Absolutely the MiniDisc. It boomed in Japan but failed to take off outside of that market, and it was caught in the middle of the transition from CDs to MP3 players and the eventual iPod/iTunes revolution so the marketshare it did have, dwindled.
Absolutely love hearing companies talk about the weaknesses of their design and how they improved it as best they can. Serious respect to Fiio and We are Rewind.
You respect a company that makes a product that's "designed" to go in your pocket but is covered in sharp corners and sticking-out buttons? Why? Seems like about the worst design imaginable.
Even though I collect CDs, I actually don't use them often. I simply rip them to FLAC files and copy them onto a 512 GB card in my phone. This way, I can get full CD quality without lugging around bulky stuff. The CDs themselves are still a nice visual representation of my music collection.
Plus, you get all of the metadata. That's one of the best things about physical media. One of the things I find irritating about downloads is that often much of the metadata is missing. Often, information like Composers, Liner Notes (which could be put in the "Comments" tag), and Beats per Minute, are missing.
@@Solitaire001 you should check put the "ongoing history of new music" episodes on "digital debris", they're a pretty cool look at all the parts of music we've "lost" with the shift to digital
its wild how quickly we can lose the ability and capacity to make something. Even if these companies had the ability to get the tooling made, would they actually be able to because all that R&D from Sony is probably in a vault somewhere. It reminds me of pixel art where people have completely forgotten how it use to look on CRTs, its only in the last few years that I have seen videos pop up that discusses this. So not a lot of people know that the dithering on CRTs blended colours or made some assets transparent like the waterfalls in Sonic and they see pixel art from the 80s and 90s and thinks it looks bad because they're not using the correct display. Its like that with cassettes, where people who get into it their first reaction is going to be awful quality lot of wow and flutter.
mainly because "we" never had that ability. Sony or whatever large manufacturer had that ability. And often it was viable only at a high enough mass production scale (i.e. the tooling to make it was too expensive for small runs)
the quality becomes a vicious cycle. since new tape decks aren't so great, quality only needs to be "good enough" so we get new cassette releases on noisy tape stock with no noise reduction for the most part.
i do believe it can be done.. the question is should they? the video did mention it will not be economically viable to spend on RnD for such vintage product that may or may not have economies of scale.. volume of business..
>because all that R&D from Sony is probably in a vault somewhere this is why patents exist, patents protect your rights to a design but also ensure that the knowledge is centrally documented
They can't make them small because the integrated specialized mechanical parts needed for those products are no longer available in the market. We have better smaller electronics now but the electronics never took up that much space to begin with, it's the electromechanical parts that need to be miniaturized. We can of course recreate those parts, make them even smaller and better, but the startup cost would be way too high for a niche product like this. if somehow there was a demand for cassette players like we have demand for cellphones, we would very quickly have a player that's like the same size as a cassette and simply attaches to the side.
@@iRelevant.47.system.boycott it's easy to manufacture precision DC motors and cassette tape heads? and per your comment, easy to make things as small as possible?
Yeah, never gonna happen. The world has moved on to digital and solid-state, which, let’s face it, is far superior to the old stuff with moving parts with respect to the intended function of these devices (listening to music on the go).
Both of those older walkmans could easily have their issues fixed with a new belt and an easy speed adjustment. Just felt it was a little unfair to compare them and judge their quality when they are not working as they should. Also there are hundreds of relatively cheap and good players floating around on ebay every day, but i understand the want for a tinker free and out of the box, modern experience
I think he did a good enough job of saying and showing how nothing could really beat the fully-optimized old tech, except that they have problems from being older.
My 11 year old son asked us for a $10 AM/FM alarm clock radio for his room. He has it set so that at 6:30am it goes off and he really enjoys laying in bed and listening to FM radio. I find it so odd because we have family spotify and TH-cam music, he can literally listen to anything he wants at any time, but he doesnt. He just enjoys listening to whatever comes on the radio at the time. I could 100% see him being over the moon if he recieved one of these walkmans as a gift.
I totally agree with you. CD is the far superior format, and it's so easy to maintain a collection. CD's don't take up that much space as vinyl, they are absolutely care-free and the sound quality doesn't degrade over time.
CD audio sounds better than streaming because it’s uncompressed. You don’t need the physical disc to achieve that quality though - any uncompressed 44.1 kHz/16 bit audio file will sound just as good
@@hifi-enthusiast but you don’t need the physical disk. Essentially they are just storage media with a collection of 44.1 kHz/16 bit uncompressed wave files on them. The files are what matter, and you can just store those on your computer
Yeah cassettes can be rough. There are some indie bands and stuff who produce cassettes basically as 'merch', as it can be a cost effective way to get a physical, analogue version of their music out. But yes, it's basically novelty factor.
Minidisc is something that was ahead of its time, good audio quality, great players with long battery time, and disc itself was safe in his cartridge housing... Minidisc is something i would like to see come back. Digital music we don't own, we lease it... Great video. Thank you.
i loved my minidisc players back then, but honestly: managing songs and playlists on my ipod(s) later was much more convenient. also ripping cds to a harddrive was much faster then recording to minidisc. md also had a "small" comeback when sony released the playstation portable. umds were very reminiscent to the md. games, movies and (iirc) even music was released on that medium.
Digital music on your hard drive is as "own" as any physical media. Yes, the hardware can fail and take down all the files with it, but CDs and MDs aren't immortal either. MD was an excellent medium, and MDs are more user-friendly than SD cards, but "seeing them come back"? no way. If they can't put together a compact CD player (an existing, live technology) how can they recreate something that the industry quit making 20 years ago? Just buy a bunch of cheapo used decks. I have three MD decks at home, and so far all three are still operational.
@@jmi5969 if i'd buy an md-player from the used market, my biggest fear besides some technical failure would be battery replacement. iirc my last sony's md player had a battery the size of 2 chewing gums stacked on top of eacher. not a very common battery size you'd find a replacement for 10 or 20 years from now.
Sometimes it's just crazy how fast something can be revolutionary and popular, then be lost and reattempted or revived but not to the quality of prior.
Like I'm only 15 and even in that short life time things like phones, arcade machines, and consoles already have aspects that are subpar compared to what came before them
Unlike with cassette players, where there is just one manufacturer of mechanisms, there are still plenty of good cd players for sale by brands like Yamaha, NAD, Marantz and Rotel, so that's a difference.
Also, CDs being a digital format and memory being so cheap it surely must be easier to dump the CD onto the internal memory and play from there instead of finding a robust drive that doesn't skip with movement.
I enjoyed portable cassette players back in the day by the likes of Sony, Aiwa etc. I noticed there was no mention of noise reduction technology which was important for the audio cassette to at least sound decent and less hissy. I guess event the basic Dolby B noise reduction is no longer available? I'd rather see the mini disc brought back rather than the cassette but I guess there would be the same issue of finding decent components to make a modern version.
yeah that's true, and noise reduction has gotten a lot more sophisticated over the past few years with just software. Dolby no longer licenses their cassette noise reduction unfortunately. VWestlife talks about Tascam's version here: th-cam.com/video/eep1kLdaURA/w-d-xo.html
There is nothing wrong with surface noise and tape hiss, they’re part of the charm of their respective formats. A cassette enthusiast complaining about hiss seems pretty goofy to me.
@@fclefjefff4041 What nonsense. Tape hiss causes a significant reduction of signal to noise especially in Type I cassettes. Why do you think so much effort was made in developing noise reduction systems and why Dolby B was a mandatory feature of all but the cheapest tape players?
@@fclefjefff4041 Okay wow, you say it's goofy so therefore it's goofy, great argument there. Heaven forbid a "cassette enthusiast" might want to listen to music without extraneous noise. And what does it being 2024 have to do with anything?
Same here. For about 25 years now I've been buying music on CD, ripping it to MP3, and then packing the CDs away for safe keeping. I have upward of 500 now. When I'm only interested in having a few tracks from an artist, I'll typically buy on iTunes / Apple Music and convert their AACs to MP3 for compatibility. My whole MP3 collection clocks in at under 50GB so it's pretty trivial to copy the whole thing onto a phone, tablet, laptop, etc. for offline playback.
I keep the actual CDs as my backup. Although it might take time, I can just re-rip the CDs when needed. This could include if a better audio format comes out.
Moved house earlier this year, and I found a Panasonic cassette player in a drawer. It's almost prestige, however, the gum size battery is totally leaked and destroyed the main board. Felt so sad about that, and I know this kind of cassette player won't come back.
Picked up a Fiio a few months ago after running into issues with a refurbished Walkman. I use tapes as promo items for my podcast, so having this makes for a neat demo.
I feel so old realizing CD players and cassette players are now "retro tech". BTW, speaking of retro tech, I love how you also wear those CASIO calculator watch in this video. I still remember wanting to own them as a kid!
I think it's more like these portable cd players are now being considered "retro tech" along with walkmans. Regular hifi cd players in their regular hifi size have never disappeared and there are plenty available brand new from quality manufacturers like Denon or Yamaha.
I strongly agree. The problem with non-replaceable batteries is that they will eventually wear out. It's nothing wrong with the battery itself, it's just all rechargeable batteries eventually wear out. However, with replaceable batteries it is a non-issue. Two rechargeable AA batteries wear out, just put in two new rechargeable batteries and continue on.
Yes or rechargeable 10500 or 14500 Li batteries that will last long but are also replaceable. Or whatever equivalent cell is needed current wise edit: saw the spec sheet, they’re using 3.7V. Either of those should work
@@yommish There are other options when it comes to rechargeable batteries. One is Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) which is suitable for devices that use standard non-rechargeable AA and AAA batteries (it has a voltage of 1.2, just like Nickel Cadium batteries while non-rechargeable batteries are 1.5 volts). While NiMH batteries aren't as powerful as LI batteries, they are fine for most uses that you'd use non-rechargeable batteries, and they don't have the potential overheating problem that LI batteries have. They are also less expensive than LI batteries, you can buy four AA NiMH batteries and a charger for less than $20 (US). I've used to use them with my portable CD/MP3 player and they worked fine. I would carry a backup pair of rechargeable batteries in case the pair in my player died.
This was a good take on tech. It’s hard to imagine that we can lose the “recipes” so quickly, but it’s so real. Idk how many companies are one old-timer or supplier away from breaking their supply chain.
Incredible! what a coincidence, I got back to cassetes because I wanted my 2 year old daughter to choose her music and be independant of daddy streaming app. I bought a device on aliexpress that did not stood the child hand very long, I repaired it like 5 times and it was one of the belt that failed every time. I found on second hand market an old cassette player for children, I had to change the speaker but no micro soldering, everything is clear inside and the mecanism is quite solid. Thank you for your video and the interview of those suppliers!
I'm 27 and in the last year I've gotten 3 boomboxes and sound systems, a CRT with VCR, and about 300 cassettes and discs of physical media and I listen to and watch them every day.
CRTs are actually what we need new factory lines producing. They're still better than modern displays in a ton of ways, even beyond the fact that retro games and standard def video only looks right on CRTs.
There was a video essay in the past couple of months that went into the details of those small mechanical parts. Supposedly because of the introduction of the iPod and other MP3 players, there wasn't much need for small parts anymore since everything went digital. And that is where we stand today. Incredibly cool though, those companies who try to resurrect those old media carriers.
My Uncle was a runner who purchased an SRF-40 FM Walkman when it first came out. He decided he didn't like running with it and gave it to my siblings and me. I was blown away by how amazing the music sounded through the headphones. I have no idea what happened to that SRF-40, but I purchased one on eBay last year. The sound isn't nearly as amazing as I remember, but I still love it. The early 2000s cassette player shown at the beginning of the video looks pretty cool, as well. As a Sony collector, do you happen to know the model number? Also, do you know if that model also had an FM/AM tuner, or was it strictly a cassette player?
01:56 So you can get a cheap, small, replaceable and functional player for 30. Or you can get their bulky, heavy, barebones player for a 100% markup. Got it.
I think the last cassette Walkman I had was actually one from Aiwa. Does anyone remember Aiwa? It came with a waterproof case that had a nylon belt clip on it. The mechanisms inside cassette players are quite hardy, but do require regular cleaning with a cotton wool bud and isopropyl alcohol on the heads. A lot of time the fluttering could be either quality of the tape, let alone quality of the transfer of the audio to the tape, issues or alignment of the tape across the heads that leads to tape tension issues. The tape doesn’t get tangled up on its own. I used to have a Fisher (Sanyo) portable tape player that had a rubber band that turned the wheels inside the mech. That would have to be replaced once it was over stretched and loose. For the average consumer, a job like that would require some skills and possibly a soldering iron, depending on the make and model. As for these new products. I think they will be very niche. Unless a celebrity gets involved with it.
Great video, really fun. The bigger worry for me isn't so much the loss of cassette transports or new CD mechanisms, it's the loss of the skills needed to keep older ones alive. Cassette players especially are complicated mechanical devices, and very few people really have the skills to keep them going. I wonder what's going to happen when those skills age out.
Very interesting video. It’s crazy to think that in 1983 Sony released the WM-10, which was exactly the size of a cassette case, and 40 years later, we’re far far away from this. It’s almost sad. At least there’s one good thing that We Are Rewind nailed and perfectly understood with their player beyond the sound, and that’s the design.
the WM-10 nevertheless ENCLOSES a cassette tape, so it's dishonest to say it was the same "exactly the same size". I assume you're aware that two physical objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, yeah? 🤣
@@railgap I remember Sony saying, "As close as a cassette case" in their 1983 commercial so you're right-"exactly" isn't 100% accurate. That being said, "as close as a Casset case" is still pretty darn impressive. 😄
@railgap it was the same length and width but a couple of mm thicker than a standard cassette case. Of course to actually put a cassette in it, it slid apart another 10mm. Impressive all the same.
This is the best, most frank, coverage of what the state of CD/Cassette players is that I have found. Thank you for this, even if the overall news and message is a sad one.
The state of cd players as a whole is absolutely fine. It's just that these portable cd players, which are apparently making a comeback as retro tech gadget, are not what they used to be. That does not apply to regular hifi cd players.
Loved everything about this video. Loved the breakdown, the discussion around production constraints also with mini product reviews, talking with the companies themselves, the host. Everything about this video was great. As someone who hasn't watched the verge in awhile but loves tech, I'd love to see more of this. Liking and commenting to hopefully drive the message home.
Open Source Hardware is the solution in my opinion. There isn’t the volume to make huge fully automated assembly lines, BUT there is enough of a market for nice CAD files and designs and such, and use small batch / “mid scale manufacturing” for the products themselves.
Some corporations have to keep producing them. Open source does not pay for new toolings, licensing fee like Dolby B or quality proprietary technology. Those older music player were labor incentive.
The problem, at least in this case, is tooling. I do wonder how much can be done with the latest 3D manufacturing techniques, though. I have to assume these guys already researched those options and found them non-workable (you wouldn't be able to 3D-print a working magnetic tape head, at any rate).
@@OscarFowler 3Dprint does not work on mass manufactured electronics. printer itself may not be that reliable. Maybe CNC milling could help but parts are important.
Open source hardware solves the problem whereby lawyers will go after you if you attempt to clone something. It absolutely does not solve the problem here, which is that mass-producing (as in, "more than five") a tape mechanism better than the de facto reference standard is simply not something that can be done in a small shop. There are hundreds of intricate pieces which have no general-purpose utility and have to be made to extreme tolerances. This is precisely why the cassette-sized players of the mid-2000s were nearly two orders of magnitude more expensive than the cheap options.
@@OscarFowler i think the tape head / optical assembly are the main issues. Most other parts could be 3D Printer, CNC Milled, or even made by EDM, ECM, or Urethane/Silicone Casting etc. This can all be done in a good community scale makerspace. And the goal isn’t necessarily be able to make some product that can be mass produced, or turn a huge profit margin and run a company, but just to be able to make a batch every so often for a group of people a la “Massdrop” or kickstarter etc It would be an ORDEAL to get all the files etc and not be cheap in time or even money, but once all that is done it is simply a matter of having good makerspaces and documentation.
This has been a brilliant documentary, in the end, I appreciate companies like We Rewind and Fiio making bold moves by offering the customers new products despite the technological limitations and quite small market share. True, the profit may be small, but their doing is indeed remarkable in the digital age.
Currently have over 5 premium walkman models! I use them every day and I love the tapes so much. Opened an entire world of music I didn't know existed!
This was a great video. A few months ago, I went on a tear to get one of the old Sony discman that I craved in my youth, but could never afford. The sweat proof yellow one.
Swapping out plastic bits for metal (e.g., the flywheel) makes a big difference, but yeah, an electromagnetic erase head would be nice to have instead of the permanent magnet
After ripping tape decks out of cars to install aftermarket Bluetooth decks for many years, hearing you say bluetoothing the tape decks to my car made my head spin
I’m so happy we’re talking about this because I FEEL like we gave up on cassettes and CDs too soon. Also, that Netflix movie/show about going to the 2000s has raised so many questions.
There was a joy going to the music store back then that can’t be replaced. There was also rage when the CD player in your car skipped because you hit a little bump. You take the good with the bad though.
Back in the early 90s when I was at school it was all about having the smallest personal cassette player possible. I had a Panasonic with a removal rechargeable battery that was barely bigger than a cassette case. I cannot believe that 30 years on this is the best they can come up with.
A couple years ago, was looking for a smallish CD player to put on a bookshelf next to my record player. I ended up buying an Onkyo, but that Fiio is exactly what what I was looking for.
10:06 -What song is being played?- That's How I Get Down - Panauh Kalayeh Lyrics: dope beats, dope rhymes and dope hooks i get a flow and i write it in my notebook i spit a verse and mc's back down on the radio rap is so whack now knock 'm out the parks like my name's cool j freestylin is what we do all day don't pay attention to nothing they say your time's up, you was cool in your hay day make way, cause here I am step in the ???, I'm the best in the land been around the world with the mic in my hand don't front, you know I stay fresh on demand that's how I get down ... always in control
@@aviphysics most tapes now prolly aren’t produced with DNR, so i don’t think it would matter much. kills the highs. plus some noise is part of the charm. it becomes too clean and you might as well go back to streaming
As a kid I had a Phillips cassette player -- right when all the other kids had "state of the art" portable CD players. BUT, that cassette player was really good. Compact in size, long lasting batter, and had a switch that'd change the direction of play -- you'd go from Side A to Side B. And it automatically switched when it got the the end of a side. I paired that with the tape of Nirvana - From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah. Later (probably the next year, though it seemed like so much longer of a gap at the time) I'd get a portable CD player (pretty sure it was a Sony) that I kept up until about 2007. Clearer sound quality, and a decent buffer, but scratches or too many bumps and you'd notice. In that way, it was less robust and bulkier than the cassette player I had. My favorite was during fall/winter when I could put it in my hoodie's pouch and get on my bike to go to a friend's house or just get away from the indoors for a bit. But honestly, I don't know that I'd ever go back to cassette or cd. I don't do streaming/subscription but instead have stuck with MP3 (or FLAC) and still have a massive library of music. I do still think Spotify (and services like it) is the worst thing to happen to music.
I haven't watched the video yet but as someone in tech, my intitial assumption is twofold: 1. The tech was heavily developed but the best stuff from back then isn't available anymore, so these companies have to reinvent the wheel, in some cases. 2. People aren't really carrying these devices around, so they're more interested in compact devices but with aesthetics that look great on their desk/shelf as well.
The really don't need to "reinvent" anything though. Just clone the old slimline mechanisms from the 80s/90s. China has never been so shy at copying stuff before now! 😂
@@njm1971nyc The issue is actually the manufacturing. The cassette players just before the industry died would have the benefit of years of innovation in manufacturing techniques to improve the manufacturing capabilities and refine the design. It's very easy to design a smaller mechanism, but it's another thing to design the equipment to manufacture, refine the processes, and ramp up production on a budget when the product doesn't have nearly the market it used to.
GREAT Video! Like more videos like this. Yes we appreciate updates on the newest products but explainers and deep dives like this are really good. I'd even say pallet cleansing.
This was fascinating... thank you! But also as someone who just invested in a minidisc player very sad to see the state of old but more advanced tech :(
Great video, Andru! "50% of vinyl buyers don't own a TT"?!? Loved seeing that Nickelodeon cassette - I worked on the concept and styling of that among others for Long Hall Technology back in the day.
I'm not really surprised about the vinyl stat. There's quite a bit of modern vinyl being produced as novelty items... bookshelf decorations, really - the mastering and even the pressing is often not up-to-snuff, making them pretty lousy to actually listen to.
@@marcogenovesi8570 yeah but they good for at home systems, which is usually imo the use for cd players. cos you just gonna rip the music if you were going to go on the go.
@@harpbeat500 just an FYI the devices shown in this video are portable music players. This is a market for hippies, similarly than with Vinyls. Normal people is fine with digital downloads
I, for one, do not miss cassettes one bit. The gradual decreease in pitch, as the battery would start to lose charge, drove me utterly bonkers. And while CDs were a vast improvement, the only time I use one now is to rip it to a non-lossy format and copy it over to my phone. That said, I do appreciate the very good coverage of the engineering and the economics behind the audio players I used in my youth. I cert ainly didn't appreciate it at the time.
You are paying 150-200 dollars. These are analog devices susceptible to em interference. That's where the price comes from shielding, complex and rare parts
I can find a better late 1990s - early 2000s device for quarter of the price. If I am lucky, I can find one in a thrift store for 1/10 of the above price. These modern players are bulky, have low performance, miss functionality. Regarding battery life, the WM-FX290 that you've mentioned runs up to 35 hours on a single AA cell.
You aren’t wrong, but vintage devices won’t be around forever. Once the spare parts get used up that’s it. So I do think it’s important to support the newer devices so this tech doesn’t disappear completely.
@@Kumimono I’m specifically referring to heads. Heads do not last forever and once the remaining nos is gone that’s it. Regarding the rubber parts, you can still get them today but the quality is no where near what it used to be. One of the big contributors to W&F on new tape players is poor quality control on the belts. I’ve even seen techs say for vintage decks you’re better off trying to restore the old belt if possible instead of replacing it with a new one.
I still got my *classic Technics HiFi setup* with a TR-979 Double Tape Deck (both decks can record, auto-reverse and measure the tape propertries for optimal recording) and even a Technics dcc digital tape deck. Seeing what is happening to such audio products today (completely phased out and soon to be forgotten), I will never sell them, even if I could make a small fortune doing so.
When the "We Are Rewind" CEO first said that it wasn't possible to make it as small anymore, I was innitially caught off guard. Baffled even. But then as you both explained, yes, it would be possible, but terribly expensive. Back in the day, it invebitably became cheap to manufacture such small devices because of scale and volume. But opening up a whole new manufacturing line for such a product in modern times would be incredibly expensive. Not impossible, but difficult without the scales and volumes of the prior times.
I actually like the larger and chunkier look of these players. One of the issues I've had with players is that they are so small that they are difficult to use, and the larger size would be a better fit in my hand. However, due to the larger size they should add a larger battery to the players to allow for more playback time, or if it uses replaceable batteries power it with 4 AA batteries rather than two.
I had my AIWA J400 MIkII ultra- portable cassette player/stereo recorder that lasted for over 16 years of daily use. Used the J400 MkII all through high school, college, and after. Finally broke with the tape transport auto-reverse stopped working in 2001 after many many years of switching playback sides. Amazing tech and could never be re-created in the form factor it was in today's manufacturing capabilities. One of the most advanced portable recorders of its time. Loved the stereo recording capability. Paid over $600 for the unit in 1985.
Awesome video. Personally for me, as a person who lived with these devices, I’m glad they are staying in the past. I had a 10 cd changer in my car trunk. It was pretty good, but you hit a big bump and it skips. MP3 players eliminated the flaws of these devices and that’s why cassette players and disc players went away
I had a Sony Discman in the early 2000s that had "unlimited" skip protection (it must have had a huge buffer), and it definitely worked. I could whack on that thing or drop it a ton and it never skipped. So the tech was there.
@@Chrono86It was, but often, expensive and top of class cd changers for cars had no skip protection. Some players did better than others at reading scratched CDs.
@@iRelevant.47.system.boycott honestly I think those cd changers were just never that great. The last time I had a cd player installed in my car (maybe around 2006) it was fantastic, never skipped.
I’m surprised Digital Audio Tape (DAT) format isn’t making a comeback in popularity. Combining legit retro credentials with digital sound quality and the quaint charm of having to rewind and fast forward like cassette tapes, I would have thought it would be a darling format for audiophile hipsters.
As a music-lover millennial who owned hundreds of cassettes and now owns tons of CD, I can say without hesitation that cassettes have no saving grace whatsoever. Basically, and other format is better by any measure. I get the nostalgia element, but cassette is a format that doesn’t need a comeback and it’s maddening seeing artists trying to make it happen in this day and age. Stick to LPs for nostalgia. PS: same applies to VHS tapes.
Yah, this. Cassettes can f right off. I mean, I get the desire to own media and the nostalgic longing for a device with retro aesthetic. But if you've ever had a tape player chew and digest an expensive cassette, spend hours trying to pull the tape out of the player while trying not to damage the tape, have to use a pencil to re-spool it and then and only then find the cassette was totally destroyed, you'd probably feel the same way.
LP has no saving grace either. Maybe the only reason for LP is that a record player can be produced in a jungle. The USSR made decent record players, but crappy cassette decks, and could not make an indigenous CD player.
As another music-loving millennial, I disagree. Cassettes are great but they need the right deck to really shine. A portable player with a cheap plastic mechanism isn't that. Try a cassette on one of the last Sony decks from the 90s, or a Nakamichi, or a Tandberg, and then let's re-evaluate saving graces.
@@matibucholski Makes sense. Research and find an antique which was already expensive in its day. Pay an absurd amount of money to play damaged and/or demagnetized media found at a garage sale.
The problem is that the physical media itself also will get worse over time. CD rot is a thing. It is why I bought an external DVD-rom drive to backup my old cd's. For some it's already too late. Personally I am still looking for a way to download music as a file (.ogg or mp3) without a subscription but just paid for by album or song.
CD-rot is in fact not a thing, unless you count all the scratched up used CDs from people who can't take proper care of their stuff. There were some European CD factories that turned out bad discs, but they were the exception. I have never found a pressed CD that would not work for reasons other than being badly scratched. But I have found a few DVDs where the second layer won't play. (CD-R on the other hand, can rot like crazy. Really crappy ones won't even last a year after being burned!)
@@Kumimono it was a chemical reaction between the acids in the booklet paper and the disc lacquer, causing brown edges and eventually loss of play. PDO had a replacement program on the go for about ten years after
I looked up the Tanashin company in Japanese. It is a VERY small company with 23 employees that happens to be still manufacturing their cassette tape mechanism. Their website is not working and their wikipedia page doesn't exist even in Japanese. It is kind of crazy when you think about it, the whole cassette tape craze in the world is depending on a single small company.
@@mvevitsisyes, vwestlife did a video researching the company and the mechanism. I guess they copy that as it’s cheap and basic and doesn’t need precision specialist equipment like the advanced Sony mechanisms, for example.
Great content, thanks. The archival question is even more pertinent for the myriad of home video formats. We have lots of MiniDV from the kids' early years and finding that the camcorder was broken lead to a bidding war on a second had unit to finally get those memories into a computer and a modern codec.
Yeah people like us who lived through the evolution of portable music and the release of the ipod understand. Finally you could have your entire or good chunk of your music library in a small device. I reckon it's just a bunch of gen z trying to be different and stand out because their entire generation craves attention and being unique.
I just use a cheap prepaid phone. Samsung music and Apple music are nice enough for music file playback, but Apple music is pretty bad at music syncing. One without online but with nice specs is definitely hard to find, but networking chips are so cheap anyways
Great video! Was gonna say I remember seeing a few cassette/CD players by the company NINM Lab that are quite small and less expensive, but then I found a video from VWestlife saying they're no good. Still seems like they might've been worth a mention as past attempts at reviving the form factor.
I look back on all the different forms of music players I had that I mostly listened to at work. They were all great and fun. I had portable cassette players first. I had portable cd players. Then I graduated to mini discs. I remember getting a rio mp3 cd player. The rio mp3 cd player was awesome. I could fit about 400 wma files or mp3s on a disc. The batteries on my rio mp3 cd player would last a lot longer than my cassette or cd players. I usually had to carry around a box of tapes or CDs. Now I got a million mp3's on my phone of music and audio books. Going back to cd players or cassette players in this day and age is insane to me.
A market limited to the people who miss the crappy audio of the compact cassette, which isn't that many people. I understand the revival of CDs, they are an excellent source of DRM-free lossless music, but whose idea was to revive the compact cassette?
@@SuprousOxide What I'd like to see is Sony outsource the cassette Walkman to another company. Sony provides the specifications, and performs a quality check to make sure that it meets/exceeds their standards. In turn, Sony puts their official Walkman logo on the player and gets a cut of the profits for each player. It would be similar to when HP came out with an iPod with Apple's approval.
I used to lament about the loss of such retro tech. I'm used to FLACs now and looking on the bright side, space management at home is no longer a problem I used to have with CDs and Casettes. Still, it'll be good to preserve retro tech knowledge as we really won't know when such tech will come back useful someday, perhaps in the doomsday survival scenario.
They have the capability to do them smaller BUT they won’t order 100k units so the manufacturers won’t bother with building new chains. Those brands just want to capitalize on the cassette revival by selling cheap and crappy players. All about money nothing about quality.
A solution worth looking into with tape and CD players that don't have bluetooth (both classic and new) are bluetooth transmitters with a 3.5mm jack. I have at least one, I used on my old portable consoles that don't have bluetooth audio out, and they work really well...
What other retro tech should we look into?
Camcorders/Handycam
Analog film SLR's please. The newly released analog cameras are a joke compared to what was possible back than.
MINIDISC !
@@HausmeisterHDI don’t know about the mirror mechanism, but there are some Open Source Film Bodies/Lens Mounts if i remember correctly.
Absolutely the MiniDisc. It boomed in Japan but failed to take off outside of that market, and it was caught in the middle of the transition from CDs to MP3 players and the eventual iPod/iTunes revolution so the marketshare it did have, dwindled.
Absolutely love hearing companies talk about the weaknesses of their design and how they improved it as best they can. Serious respect to Fiio and We are Rewind.
Nice to see somebody asked them. To hear the words "plastic flywheel" makes my ears bleed.
You respect a company that makes a product that's "designed" to go in your pocket but is covered in sharp corners and sticking-out buttons? Why? Seems like about the worst design imaginable.
@@beeble2003 but it is THE design that was possible to make, given they both asked manufacturers that could create better parts but were denied.
yeah he's very honest its refreshing
yups those big guns are only after huge profits now, not customer satisfaction like back in the day when these formats were mainstream@@nik021298
The fact he mentioned vwestlife is insane. He’s been doing videos for almost 2 decades and there all home video style. That’s awesome.
His 4:3 480p videos feel cozy.
when?
I was legit shocked there was a vwestlife mention
I see him everywhere i go no matter if it’s retro tech or movie stuff.
Techmoan getting a shout out. You love to see it 😊
💯
Great vid
Thanks for the mention, much appreciated.
@@Techmoan Both of you are goated :)
@@Techmoanit would feel blasphemous not to
Even though I collect CDs, I actually don't use them often. I simply rip them to FLAC files and copy them onto a 512 GB card in my phone. This way, I can get full CD quality without lugging around bulky stuff. The CDs themselves are still a nice visual representation of my music collection.
Plus, you get all of the metadata. That's one of the best things about physical media. One of the things I find irritating about downloads is that often much of the metadata is missing. Often, information like Composers, Liner Notes (which could be put in the "Comments" tag), and Beats per Minute, are missing.
@@Solitaire001 you should check put the "ongoing history of new music" episodes on "digital debris", they're a pretty cool look at all the parts of music we've "lost" with the shift to digital
Bingo. I buy all my CDs at thrift shops and just rip them as wav, aiff or flac. I use my old ipods or dap
The local library is great too. Free .flacs from CD rips.
This. Why do you need Spotify when I can just have my own with Blackjack and hookers.
danggg this new guy is so good!
A true gem! ☺️
Love him!
+1
Hope The Verge will start making new videos again (that aren’t just podcasts).
High praise
its wild how quickly we can lose the ability and capacity to make something. Even if these companies had the ability to get the tooling made, would they actually be able to because all that R&D from Sony is probably in a vault somewhere. It reminds me of pixel art where people have completely forgotten how it use to look on CRTs, its only in the last few years that I have seen videos pop up that discusses this. So not a lot of people know that the dithering on CRTs blended colours or made some assets transparent like the waterfalls in Sonic and they see pixel art from the 80s and 90s and thinks it looks bad because they're not using the correct display. Its like that with cassettes, where people who get into it their first reaction is going to be awful quality lot of wow and flutter.
mainly because "we" never had that ability. Sony or whatever large manufacturer had that ability. And often it was viable only at a high enough mass production scale (i.e. the tooling to make it was too expensive for small runs)
the quality becomes a vicious cycle. since new tape decks aren't so great, quality only needs to be "good enough" so we get new cassette releases on noisy tape stock with no noise reduction for the most part.
i do believe it can be done.. the question is should they? the video did mention it will not be economically viable to spend on RnD for such vintage product that may or may not have economies of scale.. volume of business..
>because all that R&D from Sony is probably in a vault somewhere
this is why patents exist, patents protect your rights to a design but also ensure that the knowledge is centrally documented
The tiny sony models were also expensive back in the day and most people would have opted for a cheaper bulkier model
They can't make them small because the integrated specialized mechanical parts needed for those products are no longer available in the market. We have better smaller electronics now but the electronics never took up that much space to begin with, it's the electromechanical parts that need to be miniaturized.
We can of course recreate those parts, make them even smaller and better, but the startup cost would be way too high for a niche product like this. if somehow there was a demand for cassette players like we have demand for cellphones, we would very quickly have a player that's like the same size as a cassette and simply attaches to the side.
the hard parts seem like the motor and tape head.
@@poofygoof There is no hard part. The Japanese had some passion for making things as small as humanly possible. Sort of an achievement on its own.
@@iRelevant.47.system.boycott it's easy to manufacture precision DC motors and cassette tape heads? and per your comment, easy to make things as small as possible?
It’s “hard” in a relative way. Ie, for a small poorly funded startup serving a small niche market with low potential.
Yeah, never gonna happen. The world has moved on to digital and solid-state, which, let’s face it, is far superior to the old stuff with moving parts with respect to the intended function of these devices (listening to music on the go).
Both of those older walkmans could easily have their issues fixed with a new belt and an easy speed adjustment. Just felt it was a little unfair to compare them and judge their quality when they are not working as they should. Also there are hundreds of relatively cheap and good players floating around on ebay every day, but i understand the want for a tinker free and out of the box, modern experience
I think he did a good enough job of saying and showing how nothing could really beat the fully-optimized old tech, except that they have problems from being older.
More content like this, love the shoutout to Techmoan!
My 11 year old son asked us for a $10 AM/FM alarm clock radio for his room. He has it set so that at 6:30am it goes off and he really enjoys laying in bed and listening to FM radio. I find it so odd because we have family spotify and TH-cam music, he can literally listen to anything he wants at any time, but he doesnt. He just enjoys listening to whatever comes on the radio at the time. I could 100% see him being over the moon if he recieved one of these walkmans as a gift.
CD players coming back due to their sound quality against streaming services makes sense to me, cassettes and their low quality audio doesn't
I totally agree with you. CD is the far superior format, and it's so easy to maintain a collection. CD's don't take up that much space as vinyl, they are absolutely care-free and the sound quality doesn't degrade over time.
CD audio sounds better than streaming because it’s uncompressed. You don’t need the physical disc to achieve that quality though - any uncompressed 44.1 kHz/16 bit audio file will sound just as good
@@hifi-enthusiast but you don’t need the physical disk. Essentially they are just storage media with a collection of 44.1 kHz/16 bit uncompressed wave files on them. The files are what matter, and you can just store those on your computer
Yeah cassettes can be rough. There are some indie bands and stuff who produce cassettes basically as 'merch', as it can be a cost effective way to get a physical, analogue version of their music out. But yes, it's basically novelty factor.
Minidisc is something that was ahead of its time, good audio quality, great players with long battery time, and disc itself was safe in his cartridge housing... Minidisc is something i would like to see come back. Digital music we don't own, we lease it... Great video. Thank you.
i loved my minidisc players back then, but honestly: managing songs and playlists on my ipod(s) later was much more convenient. also ripping cds to a harddrive was much faster then recording to minidisc.
md also had a "small" comeback when sony released the playstation portable. umds were very reminiscent to the md. games, movies and (iirc) even music was released on that medium.
Digital music on your hard drive is as "own" as any physical media. Yes, the hardware can fail and take down all the files with it, but CDs and MDs aren't immortal either. MD was an excellent medium, and MDs are more user-friendly than SD cards, but "seeing them come back"? no way. If they can't put together a compact CD player (an existing, live technology) how can they recreate something that the industry quit making 20 years ago? Just buy a bunch of cheapo used decks. I have three MD decks at home, and so far all three are still operational.
@@jmi5969 if i'd buy an md-player from the used market, my biggest fear besides some technical failure would be battery replacement. iirc my last sony's md player had a battery the size of 2 chewing gums stacked on top of eacher. not a very common battery size you'd find a replacement for 10 or 20 years from now.
yö earß v?v
Minidisc is way too advanced to make a comeback, it requires a magneto optical head and a special atrac dsp
Vwestlife mentioned already made this video an 11/10 for me.
totally agree
Sometimes it's just crazy how fast something can be revolutionary and popular, then be lost and reattempted or revived but not to the quality of prior.
Like I'm only 15 and even in that short life time things like phones, arcade machines, and consoles already have aspects that are subpar compared to what came before them
Unlike with cassette players, where there is just one manufacturer of mechanisms, there are still plenty of good cd players for sale by brands like Yamaha, NAD, Marantz and Rotel, so that's a difference.
And you can also play them in DVD players and many Blu-Ray players, which have many of the same parts.
Also, CDs being a digital format and memory being so cheap it surely must be easier to dump the CD onto the internal memory and play from there instead of finding a robust drive that doesn't skip with movement.
I've been looking for s.simple cassette player and CD. player for a while now I even found one for 3.98 at Walmart .Wound it be worth the price.?❤😢😮😊
@@MrDiarukia there is no such thing as "robust drive that doesn't skip" in CD, they were all using buffer memory even back then
@@MrDiarukia that's not hipster enough!
I enjoyed portable cassette players back in the day by the likes of Sony, Aiwa etc. I noticed there was no mention of noise reduction technology which was important for the audio cassette to at least sound decent and less hissy. I guess event the basic Dolby B noise reduction is no longer available? I'd rather see the mini disc brought back rather than the cassette but I guess there would be the same issue of finding decent components to make a modern version.
yeah that's true, and noise reduction has gotten a lot more sophisticated over the past few years with just software. Dolby no longer licenses their cassette noise reduction unfortunately. VWestlife talks about Tascam's version here:
th-cam.com/video/eep1kLdaURA/w-d-xo.html
There is nothing wrong with surface noise and tape hiss, they’re part of the charm of their respective formats. A cassette enthusiast complaining about hiss seems pretty goofy to me.
@@fclefjefff4041 What nonsense. Tape hiss causes a significant reduction of signal to noise especially in Type I cassettes. Why do you think so much effort was made in developing noise reduction systems and why Dolby B was a mandatory feature of all but the cheapest tape players?
@@jkkay477 It’s goofy for a cassette enthusiast in 2024 to complain about hiss, sorry. 🤷♂️ Listen to CDs.
@@fclefjefff4041 Okay wow, you say it's goofy so therefore it's goofy, great argument there. Heaven forbid a "cassette enthusiast" might want to listen to music without extraneous noise. And what does it being 2024 have to do with anything?
I'm all for digital media. However, I do purchase CDs, RIP them to lossless and then hang on to them. They can be used offline.
Same here. For about 25 years now I've been buying music on CD, ripping it to MP3, and then packing the CDs away for safe keeping. I have upward of 500 now. When I'm only interested in having a few tracks from an artist, I'll typically buy on iTunes / Apple Music and convert their AACs to MP3 for compatibility. My whole MP3 collection clocks in at under 50GB so it's pretty trivial to copy the whole thing onto a phone, tablet, laptop, etc. for offline playback.
I keep the actual CDs as my backup. Although it might take time, I can just re-rip the CDs when needed. This could include if a better audio format comes out.
would be better to buy the CD keep the cd sealed and pirate lossless on net so have the unopened CD.
@@NightmareRex6 pirating lossless music is an arduous task due to the humongous amount of bandwith it eats
What? CDs only have a capacity of 650mb. That's not a huge amount of bandwidth at all.
Moved house earlier this year, and I found a Panasonic cassette player in a drawer. It's almost prestige, however, the gum size battery is totally leaked and destroyed the main board. Felt so sad about that, and I know this kind of cassette player won't come back.
Boards can be restored if not to extensive damage. Also cap leakage cause a similar damage in older electronics.
Song at 10:07 is That's How I Get Down - Panauh Kalayeh - Hip Hop Eras
MVP
King
The single are not on Spotify. Mind me to drop the Spotify URL?
@@Vernardo It is, first result.
Picked up a Fiio a few months ago after running into issues with a refurbished Walkman. I use tapes as promo items for my podcast, so having this makes for a neat demo.
I feel so old realizing CD players and cassette players are now "retro tech".
BTW, speaking of retro tech, I love how you also wear those CASIO calculator watch in this video. I still remember wanting to own them as a kid!
Even iPods are retro tech
cassettes have been retro tech for like 15 years now tho lol
They're still being made! It's the CA53W in it's current form and usually less than $20. It's also the watch Marty wore in BTTF.
I think it's more like these portable cd players are now being considered "retro tech" along with walkmans. Regular hifi cd players in their regular hifi size have never disappeared and there are plenty available brand new from quality manufacturers like Denon or Yamaha.
I give both companies credit for making new cassette players and CD players but my ❤ is with vintage cassette players/decks and CD players
I've also yet to see new models of logic controlled walkmans. Those designs really made the players compact and stylish.
Reachargable AA batterieswould be much better than bespoke lithium mess. I hate this anti longevity/repairability trends.
I strongly agree. The problem with non-replaceable batteries is that they will eventually wear out. It's nothing wrong with the battery itself, it's just all rechargeable batteries eventually wear out. However, with replaceable batteries it is a non-issue. Two rechargeable AA batteries wear out, just put in two new rechargeable batteries and continue on.
Yes or rechargeable 10500 or 14500 Li batteries that will last long but are also replaceable. Or whatever equivalent cell is needed current wise
edit: saw the spec sheet, they’re using 3.7V. Either of those should work
@@yommish There are other options when it comes to rechargeable batteries. One is Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) which is suitable for devices that use standard non-rechargeable AA and AAA batteries (it has a voltage of 1.2, just like Nickel Cadium batteries while non-rechargeable batteries are 1.5 volts).
While NiMH batteries aren't as powerful as LI batteries, they are fine for most uses that you'd use non-rechargeable batteries, and they don't have the potential overheating problem that LI batteries have. They are also less expensive than LI batteries, you can buy four AA NiMH batteries and a charger for less than $20 (US). I've used to use them with my portable CD/MP3 player and they worked fine. I would carry a backup pair of rechargeable batteries in case the pair in my player died.
Holy cow, this is exactly the info I was looking for. I've been discussing with family about digitizing old tapes before they wear out.
Tapes have a close to infinite life span. A favorite long term backup medium.
This was a good take on tech. It’s hard to imagine that we can lose the “recipes” so quickly, but it’s so real. Idk how many companies are one old-timer or supplier away from breaking their supply chain.
Incredible! what a coincidence, I got back to cassetes because I wanted my 2 year old daughter to choose her music and be independant of daddy streaming app. I bought a device on aliexpress that did not stood the child hand very long, I repaired it like 5 times and it was one of the belt that failed every time. I found on second hand market an old cassette player for children, I had to change the speaker but no micro soldering, everything is clear inside and the mecanism is quite solid. Thank you for your video and the interview of those suppliers!
Oh wow. As an old, I had many cassette walkmen in the 80s and 90s. Those Tascam cassettes with the two metal reels inside were so so cool!
I'm 27 and in the last year I've gotten 3 boomboxes and sound systems, a CRT with VCR, and about 300 cassettes and discs of physical media and I listen to and watch them every day.
Now yah gotta get into the noise music scene. Listen to some fresh releases on casette, and produce your own on casette.
@ Me and my housemates are working on it :)
CRTs are actually what we need new factory lines producing. They're still better than modern displays in a ton of ways, even beyond the fact that retro games and standard def video only looks right on CRTs.
Might be the best video the Verge has put out in years. Restoring a little faith.
The clipping from the USB-C port was because he didn't lower the volume.
There was a video essay in the past couple of months that went into the details of those small mechanical parts.
Supposedly because of the introduction of the iPod and other MP3 players, there wasn't much need for small parts anymore since everything went digital.
And that is where we stand today.
Incredibly cool though, those companies who try to resurrect those old media carriers.
One thing that cassette players win over any standard phone being sold these days: the goddamn headphone jack
I collect old SONY cassette players and CD players, I just love this stuff. Nice video!
My Uncle was a runner who purchased an SRF-40 FM Walkman when it first came out. He decided he didn't like running with it and gave it to my siblings and me. I was blown away by how amazing the music sounded through the headphones. I have no idea what happened to that SRF-40, but I purchased one on eBay last year. The sound isn't nearly as amazing as I remember, but I still love it. The early 2000s cassette player shown at the beginning of the video looks pretty cool, as well. As a Sony collector, do you happen to know the model number? Also, do you know if that model also had an FM/AM tuner, or was it strictly a cassette player?
@@michaelmcchesney6645 Not him, but that looks to be a Sony WM-EX910.
01:56 So you can get a cheap, small, replaceable and functional player for 30. Or you can get their bulky, heavy, barebones player for a 100% markup. Got it.
More like 500%
✨N O I C E ! ! ! ✨
I think the last cassette Walkman I had was actually one from Aiwa. Does anyone remember Aiwa? It came with a waterproof case that had a nylon belt clip on it.
The mechanisms inside cassette players are quite hardy, but do require regular cleaning with a cotton wool bud and isopropyl alcohol on the heads. A lot of time the fluttering could be either quality of the tape, let alone quality of the transfer of the audio to the tape, issues or alignment of the tape across the heads that leads to tape tension issues. The tape doesn’t get tangled up on its own. I used to have a Fisher (Sanyo) portable tape player that had a rubber band that turned the wheels inside the mech. That would have to be replaced once it was over stretched and loose. For the average consumer, a job like that would require some skills and possibly a soldering iron, depending on the make and model.
As for these new products. I think they will be very niche. Unless a celebrity gets involved with it.
Yes, we had one of those big Aiwa home cd/cassette players with the speakers separate connected via cables.
Great video, really fun. The bigger worry for me isn't so much the loss of cassette transports or new CD mechanisms, it's the loss of the skills needed to keep older ones alive. Cassette players especially are complicated mechanical devices, and very few people really have the skills to keep them going. I wonder what's going to happen when those skills age out.
I had no idea I needed this, but oh man am I happy you gave us this insight! Please do more like this, it's really interesting
thank you for watching!
Very interesting video. It’s crazy to think that in 1983 Sony released the WM-10, which was exactly the size of a cassette case, and 40 years later, we’re far far away from this. It’s almost sad. At least there’s one good thing that We Are Rewind nailed and perfectly understood with their player beyond the sound, and that’s the design.
I still have my WMF10 I bought in the 80s. That had an FM tuner in as well.
the WM-10 nevertheless ENCLOSES a cassette tape, so it's dishonest to say it was the same "exactly the same size".
I assume you're aware that two physical objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, yeah? 🤣
@@railgap I remember Sony saying, "As close as a cassette case" in their 1983 commercial so you're right-"exactly" isn't 100% accurate. That being said, "as close as a Casset case" is still pretty darn impressive. 😄
@railgap it was the same length and width but a couple of mm thicker than a standard cassette case. Of course to actually put a cassette in it, it slid apart another 10mm. Impressive all the same.
Past was technology more futuristic and present is technology more retro
This is the best, most frank, coverage of what the state of CD/Cassette players is that I have found. Thank you for this, even if the overall news and message is a sad one.
The state of cd players as a whole is absolutely fine. It's just that these portable cd players, which are apparently making a comeback as retro tech gadget, are not what they used to be. That does not apply to regular hifi cd players.
Loved everything about this video. Loved the breakdown, the discussion around production constraints also with mini product reviews, talking with the companies themselves, the host. Everything about this video was great. As someone who hasn't watched the verge in awhile but loves tech, I'd love to see more of this. Liking and commenting to hopefully drive the message home.
I absolutely agree! More videos like this please.
Open Source Hardware is the solution in my opinion.
There isn’t the volume to make huge fully automated assembly lines, BUT there is enough of a market for nice CAD files and designs and such, and use small batch / “mid scale manufacturing” for the products themselves.
Some corporations have to keep producing them. Open source does not pay for new toolings, licensing fee like Dolby B or quality proprietary technology. Those older music player were labor incentive.
The problem, at least in this case, is tooling. I do wonder how much can be done with the latest 3D manufacturing techniques, though. I have to assume these guys already researched those options and found them non-workable (you wouldn't be able to 3D-print a working magnetic tape head, at any rate).
@@OscarFowler 3Dprint does not work on mass manufactured electronics. printer itself may not be that reliable. Maybe CNC milling could help but parts are important.
Open source hardware solves the problem whereby lawyers will go after you if you attempt to clone something. It absolutely does not solve the problem here, which is that mass-producing (as in, "more than five") a tape mechanism better than the de facto reference standard is simply not something that can be done in a small shop. There are hundreds of intricate pieces which have no general-purpose utility and have to be made to extreme tolerances. This is precisely why the cassette-sized players of the mid-2000s were nearly two orders of magnitude more expensive than the cheap options.
@@OscarFowler i think the tape head / optical assembly are the main issues. Most other parts could be 3D Printer, CNC Milled, or even made by EDM, ECM, or Urethane/Silicone Casting etc.
This can all be done in a good community scale makerspace.
And the goal isn’t necessarily be able to make some product that can be mass produced, or turn a huge profit margin and run a company, but just to be able to make a batch every so often for a group of people a la “Massdrop” or kickstarter etc
It would be an ORDEAL to get all the files etc and not be cheap in time or even money, but once all that is done it is simply a matter of having good makerspaces and documentation.
This has been a brilliant documentary, in the end, I appreciate companies like We Rewind and Fiio making bold moves by offering the customers new products despite the technological limitations and quite small market share. True, the profit may be small, but their doing is indeed remarkable in the digital age.
Currently have over 5 premium walkman models! I use them every day and I love the tapes so much. Opened an entire world of music I didn't know existed!
This was a great video. A few months ago, I went on a tear to get one of the old Sony discman that I craved in my youth, but could never afford. The sweat proof yellow one.
TBH it's quite impressive how much better the Fiio and We Are Rewind sound compared to the cheapo player, despite using the same mechanism.
There are changes to the mechanism. I would love to see a proper eraser head though.
Swapping out plastic bits for metal (e.g., the flywheel) makes a big difference, but yeah, an electromagnetic erase head would be nice to have instead of the permanent magnet
After ripping tape decks out of cars to install aftermarket Bluetooth decks for many years, hearing you say bluetoothing the tape decks to my car made my head spin
awesome they openly talk about the issue, hopefully they can solve it in the future
A wonderful video showing the deeply complicated world of manufacturing pipelines and the difficulties of niche low-volume technologies.
Short answer: the supply chains that made the old tech possible are lost to time.
Literally been cassette player shopping all week. Great timing!
I’m so happy we’re talking about this because I FEEL like we gave up on cassettes and CDs too soon. Also, that Netflix movie/show about going to the 2000s has raised so many questions.
Or we gave in to the subscription model way too quick
@@kushagraNexactly
Yeah i think 4K Blu-ray, M-Disc, and MAYBE a modernized minidisc have their niche for physically OWNING the media.
@@kushagraNthis.... this is why... the greed of corporations forced us into subscription...
There was a joy going to the music store back then that can’t be replaced. There was also rage when the CD player in your car skipped because you hit a little bump. You take the good with the bad though.
Back in the early 90s when I was at school it was all about having the smallest personal cassette player possible. I had a Panasonic with a removal rechargeable battery that was barely bigger than a cassette case. I cannot believe that 30 years on this is the best they can come up with.
I have a Devolution Theory ...
A couple years ago, was looking for a smallish CD player to put on a bookshelf next to my record player. I ended up buying an Onkyo, but that Fiio is exactly what what I was looking for.
10:06 -What song is being played?- That's How I Get Down - Panauh Kalayeh
Lyrics:
dope beats, dope rhymes and dope hooks
i get a flow and i write it in my notebook
i spit a verse and mc's back down
on the radio rap is so whack now
knock 'm out the parks like my name's cool j
freestylin is what we do all day
don't pay attention to nothing they say
your time's up, you was cool in your hay day
make way, cause here I am
step in the ???, I'm the best in the land
been around the world with the mic in my hand
don't front, you know I stay fresh on demand
that's how I get down
...
always in control
Thank you! Shazam wouldn't recognize it and Google was useless with the results when searching for the lyrics.
Short answer: supply chains?
yeah kinda
not really, more that the components aren’t manufactured anymore
Components, licenses and patents. Like you can't make a tape player with Dolby Noise Reduction.
@@aviphysics most tapes now prolly aren’t produced with DNR, so i don’t think it would matter much. kills the highs. plus some noise is part of the charm. it becomes too clean and you might as well go back to streaming
@@aviphysics yeah I mean they should at least play Chrome and Metal Cassettes but not even new Walkmen have it
That Panasonic CD player was one of the best I ever owned.
I always liked Panasonic products. They make great audio/video players to this day.
So Becca gets a separate channel and now we get this guy too. Even more content! :D
As a kid I had a Phillips cassette player -- right when all the other kids had "state of the art" portable CD players. BUT, that cassette player was really good. Compact in size, long lasting batter, and had a switch that'd change the direction of play -- you'd go from Side A to Side B. And it automatically switched when it got the the end of a side. I paired that with the tape of Nirvana - From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah.
Later (probably the next year, though it seemed like so much longer of a gap at the time) I'd get a portable CD player (pretty sure it was a Sony) that I kept up until about 2007. Clearer sound quality, and a decent buffer, but scratches or too many bumps and you'd notice. In that way, it was less robust and bulkier than the cassette player I had. My favorite was during fall/winter when I could put it in my hoodie's pouch and get on my bike to go to a friend's house or just get away from the indoors for a bit.
But honestly, I don't know that I'd ever go back to cassette or cd. I don't do streaming/subscription but instead have stuck with MP3 (or FLAC) and still have a massive library of music. I do still think Spotify (and services like it) is the worst thing to happen to music.
I haven't watched the video yet but as someone in tech, my intitial assumption is twofold:
1. The tech was heavily developed but the best stuff from back then isn't available anymore, so these companies have to reinvent the wheel, in some cases.
2. People aren't really carrying these devices around, so they're more interested in compact devices but with aesthetics that look great on their desk/shelf as well.
The really don't need to "reinvent" anything though. Just clone the old slimline mechanisms from the 80s/90s. China has never been so shy at copying stuff before now! 😂
@@njm1971nyc The issue is actually the manufacturing. The cassette players just before the industry died would have the benefit of years of innovation in manufacturing techniques to improve the manufacturing capabilities and refine the design. It's very easy to design a smaller mechanism, but it's another thing to design the equipment to manufacture, refine the processes, and ramp up production on a budget when the product doesn't have nearly the market it used to.
Love Techmoan and VWestlife, both deserve that shoutout. Bravo!
GREAT Video! Like more videos like this. Yes we appreciate updates on the newest products but explainers and deep dives like this are really good. I'd even say pallet cleansing.
This was fascinating... thank you! But also as someone who just invested in a minidisc player very sad to see the state of old but more advanced tech :(
I had that same iRiver SlimX player back in the day. Fantastic piece of kit.
Thank you for mentioning VWestlife! Very underrated channel!
Great video, Andru! "50% of vinyl buyers don't own a TT"?!? Loved seeing that Nickelodeon cassette - I worked on the concept and styling of that among others for Long Hall Technology back in the day.
wow!! That's awesome, those Nickelodeon electronics were beautiful
@@andrump3 Thanks! yes they did a really good job with all. The CD Blast Box was a favorite along with the original Time Blaster!
I'm not really surprised about the vinyl stat. There's quite a bit of modern vinyl being produced as novelty items... bookshelf decorations, really - the mastering and even the pressing is often not up-to-snuff, making them pretty lousy to actually listen to.
That saddens me, but actually… can’t wait for all that pristine vinyl to hit the resale market if it goes out of fashion again
Fantastic video! Was cool seeing a techmoan shoutout too.
Best CD player for $30:
Everyone who got a blu ray player 15 years ago is selling them cheap on eBay. They play everything
they are not exactly portable
@@marcogenovesi8570 they are. I still use Sony D 777 from 95 and it use AA batteries.
@@marcogenovesi8570 yeah but they good for at home systems, which is usually imo the use for cd players. cos you just gonna rip the music if you were going to go on the go.
And what about the dac of those for music?
@@harpbeat500 just an FYI the devices shown in this video are portable music players. This is a market for hippies, similarly than with Vinyls. Normal people is fine with digital downloads
I, for one, do not miss cassettes one bit. The gradual decreease in pitch, as the battery would start to lose charge, drove me utterly bonkers. And while CDs were a vast improvement, the only time I use one now is to rip it to a non-lossy format and copy it over to my phone.
That said, I do appreciate the very good coverage of the engineering and the economics behind the audio players I used in my youth. I cert
ainly didn't appreciate it at the time.
You are paying 150-200 dollars. These are analog devices susceptible to em interference. That's where the price comes from shielding, complex and rare parts
This was fantastic. Thanks for making it!
I can find a better late 1990s - early 2000s device for quarter of the price. If I am lucky, I can find one in a thrift store for 1/10 of the above price. These modern players are bulky, have low performance, miss functionality. Regarding battery life, the WM-FX290 that you've mentioned runs up to 35 hours on a single AA cell.
You aren’t wrong, but vintage devices won’t be around forever. Once the spare parts get used up that’s it. So I do think it’s important to support the newer devices so this tech doesn’t disappear completely.
@@tuckertastictk Many of the parts that wear out can be manufactured, though. Belts, pinch rollers, even Sony's funky DD rubber thingies.
@@Kumimono And it will take a few kilometers of tape to wear out a tape head, never heard of it.
@@Kumimono I’m specifically referring to heads. Heads do not last forever and once the remaining nos is gone that’s it. Regarding the rubber parts, you can still get them today but the quality is no where near what it used to be. One of the big contributors to W&F on new tape players is poor quality control on the belts. I’ve even seen techs say for vintage decks you’re better off trying to restore the old belt if possible instead of replacing it with a new one.
I still got my *classic Technics HiFi setup* with a TR-979 Double Tape Deck (both decks can record, auto-reverse and measure the tape propertries for optimal recording) and even a Technics dcc digital tape deck. Seeing what is happening to such audio products today (completely phased out and soon to be forgotten), I will never sell them, even if I could make a small fortune doing so.
When the "We Are Rewind" CEO first said that it wasn't possible to make it as small anymore, I was innitially caught off guard. Baffled even. But then as you both explained, yes, it would be possible, but terribly expensive. Back in the day, it invebitably became cheap to manufacture such small devices because of scale and volume. But opening up a whole new manufacturing line for such a product in modern times would be incredibly expensive. Not impossible, but difficult without the scales and volumes of the prior times.
I actually like the larger and chunkier look of these players. One of the issues I've had with players is that they are so small that they are difficult to use, and the larger size would be a better fit in my hand. However, due to the larger size they should add a larger battery to the players to allow for more playback time, or if it uses replaceable batteries power it with 4 AA batteries rather than two.
I had my AIWA J400 MIkII ultra- portable cassette player/stereo recorder that lasted for over 16 years of daily use. Used the J400 MkII all through high school, college, and after. Finally broke with the tape transport auto-reverse stopped working in 2001 after many many years of switching playback sides. Amazing tech and could never be re-created in the form factor it was in today's manufacturing capabilities. One of the most advanced portable recorders of its time. Loved the stereo recording capability. Paid over $600 for the unit in 1985.
Awesome video. Personally for me, as a person who lived with these devices, I’m glad they are staying in the past. I had a 10 cd changer in my car trunk. It was pretty good, but you hit a big bump and it skips. MP3 players eliminated the flaws of these devices and that’s why cassette players and disc players went away
I had a Sony Discman in the early 2000s that had "unlimited" skip protection (it must have had a huge buffer), and it definitely worked. I could whack on that thing or drop it a ton and it never skipped. So the tech was there.
@@Chrono86It was, but often, expensive and top of class cd changers for cars had no skip protection. Some players did better than others at reading scratched CDs.
If it skipped after a big bump, it was not "pretty good".
@@iRelevant.47.system.boycott honestly I think those cd changers were just never that great. The last time I had a cd player installed in my car (maybe around 2006) it was fantastic, never skipped.
Great reportage! Very informative for old school music lovers.
what song plays 12:53 ?
I’m surprised Digital Audio Tape (DAT) format isn’t making a comeback in popularity. Combining legit retro credentials with digital sound quality and the quaint charm of having to rewind and fast forward like cassette tapes, I would have thought it would be a darling format for audiophile hipsters.
This is a great video
Fantastic journalism. I enjoyed this video very much!
As a music-lover millennial who owned hundreds of cassettes and now owns tons of CD, I can say without hesitation that cassettes have no saving grace whatsoever. Basically, and other format is better by any measure. I get the nostalgia element, but cassette is a format that doesn’t need a comeback and it’s maddening seeing artists trying to make it happen in this day and age. Stick to LPs for nostalgia.
PS: same applies to VHS tapes.
Yah, this. Cassettes can f right off.
I mean, I get the desire to own media and the nostalgic longing for a device with retro aesthetic.
But if you've ever had a tape player chew and digest an expensive cassette, spend hours trying to pull the tape out of the player while trying not to damage the tape, have to use a pencil to re-spool it and then and only then find the cassette was totally destroyed, you'd probably feel the same way.
LP has no saving grace either. Maybe the only reason for LP is that a record player can be produced in a jungle. The USSR made decent record players, but crappy cassette decks, and could not make an indigenous CD player.
@@ElectronicVisionsOfThePastLP has bigger artwork and can have even more “special” designs than CDs or cassettes.
As another music-loving millennial, I disagree. Cassettes are great but they need the right deck to really shine. A portable player with a cheap plastic mechanism isn't that. Try a cassette on one of the last Sony decks from the 90s, or a Nakamichi, or a Tandberg, and then let's re-evaluate saving graces.
@@matibucholski Makes sense. Research and find an antique which was already expensive in its day. Pay an absurd amount of money to play damaged and/or demagnetized media found at a garage sale.
I love this. It was really well put, more niche things like this should be shared.
The problem is that the physical media itself also will get worse over time. CD rot is a thing. It is why I bought an external DVD-rom drive to backup my old cd's. For some it's already too late. Personally I am still looking for a way to download music as a file (.ogg or mp3) without a subscription but just paid for by album or song.
You haven't heard of iTunes, or Amazon Music, or Bandcamp? 😂
CD-rot is in fact not a thing, unless you count all the scratched up used CDs from people who can't take proper care of their stuff. There were some European CD factories that turned out bad discs, but they were the exception. I have never found a pressed CD that would not work for reasons other than being badly scratched. But I have found a few DVDs where the second layer won't play. (CD-R on the other hand, can rot like crazy. Really crappy ones won't even last a year after being burned!)
@@8bitwiz_ Same kind of, layer separation as in some LaserDiscs, I'd wager. (The European CD factory issue).
@@8bitwiz_ Not accurate in my experience. Have pristine main label CD's that glitch after 2 decades. It is the exception among hundreds though.
@@Kumimono it was a chemical reaction between the acids in the booklet paper and the disc lacquer, causing brown edges and eventually loss of play. PDO had a replacement program on the go for about ten years after
really good vid!! 💜
I looked up the Tanashin company in Japanese. It is a VERY small company with 23 employees that happens to be still manufacturing their cassette tape mechanism. Their website is not working and their wikipedia page doesn't exist even in Japanese. It is kind of crazy when you think about it, the whole cassette tape craze in the world is depending on a single small company.
These are clones of a tanashin mechanism, tanashin themselves don't make it anymore.
@@mvevitsisyes, vwestlife did a video researching the company and the mechanism. I guess they copy that as it’s cheap and basic and doesn’t need precision specialist equipment like the advanced Sony mechanisms, for example.
This was an outstanding video.
What is the song playing during the cassette tests??
That's How I Get Down - Panauh Kalayeh - Hip Hop Eras
Great content, thanks. The archival question is even more pertinent for the myriad of home video formats. We have lots of MiniDV from the kids' early years and finding that the camcorder was broken lead to a bidding war on a second had unit to finally get those memories into a computer and a modern codec.
Short Answer: the old ones were made by legendary japanese engineers, the new ones are made by people that write arduino sketches with ChatGPT
What a great in depth video, looking forward to more of your content
That’s when you realise how great the iPod was as an evolution of the cassette and CD players for music on the go.
Yeah people like us who lived through the evolution of portable music and the release of the ipod understand. Finally you could have your entire or good chunk of your music library in a small device.
I reckon it's just a bunch of gen z trying to be different and stand out because their entire generation craves attention and being unique.
Very interesting and well made video! More of this please!
Forgot about cassette player, nowadays we didn't find offline mp3 songs and a good offline mp3 player apps on mobile.
There are several off-line MP3 players on the market from companies Fiio and Shanling.
Black Player on play store!
I just use a cheap prepaid phone. Samsung music and Apple music are nice enough for music file playback, but Apple music is pretty bad at music syncing. One without online but with nice specs is definitely hard to find, but networking chips are so cheap anyways
@@kawaiidere1023 Yah, that is a good way to go!
Jet Audio is a good off-line player.
Great video! Was gonna say I remember seeing a few cassette/CD players by the company NINM Lab that are quite small and less expensive, but then I found a video from VWestlife saying they're no good. Still seems like they might've been worth a mention as past attempts at reviving the form factor.
VHS collectors know this issue too well. There is never going to be a new VCR, of any kind.
Correct. Same with CRTs. Once they dry up, they are gone for good.
Same with my Laserdiscs. The laser heads were cheaply made and now machines are almost impossible to repair or find in working order.
@@WooferCooker Nothing is stopping someone from designing a new CRT.
I look back on all the different forms of music players I had that I mostly listened to at work. They were all great and fun. I had portable cassette players first. I had portable cd players. Then I graduated to mini discs. I remember getting a rio mp3 cd player. The rio mp3 cd player was awesome. I could fit about 400 wma files or mp3s on a disc. The batteries on my rio mp3 cd player would last a lot longer than my cassette or cd players. I usually had to carry around a box of tapes or CDs. Now I got a million mp3's on my phone of music and audio books. Going back to cd players or cassette players in this day and age is insane to me.
Come on Sony. There is a market for you here, make a quality cassette mechanism again.
they don't care about it anymore
Must be millions of players around. Easier to do a renovation and restore.
A market limited to the people who miss the crappy audio of the compact cassette, which isn't that many people. I understand the revival of CDs, they are an excellent source of DRM-free lossless music, but whose idea was to revive the compact cassette?
No. There isn't. This is a niche market too small for them to bother
@@SuprousOxide What I'd like to see is Sony outsource the cassette Walkman to another company. Sony provides the specifications, and performs a quality check to make sure that it meets/exceeds their standards. In turn, Sony puts their official Walkman logo on the player and gets a cut of the profits for each player. It would be similar to when HP came out with an iPod with Apple's approval.
I used to lament about the loss of such retro tech. I'm used to FLACs now and looking on the bright side, space management at home is no longer a problem I used to have with CDs and Casettes. Still, it'll be good to preserve retro tech knowledge as we really won't know when such tech will come back useful someday, perhaps in the doomsday survival scenario.
They have the capability to do them smaller BUT they won’t order 100k units so the manufacturers won’t bother with building new chains. Those brands just want to capitalize on the cassette revival by selling cheap and crappy players. All about money nothing about quality.
Have you heard the FiiO? That thing sounds amazing on a quality set of headphones.
@ compared to older walkmans they’re still bad.
A solution worth looking into with tape and CD players that don't have bluetooth (both classic and new) are bluetooth transmitters with a 3.5mm jack. I have at least one, I used on my old portable consoles that don't have bluetooth audio out, and they work really well...