Tag Archives: cassette player

Kickback brings transparent, nostalgic CD, cassette players and Bluetooth speaker

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Anyone who has ever done spring cleaning knows that you will still find some old compact discs and cassette tapes in your pile of junk. CDs are also still pretty popular now specifically in the K-pop and J-pop industry. The challenge though is to find devices that can still play these “artifacts”. Kickback is a brand that banks on nostalgia with its line up of retro products. Three of the more popular ones are the Discman, Portable Cassette Player, and the Jukebox Mini.

Designer: Kickback

The Discman is inspired by the Sony portable CD player that was very popular back in the days. Aside from being named after it, the design sensibilities is also taken from that particular CD player. What makes this different is that it has a fully transparent exterior so you can see your disc spinning around as you play it. The Bluetooth-enabled device also has a small digital display so you can see what track is playing and some buttons for various controls.

The Portable Cassette Player has a simple name enough so you can understand what it is. Well, that is, if you still know what a cassette tape is. For though of us who know what it is, it is also a portable device with a simple and minimalist design. Just like the Sony Walkman where it draws its design from, it is small enough to fit into your pocket. Well, if you still have cassette tapes of course.

Lastly, we have the Jukebox Mini, which is just semi-nostalgic when it comes to its design. It’s a Bluetooth speaker but with a retro design with two round speakers encased in a rectangular case. It claims that it carries the same quality as speakers from Sonos or Beats Pill. It can be placed on a shelf or desk or mounted on the wall, or you can also carry it around. It comes in cute mint, white, and pink colors.

The post Kickback brings transparent, nostalgic CD, cassette players and Bluetooth speaker first appeared on Yanko Design.

This LEGO version of the classic Sony Walkman WM-22 features an opening lid with removable cassettes!

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Fashion is cyclical and it seems like cassettes may just be making their comeback. Audio manufacturer Fiio just debuted their latest retro CP13 cassette player at CES this year, and it shouldn’t be long before people are making mixtapes again. Just to prime us for that retro-resurgence, LEGO builder Srta.JirafaEnfadada designed a to-scale Sony Walkman made entirely out of LEGO bricks… and the best part, it actually fits LEGO cassettes in!

Designer: Srta.JirafaEnfadada

Before MP3 players and iPods pretty much changed the game, cassettes were the gold standard in music playback. Cars had cassette players, people owned boomboxes, and for a brief while, the Sony Walkman was one of the coolest products you could own. Designed to play cassettes on-the-go, the Walkman walked so the iPod could run. You could make your mixtape, pop it in, and listen to music either on the Walkman’s built-in speaker (if it had one), or on a pair of headphones or earphones for a private music experience.

This entry into the LEGO Ideas forum is based on the WM-22 Walkman, available in the iconic red colorway. It features the classic opening flap on the front that lets you put cassettes in and take them out between plays, with a transparent window that even lets you peer into the walkman’s insides to see which cassette’s loaded. Around the periphery are its play-pause and rewind/fast-forward buttons, and a simple rotary dial to adjust volume. The WM-22 didn’t sport a record button, which most costlier models had, allowing you to even capture audio directly to the cassette. However, it did have a 3.5mm jack, which can be found on this LEGO version too (right above the volume button), allowing you to hook a pair of headphones in. You’ve also got 4 different LEGO cassettes to choose from with the build, adding variety to your music library!

The Sony Walkman was submitted to the LEGO Ideas forum, an online dashboard where LEGO enthusiasts can share their own LEGO-based creations. The forum allows the LEGO community to vote for their favorite designs, with the top-voted ones getting turned into box-sets for us regular-folk to buy. The Sony Walkman sits at 2,068 votes as of writing this article, and if it hits the coveted 10,000 mark, it could potentially be made into a retail set! You can vote for the Sony Walkman or any of your other favorite designs on the LEGO Ideas website.

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Fiio CP13 revives Sony Walkman mixtape era in a USB-C chargable version

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Fiio, best known for its audiophile-grade DACs and desktop streamers has surprised everyone at CES 2024 with a retro gadget that breaks the ice in terms of its nostalgia. This is the CP13 cassette player inspired by the popular Sony Walkman back in the 80s era.

The gadget is just not a shell inspired by the Walkman of that time, rather it is a modern cassette music player to its true core. You can gauge the realism from the fact that there isn’t Bluetooth on this music player to keep this very authentic. However, the Chinese manufacturer has added USB-C charging feature to save you from buying AA batteries every week.

Designer: Fiio

Doesn’t this mean, that cassette player technology has gone a full circle and now coming back in trend? In fact, the year 2022 saw an annual sale of 195,000 cassette player units. The appearance in ‘The Last of US’ and pop albums by Billie Elish, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift further seems to strengthen this fact!

Paying homage to the original Walkman in dual tone silver blue finish, the gadget has a retro design with large playback buttons, 3.5 mm headphone port and an oversized knob. By the looks of things, there’s no option to auto-reverse, so you’ll have to manually change sides. However, you can fast forward, reverse and pause just like the original one.

Another added feature along with the more modern charging port is the status LED. The player is good for 15 hours of playback on a single charge but sadly there’s no function to convert tapes to MP3 files. Of course, there’s the signature color variant but audioheads can also go for the matte black with white and the blue with metal silver option.

The audio accessory is priced at $164 and I’m not too sure if I’ll be going down that road anytime soon. Still, the Fiio CP13 does evoke a lot of fond memories of the golden era when owning music albums and following artists was a lot more precious compared to modern times.

The post Fiio CP13 revives Sony Walkman mixtape era in a USB-C chargable version first appeared on Yanko Design.