The early 2000s were the halcyon days of physical media. While not as svelte as MP3 players became, why are those early 2000s machines smaller than all the new models popping up amidst the retro audio craze?
We’ve bemoaned the end of the electromechanical era before, and the Verge recently interviewed the people at We Are Rewind and Filo to get the skinny on just why these newer cassette and CD players aren’t as small as their predecessors. It turns out that all currently produced cassette players use the same mechanism with some small tweaks in materials (like metal flywheels in these higher quality models) because the engineering required to design a smaller and better sounding alternative isn’t warranted by the niche nature of the cassette resurgence.
A similar fate has befallen the laser head of CD mechanisms, which is why we don’t have those smooth, rounded players anymore. Economies of scale in the early 2000s mean that even a cheap player from that era can outperform a lot of the newer ones, although you won’t have newer features like Bluetooth to scandalize your audiophile friends. A new Minidisc player is certainly out of the question, although production of discs only ended this February.
If you’re looking to get back into cassettes, this masterclass is a good place to start. If you don’t fancy any of the players the Verge looked at, how about rolling your own incarnation with the guts from a vintage machine or just going for the aesthetic if cassettes aren’t your jam?
This isnt the first article I’ve read with this headline, and the answer is clear. Few care about this old tech, it’s nowhere near as popular as it once was. The scale needed for research or manufacturing isn’t there. Anyone buying this is probably in it for image, and wont use it for long.
That status quo could always change, but it would definitely need to become a little less niche first.
The scale needed for research or manufacturing depends a lot on the underlying motivations and whether you depend on existing systems to achieve it.
If the desire and capital existed to start a business for reasons other than maximizing profits that would change the equation/dynamic.
Does not even need to be cassette or cd player which is impossible to find in smaller size. Good luck finding small portable fm radio today, preferably with replaceable battery. In the 80’s and 90’s there were many great portable radios, using aaa batteries, smaller than size of 2 matchboxes side to side, including relatively good speaker. Also many very tiny radios without build in speakers, great tuner in the size of 2nd gen ipod shuffle. Micro size, no nonsense fm-tuner with good reception and replaceable batteries that lasted forever would still be great option in multiple cases today.
Small portable radios (I found on Radio Jay Allen and his portable radios shootout) and without speaker (Sangean SR-32, Prunus J-985, Aiwa R-22, Retekess V112) that exist suffer shorter battery life, worse reception and durability. Although the size seems to me acceptable I agree they can’t match devices I have seen in ’90 (some of them being just merchandise).
Just look at this battery life test:
https://swling.com/blog/2016/08/update-3-sangean-dt-160cl-v-sony-srf-39fp/
Sony’s design is over a decade older and totally outperforms Sangean – not only lasts longer but also runs on 1 battery not 2.
I still don’t understand why FM radios got removed from mobile phones – I much prefered the tiny battery usage, no data usage and constant signal over internet based stations.
Because people use bluetooth earphones and you need the cable for the antenna.
Some of the small cheap mp3 players have fm radio built in, using earphones as antenna.
I bought a CD player because sometimes I want to listen to music without having to turn on a computer or a phone, or worry about my listening habits being spied upon for the purpose of sending me targeted advertisements. Even if the internet is down, even if the power is out, I can still play a CD and have the experience be completely contained within my living room. Plus, CDs last forever. No idea why anyone would buy tapes.
CDs, do not, last forever. You’ve obviously never heard of bit-rot of data. The magnetic tape on cassette has a longer lifespan than data on a CD.
Bit rot is a problem with burned CDs.
Production stamped discs will last significantly longer (decades) with their issues being uv degradation, plastic degradation, or delamination of the layers if you got a terrible batch of plastic or resins in manufacturing.
One problem that polycarbonate can have is the presence of a salt in the resin (at least Bayer chemical was having issues with this in the early 2000’s)
A lot of music was only made available on cassette. Some people also enjoy the warm, crackly sound which perfectly complements old hip hop albums. They’re not called mixtapes for nothing
For the price of this cassette player, you can:
1. Buy a 2nd phone.
2. Don’t even put in a SIM card (do those still exist?) in it.
3. Put your “CD” collection on it.
4. Either use Wifi (and block outgoing internet) or disable all radio’s and just use USB.
5. Enjoy your music collection from a convenient touch screen interface.
And of course, the simple way to make sure your own personal music collection is safe, is to have (preferably off site) backups. I have a few (mostly old) HDD’s lying around in drawers for this task, and I rotate my backups between them. A (extra) NAS is more convenient, but an HDD lying in a drawer is also safely air gapped against any sort of malware attack on your network.
Off site backups do not only provide redundancy against failing hardware, but also against fire and burglary.
it seems like you’re comparing a mass produced consumer device of yore with a novelty gimmick of today?
anyways, the only kind of cd player i still use is a usb device i use to rip cds to my pc. and looking around at the marketplaces, those haven’t changed in 20 years. they don’t lookany bigger than they were at the apex. they’re essentially early aughts laptop cd drives wrapped in a thin plastic box. so where it’s still a regular consumer device, nothing has changed?
hah and! i looked for usb tape decks — i had one of those years ago too — and they are still tiny. they look to be about 5mm wider/taller than a naked casette, and maybe 3x as thick.
The smallest portable cassette player I remember was a Sony device about half the height of a cassette. It would be trivial with modern technology (greater battery capacity in a smaller space and stronger materials, and more powerful motors) to build a player much smaller. But, who cares?
They were small so you can carry them around. Now if you want something to carry around it’s even smaller. You used to have to carry tapes and CD’s too. Just last week I dinged a star off an Amazon review because they sent drivers on a CD, and had to go find my USB DVD drive.
You dinged them for supplying a set of drivers in a form that amazon can’t reach in and erase on a whim? Not like amazon hasn’t zapped out anything we’ve paid for before.
?..Permit me to toss in my own experiences with drivers and thus my personal attitude about ’em please.
Some years ago I accidentally discovered that asking manufacturers for the drivers on floppy discs, generally got you a clean set of drivers.
No trial wares or nag screens or trying to get you to let some amusement corp rifle through your hard drive and bombard you with spam mail.
Drivers on CD? Very handy if you copied them off to your hard drive and then went through them with a hex editor and stripped or remed out the adobe installation and other cruft before running the install.
Sometimes I found older drivers that would still run fine under win98, but they had been simply commented out of the OS options in the installer check lists.
My take on physical media? Goodness sakes, Grab it any time you get a chance!!
You never know what useful bits you might find, just needing a few keystrokes to make it available and let our gadgets do our bidding.
Nothing like having a utility (on CD) that still does a job you want, rather than finding out that the lawyers have had that certain function stripped from the only downloads left online anywhere.
Often that is true only possible source of drivers, the seller is just sending you what they have.
Well nobody mentioned ,currently you can visit Huaqiangbei, find a couple of suppliers of surplus cassette mechanisms (90’s & 2000) and a manufacturer of rubbers bands and you have half of the work done.
Bigger is better when it come to “deck” and flywheel, better yet is reversible play because there are 2 in counter rotation. The last of the mainstream players were trash already with plastic everything.
I guess it’s time to dig out my campo-blaster from the 80’s and give it life again with a lithium redo.
Reasonably nice sounding portable stereo cassette player/recorder with AM/FM/SW plus mandatory bluetooth can be found on them ebays for around $45-$65 including S&H. I own a couple and they are quite nice for the price paid. Not sure how long they will last, so far three years in total and working properly. Larger ones that would be called “boomboxes” go for under $100, but with some patience a used one can be found for around the same price.
Walkman players, not sure yet, I saw a few for around the same price, so that’s my next test (for now my priorities are elsewhere).
Why cassette players “making a comeback” (imho, not really, just some kind of traction with the nostalgic crowd like myself) is something odd for sure. The mechanical/electronic technology for these overall stayed about the same since late 1990s when pretty much all R&D was shut down. If you buy a surplus cassette mechanism, in all likeness you get rather cheap plastic replica of okay kind, or if you procure surplus car stereo mechanism, it will have metal parts, but these will still be a far cry from what was made and sold in the early 1980s, well-made decks made by Sanyo or Sansui or Pioneer or Aiwa.
Regardless, portable cassette was almost never about good quality, with the exception of high-end walkman that still sell for almost the same price now (good used Sony Walkman will set you back around $150 – the well-made one kinds, not cheaper lower grade). I suppose some people like myself just enjoy the nostalgia :-]
The 2000s example wasn’t Sony’s tiniest. That would be one a coworker owned back in ’86 or 87 and it was a Sony tinfoil thin affair powered by a single AAA battery, even tinier than a cassette case and the envy of all us peasants who had to make do with Sanyos, Sansuis or Aiwas. Though I owned an Aiwa with bass boost AND three-band equalizer and sounded great with CrO2 tape. Plus radio.
I don’t miss them so much anyway, my gear nowadays is not audiophile level but has Dolby Atmos (a midrange Samsung phone) and just replaced my old BT Philips Bass+ cans for JBLs also Bletooth. Replaying the old songs in it reveal new levels and instruments hitherto unheard in 40 years… FLAC versions of Andreas Vollenweider and Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells sound like I hear them for the first time.
Even good quality MP3 streams sound great. Two nites ago I fell asleep hearing a Prog rock station through TuneIn without setting the off timer first and in the morning I woke not because of the noise but because the melody playing was so good my subconscious slapped my face and woke me up to enjoy it too = ) pity I was so sleepy I forgot to favorite the song = (
I left 2 comments here last night and they are gone now…
For the money it takes for a terabyte of data, it almost makes sense to rip CDs straight to WAV. So bummed that back in the day I ripped all my stuff to 128kpbs MP3 and abandoned the CDs during a move.