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Modern Walkmans
- fsckboy 10mo agowow, 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_walkman_stereo_receiver_srf_40w_823185.jpg 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)
- nickt 10mo agoIt’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?
- komali2 10mo agoIs 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.
- ares623 10mo agoThe video is probably from the “techmoan” channel. Very good content.
- ares623 10mo agoThey’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.
- encom 10mo agoDon't these all use the same crappy internals, because there's only one company left making those, to satisfy the remaining hipster crowd?
- mingus88 10mo agoI 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.
- zoklet-enjoyer 10mo agoFrom 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.
- kylec 10mo agoYes, pretty much: https://www.theverge.com/24295971/we-are-rewind-fiio-cassette-player-cd-dm-13 https://www.theverge.com/24295971/we-are-rewind-fiio-cassett...
- Nursie 10mo agoOther 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 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.
- worthless-trash 10mo agoTbh, 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.
- Nursie 10mo agoMine 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.
- StrangeSound 10mo agoThere 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
- GeekyBear 10mo agoFlash 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.
- galleywest200 10mo agoI have found that sometimes it is nice to have fewer choices when selecting media. It helps prevent analysis paralysis for me.
- mrexroad 10mo agoMy 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.
- burnt-resistor 10mo agoYeap, 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.
- Kerrick 10mo agoI've been having a hard time finding an (in-production) mp3 player that doesn't have a web browser.
- al_borland 10mo agoAs someone who grew up with cassette tapes, I don’t anticipate this fad lasting too long. They were very inconvenient. With most technology I see resistance from people not wanting to move on. I don’t remember seeing that with cassettes. The only downside of CDs was that you couldn’t record from the radio and Napster eventually solved that better than radio ever did. 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.
- masklinn 10mo ago> 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.
- otabdeveloper4 10mo ago> 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.
- masklinn 10mo ago> 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.
- NetMageSCW 10mo agoI loved my Sony WM-10 back in the day.
- ivolimmen 10mo agoI 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.
- amatecha 10mo agoyeah 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
- tosapple 10mo agoThat sounds like a very nice device, does it say how much "anti-skip" it had?
- tosapple 10mo ago10 seconds according to https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/panasonic_sl_sx410.html https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/panasonic_sl_sx410.html
- amatecha 10mo agoYeah! 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 :)
- burnt-resistor 10mo agoI 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.
- jay_kyburz 10mo agoThe 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
- isodev 10mo agoI 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.
- StrangeSound 10mo agoBelieve 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
- isodev 10mo agoisn'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)
- amatecha 10mo agoit 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 https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/WhyRockbox
- lloeki 10mo agoAlso 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.
- cal_dent 10mo agonostalgia is a helluva drug
- mycall 10mo agoDo they eat cassette tapes just as good as the originals?
- joombaga 10mo agoNo, not if you rewind them. At least mine doesn't. But I can't trust the tension on a new tape.
- normie3000 10mo agoWhere 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?
- 47282847 10mo agoUSB 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).
- normie3000 10mo agoI 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.
- firesteelrain 10mo agoSpotify with CarPlay?
- arionmiles 10mo agoI 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.
- sceptic123 10mo agoThat's a service manual, any reasonable manufacturer still produces those
- arionmiles 10mo agothey have become harder and harder to obtain through the years.
- sceptic123 10mo agoI 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.
- LargoLasskhyfv 10mo agoBandsalat
- actionfromafar 10mo agoGreat name for a band
- qazswx 10mo agoqsc
- qazswx 10mo agowddq
- 4dregress 10mo agoI wonder if the same thing will happen with cameras?
- actionfromafar 10mo agoAlready kind of has, with the Kodak Ektar 135 film cameras and such.
- thomassmith65 10mo agoBluetooth 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-the-world/ https://time.com/archive/6697378/living-a-great-way-to-snub-...
- jansan 10mo agoA question to native English speakers: Do you really say "Walkmans", not "Walkmen"?
- mrexroad 10mo agoThat’s what I’ve always heard, and said.
- toast0 10mo agoYeah, 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.)
- pkulak 10mo agoPersonally, I don’t like non-standard plurals and take the opportunity of a new word not to carry the mistake through. I prefer “mouses” as well, for the plural of a computer mouse.
- jll29 10mo agomouse => mice corpus => corpora thesaurus => thesauri Emacs => Emacsen Unix => Unices
- sceptic123 10mo agoI 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.
- jwr 10mo agoAll 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.
- socalgal2 10mo agoI preferred my Japanese Mini-Disc player. 240hrs of play time on one charge
- fifilura 10mo agoI had this one, black https://walkman.land/panasonic/rq-s55 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.
- jwr 10mo agoOh, that's a great website! I found the model I last used: https://walkman.land/panasonic/rq-sx55 https://walkman.land/panasonic/rq-sx55
- philistine 10mo agoAll 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.
- changadera 10mo agoWe 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.
- jsmailes 10mo agoI 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.
- klez 10mo ago> 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.
- spopejoy 10mo ago> 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.
- sceptic123 10mo ago> 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.
- klez 10mo agoTake 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 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jVoSQP2yUYA
- sceptic123 10mo agoSo 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.
- jpfromlondon 10mo agoThe 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.
- maratc 10mo agoAnyone knows of a similar site but for portable AM/FM radios?
- jll29 10mo agoThis 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).
- IAmBroom 10mo ago"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..."
- 112233 10mo agoMeanwhile, here is an actual Sony Walkman that is modern, i.e. in production: https://electronics.sony.com/audio/audio-components/hi-res-audio/p/nwwm1zm2 https://electronics.sony.com/audio/audio-components/hi-res-a...
- eudamoniac 10mo agoBuying 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.