We... Kind of got this today, I dunno I just don't see the appeal of these mp3 players. I'm not a die-hard cassette junkie either but at least tape players and decks offer a kind of functionality and experience that a modern phone wouldn't provide, these are just generic looking devices running Android that happen to play music. Still the 40th anniversary model does look cool, but £400 is... Steep.
Right..! I'd say that I'm not an audiophile. Yes, I want units that sounds better, but to be frank, I'm reasonably happy with the sound of the plastic Sony walkmans from the 2000's. These dedicated players can sound better and store more, but for myself listening to MP3s on my phone is more than enough. I'm more in the hobby for the walkmans themselves, you might say. Marvels of miniature engineering from a different era.
Couldn't have said it better myself. If I want to get into a streaming service for music then I have my phone, otherwise I love Walkmans for their brilliant engineering. No offence to these advanced modern Walkmans but all I'll find inside are microchips and micro components, no belts or mechanism that I can fully observe, study and marvel at.
Forbes seems to like it's little TPS-L2 emulation trick. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidp...rise-feature-is-a-scene-stealer/#4b93be072da2 It also appears to be a new model. From the first photos I thought it was just a repainted NW A45. I had been intending to buy one of those for ages. Decisions decisions.
Well, crap... Now I want it. Thanks Sony, also damn you Sony, couldn't you have announced this on the day of the 40th? I've originally planned (or already started to plan) to do different things with my money, not expecting anything anymore... I know that feeling @Machaneus we're in the same boat right now. What took them even so long until now?
How could I face myself if I don't buy it , what excuse would I have ? Ok maybe I can say it's digital , capitalizing in nostalgia and all that and then the regrets , no no , too complicated , I'm buying end of it. Maybe they are watching the talking around here .
@Machaneus Well, it's pretty amazing how a few days before their announcement I've mentioned to someone how exactly what they did could have easily been done with their current walkman series and how they could easily get fans of Guardians of the Galaxy and original walkman fans to buy it with minimal effort... Perhaps they wanted to see if they really need to do that based off reactions. If nobody cared there's no 40th anniversary edition, they might have done nothing at all, but perhaps they've seen the confusion and expectation and this was a (cheap?) last minute decision? We probably won't know. But as in your case, how could I face myself if I wouldn't try to get a hold of one of these. I don't care it's digital, in fact I still lack a proper digital-only walkman brand item, it's a must have! And I don't think one that has a spinning tape animation exists on the market except for this one maybe.
Indeed @Sly. you mentioned early on the 40th anniversary scheme on a digital player . Credit goes also to @Longman for mentioning the importance of the headphones of that first walkman , only yesterday Sony uploaded among the other 40th anniversary series of videos an interview with their designer . Either you guys reading their minds or they are reading you . Probably they were planing something sometime ago , after all this looks like a new model , that doesn't mean they didn't pick some last minute ideas. Another thing to mention by the way , I can't stress it enough that all digital players can play mp3 files but they are not all mp3 players only. Good digital players play wav , flac , dsd and mp3 files. That the crappy mp3 was used so widely , damaged seriously the reputation of anything digital related to music , it seems history repeats itself , people even today believe that compact cassettes are an inferior medium because the vast majority had experience with lesser hardware. Have mentioned elsewhere that I'm using on a daily basis , the last 10 years , the 30th anniversary walkman the Sony NWZ- X1060 and never used it for mp3 files , only WAV files (CD quality) ,rips from my CD library. Unfortunately it can't play FLAC files that I prefer the most , provided I know the source of the file , this new 40th anniversary model will fix that.
Maybe that's part of the marketing strategy as well? From a brand-awareness point of view, I'd imagine that it'll be a good idea to make the "40th Anniversary" hype last longer.
Has anyone here got a digital modern Walkman? I am curious about this model to be honest, however I'm not sure how much more dedicated these are for music than a standard smartphone... From videos it seems like there are some components specifically purposed for audiophiles.
Don't have one myself but a friend of mine has one of the NW-A series. The sound is supposedly pretty good, besides it can play more than just mp3, which isn't all too common. I don't have a smartphone, so I wouldn't be able to compare anyway. Can smartphones even playback wma, wav or flac? PS: Didn't even remember I wrote what I wrote earlier @Machaneus ! Perhaps Sony was indeed checking in on some stereo and tape communities, like this one, though that would be strange and I wouldn't really bet on that.
There are some more details here https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/walkman/nw-a100-series It appears that there is a non anniversary model coming out as well. I don't have a really modern Sony digital player but have quite a few that are about ten years old, the most recent purchase being a never used NWZ-E443. I haven't done any real sound quality comparisons. However, it would be strange to start comparing Minidisc with any of Sony's digital players as the original ones used the same ATRAC compression. I completely agree with the comments about MP3s. I read that a lot of the testing was done using Susan Vega's "Toms Diner" which is very strange choice being nothing like the majority of music. Stereomecha and Sly will both be aware of DAB radio which uses MP2. Andy Williams "Can't take my Eyes Of You" sounds particularly bad on that as the electronic ? snare drum just turns into an annoying buzz. Regarding Smartphones I have never played any music on my phone but would buy a new one tomorrow if one was introduced with the features I want. One is Xenon Camera Flash. My last two phones have had that so why should give that up ? Modern phones seem to be turning into small tablets with 6.5"+ screens that happen to make phone calls. Many don't even have headphone jacks. Few have any buttons. Apple never have expandable memory and the 256GBte I could buy for £25 in an SD Card would cost a small fortune from them. Interestingly the new Sony Walkman has a 3.5" screen which is the same as the phone I am still using; a ten year old Sony Satio. Funnily when I got that phone (without seeing one first) I was disapointed about how big it was compared to my K800.
+1 to @Machaneus !!!!!!! You put my own sentiments into a comprehensible post! Pre-recorded cassettes with professionally printed sleeves but dubbed at high-speed were the first Blow, then MP3 nailed the coffin! I use my Pono player (in balanced mode) daily, and NEVER play lossy MP3 rips. Most players sound better when playing ‘wav’ files vs FLAC, ape, or Apple Lossless... me personally I do not hear any benefit in going hi-res.... but my digital collection of some of my favorites (Miles Davis, Camel, Dead Can Dance, Pink Floyd) are in hi-res just for the sake of it! As with Walkmans and Discmans, all DAPs sound different, and price is not an indication of the sound quality. Pono player is ugly and finicky, but sounds ‘Better’ then i-Pod with Ray Samuels h/p amp to me. Latest offerings from Sony get some nice reviews from the dudes who can shell $2k+ for the portable, but once my Pono finally dies I will go for the Questyle player. As I said, they all sound different, and folks at Naim Audio chatroom are saying that they buy extra Pono players as a backup because they sound “right” to Naim-heads like me
Absolutely, I have only ever used CD quality 44100 kHz WAV files to play on any audio player I have owned. I had a hand-me-down iPod Touch first generation received when a family member no longer used it and that lasted a long time before its battery life plummeted, but at that point I still had a flip-phone Motorola so the novelty of a touch screen device hadn't died for me at that point. It has been several years since I used it, the past few years I've either put some music on in the background on my laptop or phone otherwise I will just use a Walkman
The link below is especially for @Jorge , suggested though for all. Gordon Reid in an admirable attempt to explain what is going on under the deep waters of the digital sound world to us mere mortals. Keep in mind that it was published 12 years ago , I'm not certain if the situation is the same , worse , or better today. A screenshot of the prologue : https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/digital-myth
Yes. A little research suggests it used a bit rate of 704Kbit/s so it isn't surprising it sounded pretty good. "Near CD Quality"; an expression that now seems to be applied to anything 64KBit/s upwards. I just read the Sound and Sound article. The comment at the end is the most important bit. I posted a picture before of a classical tape proudly proclaiming it was DDA which was a selling point when it was made. Of course studio quality Digital recorders didn't use any compression and most likely recorded to Video Tape like the Alesis ADAT.
@Machaneus THANKS for the link!!! I will save it for my friends who still(!!!) believe, as I did 20+ years ago, that "digital is digital" and that any Discman sounds as good as a $100k dCS stack. Very nice and comprehensible write-up! The ultimate proof of course is in listening, but it takes time and efforts to go to the hi-end audio store (if you can find one nowadays!) and sit for a presentation. And some luck: my latest visit to Shelley Stereo (where I spent more than a few thou $$ ten years ago) was a waste of my time: its owner did Not recognize me and let me hang there forever, until I gave up and just walked away. And I have always thought that this attitude is just an 'urban legend'... EDIT: my dress-code 10 years ago was the same as nowadays: T-shirt (without any profound messages) , shorts and sandals. I did not have any Swiss watches then, but this encounter that I am talking about, the only one which survived the fire was on my wrist... but must have been too inconspicuous to draw the owner's attention (Vasheron Constantin "Overseas")
