HiWire

Yes, Sony has a very distinguished history of making great-sounding portable players (though not all of their products have been great). I do find their flagship pricing excessive, but these are low-volume products in 2023 and the A306 is cheaper than most of the Astell&Kern players. I'm still listening to my portable CD player, the Sony D-EJ2000. It drives Alessandro MS-1 headphones and Sennheiser Momentum earbuds without a problem. My main issues with Sony flash players has been price, battery life/replacement, and software. There are a lot of complaints about short battery life on the players, as well as operating system clunkiness and stability. Sony tried to fix that by moving to Android OS, but it's a work in progress. The NWZX707-B ($899.99) and NW-A306-B ($349.99) are now officially listed as available for pre-order on Sony's website. I hope they end up being quality products! We can expect to see official reviews when they become available. I doubt I will buy one myself, but I'll pick up the 707 if it is Sony's last player. From a value perspective, it's much easier to continue using my Apple iPod Shuffle (4GB) or my old iPhone 5S (32GB) as a portable player. They have great battery life, the 5S has a headphone jack and Bluetooth for speakers, and their quality is decent for portable use in noisy environments.

The Kills - Midnight Boom

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Boomers rejoice! AM radio wants in on the nostalgia boom:

What do they say... only the good die young. Checking out Morphine's Cure for Pain.

Oops! Too much coffee this morning. That would explain why the testimonials were so polished... Still, I'm checking out his music too late.

RIP, Mark Lanegan

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Getting Audiocrazy... Chinese company mods Chinese boombox... things are getting very meta in here. Does it meta? "Japenese" tape mechanism to avoid it never eating tapes... my takeaway? Don't get mono. 🚮

Loudermilk

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Perfect sound forever! I do like the ability to make perfect digital copies. It's subjective whether digital sounds "better" than analog, but it certainly is easier, faster, and cheaper.

You can get superior quality and easier file handling for practically free with digital music. That's why I think the people evangelizing cassettes are nostalgic above everything. Cassette decks take so much maintenance and the parts are getting hard to find... all for inferior performance and deteriorating quality. I get that cassette has that analog sound, but it was never that good at the budget level. I thought were cassettes were fun as a kid, but that is because I didn't have my own stuff. I recorded stuff on a boom box or my mom's radio/cassette player. No hi-fi stuff.

I was excited to fire up my portable cassette player (not a treasured high-end relic) a few weeks ago, only to discover it doesn't work any more. I doubt I can summon the wherewithal to get into cassettes again... my dad has several cassette decks, so I might bring my small bunch of cassettes (fewer than 15) back at some point and try to digitize them. It's not worth the effort, though, as most of the cassettes are purchased (Dolby B ) and the few I recorded came off AM radio and they were recorded badly.

American McGee's Alice might be coming back in a new game, Alice: Asylum

Happy Birthday!

AI is generating some weird stuff... BattleTech as an 80s science fiction movie:

Probably live music and other random stuff. The budget is super low, which is why I've started at around $200 or so. I already have GarageBand and Adobe Audition, so I should learn to use them.

Modern Talking – Cheri, Cheri Lady Paramore – Running Out of Time Naxatras – Omega Madness

I've got nothing... started investigating a Zoom iQ6 stereo microphone for the phone and the Rode VideoMicro II for a nonexistent camera. Purely for hobby recording. Compact, low-cost, maybe reasonable quality? Doing research on vintage cassette Walkmans and MiniDisc recorders revived my curiosity in field recording.