As some of you may know, FiiO is making a new cassette player, supposedly with a now custom mechanism. What we know: - New bespoke brushless motor design - New custom head design - Logic control - Same custom FIIO DDB chip as their radio receiver RR11 - "Ultra-thin" volume - Released around november - Prototypes will supposedly be tested this month (June 2025) - "Best recorder currently available" - Will not feature auto reverse - 150 USD Sources: - FiiO Willson on Xiahongshu - head-fi.org - FiiO twitter
Interesting. But the wow and flutter in the original was so bad that it wasn't worth using at all even over some of the ancient cheap walkmans. They need to implement some kind of disc drive. I remember checking a review and the sound quality was so horribly muddy, it sounded beyond 'mono'. The smaller and thinner they are the worse the sound quality usually is. If they want to make a good one, it needs to have a very nice head also.
To be honest I've never tried one, but from the data I've seen the current CP13 beats the 6xx EX series in W&F which isn't that much because it's so big compared to them. I know some japanese people have done improvements to it, they fit a bracket to reinforce the mechanism and some have fitted better electronics and even a type 2 switch, so the potential is there even with the older tanashin-clone mech. IMO they should do a CP13 MK2 with improvements.
I did purchase the We Are Rewind and like to occassionaly use it. Old tech with a USB C port, like a record player with BT I can't say I noticed (high) W&F on E/F/GX 600 units after news belts and proper internal cleaning. For 150 USD you can't buy a Walkman that is fully serviced and as new. We captured several modern Walkmans on Walkman.land, but did not want to pollute the database of the originals. Here is the link: https://walkman.land/modern
The EX672 gets 0,43% DIN W&F in forward, which is significantly more than the cp13 and some other tanashin clones. The thing is, the modern player's problems are really not in speed stability, it seems to be in everything else, the heads, the electronics etc
Very hard to guess the size from this picture, but it looks 501 sized IMO (I believe only the left one is a cp15)
My EX2000 is much lower than that, actually one of the lowest excepting the DD Walkmans I have. That said, they are all 10x the price so yes it really only matters I think if you want to listen to string instruments. Those We Are Rewind players look amazing but I think the biggest issue was still the head. The head is not going to be easy to recreate at all even in this day and age. Unless someone comes up with some awesome direct DAC style head or something. But they would likely patent it and we'd never see it on more than one device. Fiio at least makes very good quality devices. I would be interested to see this new model. This is really awesome!
That's my point, the modern players really aren't all that bad, at least in terms of the mechanism, if people could live happily with an ex 6xx then a theoretical modern device that's just a little bit better is completely usable. For sure in terms of the modern ones the FiiO/Maxell/WAR are the current greatest, and the japanese have modded the first two to even support type 2 eq. Let's see what the future holds.
