual things a phone can do. It's tempting but just not as convenient.
I still play around with tapes at home. I have a modded player with speed controls, a couple of decent tape decks, and a 4 track recorder. I have a couple of loop tapes to play around with too. But yeah, as a portable music format, not sure I want to go back to that.
I still play around with tapes at home. I have a modded player with speed controls, a couple of decent tape decks, and a 4 track recorder. I have a couple of loop tapes to play around with too. But yeah, as a portable music format, not sure I want to go back to that.
Flash storage is so much cheaper now.
I can't imagine choosing a cassette walkman over an mp3 player just based on how much music fits on the device.
I can't imagine choosing a cassette walkman over an mp3 player just based on how much music fits on the device.
I have found that sometimes it is nice to have fewer choices when selecting media. It helps prevent analysis paralysis for me.
My daughter asked for a record player for Christmas. My wife and I picked a few albums to gift her… knowing that she’ll be captive to them for a short while. Starting her off with Nirvana’s mtv unplugged, Miles Davis kind of blue, and abbey road. She’s got great taste in music, so I’m looking forward to her to slowing down and deliberately experiencing an album, rather than fragmented playlists sprinkled with “Alexa/siri skip” every few minutes.
Yeap, it comes across as anemoia false nostalgia pining for a "utopia" than never existed. I had Weird Al and Metallica on cassette and a cheap-o, bulky Walkman and Koss Porta Pros. It didn't really ever play at a constant speed and ate batteries like they were free. When CDs came out (which was actually around 1981), they were a million times better, but it took forever to get the Discman down to a halfway decent price and not skip like crazy on the slightest bump. A good example of a portable CD player that worked well was the '94 Sony D-828K Car Discman that also wasn't just for cars.
And the 80's and 90's weren't that great. The best thing that happened was George Carlin on pirated analog HBO telling us how Americans were morons and that everything sucked. ;o)
Flash storage bit rots. As do consumer writable optical media. RAID HDD or you ain't got nothing.
And the 80's and 90's weren't that great. The best thing that happened was George Carlin on pirated analog HBO telling us how Americans were morons and that everything sucked. ;o)
Flash storage bit rots. As do consumer writable optical media. RAID HDD or you ain't got nothing.
Anolog media is just cool.
Its like having some WW|| knife or motorbike helmet or vax780 in your youth Cool for teenagers
I've been having a hard time finding an (in-production) mp3 player that doesn't have a web browser.
I wonder why SanDisk stopped manufacturing the Sansa Clip+. The production cost in 2025 would be extremely low and the demand still relatively high (relatively high as in, really low but high enough to sustain it as a product).
This is the exact mp3 player I had in mind as a better option.
A question to native English speakers: Do you really say "Walkmans", not "Walkmen"?
Yeah, Walkman is a name; we don't usually pluralize individual components of a name, we just add an s or an es, or sometimes (but not always) a trailing y becomes ies. But if we did plural by components it would be Walksman. :p (Personally, I try to pluralize compound nouns this way, cause I think it's fun. Even if it's not always appropriate or correct.)
I always saw it as an unmarked plural (like sheep/fish/etc). I also find it hard to not prefix it with Sony in my head. But I would definitely use Walkmen over Walkmans if pushed.
That’s what I’ve always heard, and said.
We recently dug out my portable cassette player (Not as small as a walkman, takes D cell batteries) so my daughter could listen to my wife's Disney cassettes from her childhood in the early 90s. I was amazed how a 5 year old immediately figured out how to manipulate the tape player and flip over cassettes etc. I suppose it was similar for me at the same age. We even found a NOS Disney cassette on eBay that my wife didn't have.
The funny thing is, even though I'm just about old enough to have bought a few chart music cassettes when they were a contemporary medium, I don't own any cassettes and I only had the player because I bought it on eBay to experiment with tape degradation for music.
The funny thing is, even though I'm just about old enough to have bought a few chart music cassettes when they were a contemporary medium, I don't own any cassettes and I only had the player because I bought it on eBay to experiment with tape degradation for music.
wow, back in the day, well after the cassette walkman, the FM walkman was actually a BIG DEAL! they didn't even make a 2-in-1, not even an AM/FM! i loved <3 mine
https://www.radiomuseum.org/images/radio/sony_tokyo/fm_walkm...
(i wasn't against cassette walkmans, but i was against carrying enough tapes to mimic the variety of music that they played on the radio)
https://www.radiomuseum.org/images/radio/sony_tokyo/fm_walkm...
(i wasn't against cassette walkmans, but i was against carrying enough tapes to mimic the variety of music that they played on the radio)
Bluetooth and is nice, but it's probably a better buy to get an antique portable cassette recorder. It's really something how primitive these look in comparison to the what was on the market in the 1980s.
Probably of interest to people here is this article from the dawn of the Walkman: https://time.com/archive/6697378/living-a-great-way-to-snub-...
Probably of interest to people here is this article from the dawn of the Walkman: https://time.com/archive/6697378/living-a-great-way-to-snub-...
The FiiO Echo Mini popped up on my feed the other day. I think its cooler.
https://www.fiio.com/echomini
https://www.fiio.com/echomini
> penetrating voice and warm sound
Are they talking about cassette tapes? Maybe my memory is failing me, but I don't remember that being a thing back in the day.
Are they talking about cassette tapes? Maybe my memory is failing me, but I don't remember that being a thing back in the day.
Take a look here[0] for a discussion about cassette quality.
TL;DR: Like many of us you probably had shitty equipment and shitty cassettes. They are more than capable of sounding great with the right tools.
[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jVoSQP2yUYA
TL;DR: Like many of us you probably had shitty equipment and shitty cassettes. They are more than capable of sounding great with the right tools.
[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jVoSQP2yUYA
So it's possible to get better sound quality with better quality tapes and players, but I'm pretty sure the player that's using that description falls neatly into the shitty equipment category.
It’s amazing to see this. How good are the transports in these modern units? I seem to remember when cassettes died the first time, the whole ecosystem went away, from Chrome Dioxide cassettes to good quality transports, which took a long time to get right. How do these compare to a good quality unit from the 80’s and 90’s?
Is transport the bit that reels the tapes? I watched a YouTube video recently about these that said that it seems all these modern ones are using basically the same mechanism from a PRC factory, and thus the minimum size is quite large.
Since Sony doesn't manufacture their phenomenally small mechanisms anymore, the era of the tape sized tape player is gone unless someone invests millions in r&d and setting up manufacturing.
Also in terms of quality: fine, but the video found better quality from vintage units he had cleaned up.
I don't have the video saved sorry.
Since Sony doesn't manufacture their phenomenally small mechanisms anymore, the era of the tape sized tape player is gone unless someone invests millions in r&d and setting up manufacturing.
Also in terms of quality: fine, but the video found better quality from vintage units he had cleaned up.
I don't have the video saved sorry.
The video is probably from the “techmoan” channel. Very good content.
They’re not very good. As the other comment said, they all use the same mechanism. It gets the job done, but that also means the “premium” models are rip offs. Basically lipstick on a pig, so to speak.
Sadly I don’t see new mechanisms appearing anytime soon. But there is still hope. There have been new film cameras with modern innards recently released.
Sadly I don’t see new mechanisms appearing anytime soon. But there is still hope. There have been new film cameras with modern innards recently released.
Meanwhile, here is an actual Sony Walkman that is modern, i.e. in production: https://electronics.sony.com/audio/audio-components/hi-res-a...
I dunno but it seems like anemoia. Maybe a few folks want to listen to a mixtape from their teen years that's gathering dust but is likely to break than play properly.
Also, it's difficult to top the school bus yellow Walkman Sports photo from Playboy that pretty much crystalized the zeitgeist.
Also, it's difficult to top the school bus yellow Walkman Sports photo from Playboy that pretty much crystalized the zeitgeist.
Buying anything like this contributes to eWaste in a really silly way, because cassette tapes are inferior to digital in quite literally every objective measure. As far as unnecessary consumption is concerned, this is more unnecessary than most of it.
Where are the modern tape decks for cars? Or something equivalent where the medium is robust enough to throw in the passenger footwell, and big enough to be safely grabbable and changeable while driving?
USB front slot with USB memory sticks? One stick per playlist/album. Different form factors so you can locate the right one without taking your eyes off the road. Possible to embed into larger enclosures if you find them to small.
(Personally, I do prefer the modern Bluetooth+mobile+app+voice control).
(Personally, I do prefer the modern Bluetooth+mobile+app+voice control).
I rocked this setup for a while, and it wasn't terrible. My only mistake was to buy 20 identical USB drives, but a sharpie helped to some extent.
Spotify with CarPlay?
Anyone knows of a similar site but for portable AM/FM radios?
I skipped this phase I still own a portable CD-player. I think I even own 2, me and my wife had one when we where young. They both still work.
yeah I still have my old Panasonic SL-SX410 from 1999 or so, barely larger than the CD itself and with included AAA rechargeable NiMH batteries - kind of special at the time and it would charge the batteries itself (no separate charging station needed). I actually still have the original batteries and they still hold a very small charge. Maybe can listen to one or two songs lol
That sounds like a very nice device, does it say how much "anti-skip" it had?
10 seconds according to
https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/panasonic_sl_sx410.html
https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/panasonic_sl_sx410.html
Yeah! and check out that little "remote", allowing quick access to pause/play/skip and volume control! I could just keep the CD player in my pocket and be walking and listening to music, never needing to take it out of my pocket basically. Super cool :)
I wonder if the same thing will happen with cameras?
Already kind of has, with the Kodak Ektar 135 film cameras and such.
I loved my Sony WM-10 back in the day.
nostalgia is a helluva drug
Minidisc is the format I have some nostalgia for. It never blew up, but it felt like the best of both worlds. You could record from the radio like a digital cassette tapes, and even trim out the DJ and reorder tracks… and give them names. You could also buy them like a CD. From a digital file you could use a TOSlink cable to get a great quality recording at home. And the later ones even played MP3s directly. It could really do it all.