New Android 12-powered Sony Walkmans: cool looks and high prices

[mbrowne5061]

it doesn't because the WHXM5 already has its own DAC. it only receives the music from the phone, not the audio signal. it's like a file transfer, it doesn't matter whether the music is coming from a 99$ phone, $999 phone or $1999 phone, the headphone will process the file and produce the same sound regardless.

this walkman is for those who uses 3.5mm analog headphones. probably designed for some old snobs who thinks no other android player can play hi-res audio files. or for some people who think they're gonna get better sound quality from spotify (no spotify hi-fi yet till today) using this kind of device. not to worry it's a japan only release so it's hardly surprising. remember they are still using faxes over there, I mean they just live differently.

Well, that and the 3.5mm jack has been getting phased out (for better or worse) on phones for years now.

I'm riding my current Note9 into the ground, even paying for battery replacements while its still an option, but I expect my next phone to be as bare bones as it gets if I can't find a good one with a 3.5mm jack. If that happens, a device like this would be somewhat attractive to me (assuming I could find one at a lower price).

 

[TheBigT42]

I can go to BestBuy and get an Android Track Phone for $70. My 50+ year old ears would not be able to hear the difference.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/tracfone-motorola-g-power-64gb-prepaid-black/6520989.p?skuId=6520989

 

[Neatfeatguy]

I'm talking about current market value, I aquired the stuff over the years. My dad got me into vintage audio and I expanded on his collection after he died. It wasn't really until ~2012-2015 that people started to realize what they had and the prices went up. I'm probably $6000 into the whole thing and $30,000 is what I estimate it at at current market prices. The only parts I spent really money on were a modern pair of Klipshe RF7- II's and even those have tripled in price in the last few years on the used market.

But It's also a hobby for me. I'll get old amps and speakers and sometimes they're in rough shape. It's fun to restore old speaker cabinets and amplifiers. It's easy enough to recap the old amps and do LED conversions. for $10 in caps I can turn a $50 broken amp into something work $300-400. That said, I've never actually sold anything from my collection and times will have to get pretty hard for me to do that.

Don't take it to heart what people say when you tell them what your collection of <insert here> is worth. A lot of people instantly think you're lying because they're jealous.

People tell me that I lie about the cost of merchandise my older brother and I owned back in the late '80s and early '90s - we had to have a good $50k+ between the two of us. We had oodles and oodles of baseball/football/hockey/basketball cards tons of signed sports memorabilia. We'd get out to Brewer games and work on getting autographs from them and the away teams. We'd get out to the Chicago Bears practice camp (when it was in Platteville, WI) and get autographs. We spent every other weekend during the spring and summer months attending card shows all over WI - we'd purchase a table spot to setup and sell/trade with others and many card shows had meet and greets where we'd get sports players autograph (my favorite that I still have is a signed card from Bart Starr). We had the best players of the early 70s to the late 80s rookie cards (Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Mike Singletary, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, etc...) We'd hunt for deals while we were there, we'd be scouring the newest Beckett pricing book to get the best prices. We also had tons of gaming stuff (games, systems - even multiples of some - NES, SNES, Genesis, TurboGrafx 16, Gameboy, Atari 2600, etc) and my brother had amassed a good collection of comic books (including a few first issues such as the 1st X-Men, 1st Wolverine, 1st Hulk and so on). We built up thousands of dollars of merchandise and we loved it.

Then one day my older brother (when he was 16) took 99% of everything and pawned/sold it off, but that's a story for another time.

 

[Bamda]

That's odd, my phone can do all of this for the same price, actually, my phone costs less.

 

[MakeMSGreatAgain]

Someone should just make a portable audio player that looks like the WINAMP original skin with physical buttons and very basic LCD for the EQ and song info that changes. If it looked exactly like the WINAMP skin that would be so damn nostalgic for a lot of us. Only thing is it would have to be well priced. I'm thinking $80 max. I'd buy it if it had proper features like headphone jack, microSD card slot, bluetooth so I can use my smartphones internet to stream music, and a kit to put it in my car.

It really whips the llama's ***.

 

[trgz]

"Large capacitors" - in a device that measures 72.6 x 132 x 17mm I doubt they're that large!

 

[Thatsdisgusting]

I have the Mojo V1 currently just sitting in drawer - really happy sound . On my PC I use a Hugo 2 - more convenient as in place DAC - can easily power any of my headphones .
If I was commuting on public transport - would use my Mojo maybe ( probably with Sony's latest noise cancelling headphones - as most of mine are open.

I still have some Sony Mini Disc player some where - were great for travelling - but my yellow Sony sports Walkman- got me through a lot of years on the road - only retired it for the Mini Disc - Quarters use to important the USA - well AA batteries were a way to spent for last pesos before crossing the border ( torches , SW Radio, small alarm clock , Walkman, portable speakers , brides, gift ) -Was super efficient to run

Have that big one aswell. Prefer to run Mojo 2 because of EQ capabilities. So I gave my father Hugo2, he also thought that would be great since he's more vinyl+acoustics at dedicated music room at home, while I'm on the "move".

But it turned out me using mojo only as PC DAC while dad runs Hugo "on the move" with streamer he bought and his iPhone :lol:

P.S. Still miss OPPO though, HA2SE was the best DAC I had, beside Chords.

 

[J Oelschl]

Why would ANYONE want this versus a phone that can do this and more?

 

[Tams80]

And yet more ignorant comments from people who aren't even interested in this.

@Bamda @J Oelschl in particular.

Why even bother commenting?

Anyway, why this over a phone? Physical media controls. Better sound quality. A 3.5mm socket. A separate device so: your phone battery isn't being drained, you can still have notifications on your phone but not be distracted/interrupted, if something happens to your phone or this not everything is lost. Nostalgia.

Anyone else think 64GB of internal storage for a Walkman is a pathetic? I know streaming is more popular nowadays but still there's loads of people with their CD collections stored on their computers etc.

It has a microSD card slot. Yeah, I know that might be hard to fathom for some in the 2020s, but it does.

The soldered on memory is just for the OS and a few apps. It's probably cheaper to get a 64GB chip than a 16GB one.

 

[Endymio]

"Large capacitors" - in a device that measures 72.6 x 132 x 17mm I doubt they're that large!

Large in farads (or uF, rather), not in volume. Cell phones generally use cheap multilayer ceramic caps, that cost only a tiny fraction of a cent each. A few high-quality tantalum caps on the audio circuit makes a very real difference.

 

[trgz]

Large in farads (or uF, rather), not in volume. Cell phones generally use cheap multilayer ceramic caps, that cost only a tiny fraction of a cent each. A few high-quality tantalum caps on the audio circuit makes a very real difference.

Let's hope they use good quality ones then, as you want to avoid the cheap ones. And let's not forget that it's a 'conflict mineral' (though it's everywhere already).