Looks like Fiio created a new portable cassette player (Walkman). At first glance it looked like it was a decent piece. If you look a bit closer, it's actually a cheap plastic device. Compared to a basic vintage Sony or Aiwa player that can still be bought on the used market, they are charging around $120 for this plastic wonder. So they essentially succeeded in making something mediocre even worse than it was and for more money too.
Just like MP3s did for 44.1k sampled digital audio, they made cassettes sound worse than they already did. I'd however venture to say that a decent diy recording on a high bias tape made with a higher end deck still sounds better than any MP3 does (discounting the little bit of tape hiss). I'd accept the hiss any day over the compressed audio.
Just like MP3s did for 44.1k sampled digital audio, they made cassettes sound worse than they already did. I'd however venture to say that a decent diy recording on a high bias tape made with a higher end deck still sounds better than any MP3 does (discounting the little bit of tape hiss). I'd accept the hiss any day over the compressed audio.
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Perhaps the tape heads are reclaimed from landfill! Alternatively, there's probably lots of NOS lying around to be used up.
Recent years have seen a number of high profile artists release their music in cassette format and FiiO simply hope to cash in on the nostalgia bandwagon.
Just before @Andrewbee posted, I was writing that, last year, French brand We Are Rewind released a portable cassette player with a metallic casing.
Unlike the FiiO it includes bluetooth connectivity for headphones.
