What’s old is new again with the reboots of the classic devices for games and music that are constantly coming out. But this kitsch value comes at a cost, even if the technology is current.
Audiophiles want digital music players to set aside cellular components in favor of devices that maximize sound quality, or at least that’s what Sony seems to be betting on with the introduction of a $ 3,700 Walkman this week.
Before you ask, no, it can’t play real tapes, which means it’s not really a Walkman, but an Android 11 media player that can play and play downloaded music through apps, as your smartphone can probably do. ligent. But we won’t talk about that because of the golden bath.
Market demand for this is unclear, especially after the death of the iPod, Sony’s latest Golden Walkman has a lot of features that the Japanese manufacturer claims to improve sound quality, such as a chassis made of oxygen-free copper that lives underneath. the gold plating.
This is one step closer to the $ 3,200 model announced in March of this year and has been available for some time. A “budget” version of the latest device also removes some of the more esoteric hardware that improves sound quality, but is still priced at $ 1,400.
Here’s the $ 3,700 gadget from Sony
The two latest Walkman models are Wi-Fi only and can play streaming and downloaded music, including MP3, FLAC, AAC and other formats. Storage is modest: the full-priced model includes 256 GB (215 GB actually usable), while the economy version ships with 128 GB. Both have SD expansion slots, though. There’s a standard stereo mini headphone jack and USB-C apparently for charging.
The launch of these devices, with features that are sure to spark a debate about what quality can be extracted from audio files, comes at an inopportune time for digital music players. The aforementioned end of the iPod line and Apple’s message telling consumers to switch to an iPhone is just one more symptom of a change in listening tastes that completely shuns media ownership.
Think of Ikea’s decision to start making and selling its own turntables – a sign that some people’s tastes for listening to music are changing. Vinyl records are once again the most popular format for buying and playing music, which includes online digital shopping.
That said, physical media sales are still overshadowed by online streaming services. Vinyl, which accounted for more than half of music purchases, accounts for only 4.7 percent when streaming is included.
In early 2021, Spotify announced plans to add lossless quality audio to its platform, which Apple and Amazon Music copied a few months later. Lossless audio avoids one of the central drawbacks of music streaming, as long as you have a fast enough cellular data or Wi-Fi connection, which raises the question of whether digital music players are really good. ready to be grazed.
When Ikea reintroduced turntables it acted on a tendency to listen to music: the resurgence of physical media among collectors and audiophiles. What Sony hopes to achieve with a $ 4,000 Wi-Fi-only Android phone alone is less clear. ®