This Bluetooth CD player was inspired by the 90s

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,256   +192
Staff member
Editor's take: NINM Lab last summer launched a successful Kickstarter campaign for a retro-minded portable cassette player packed with modern features such as Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity. If it worked for fans of cassettes, might compact disc enthusiasts be interested in something similar?

As it turns out, the answer is, “yes.”

NINM Lab recently launched a new Kickstarter campaign for Long Time No See, a portable CD player for the modern era. Like the cassette player before it, the CD player features Bluetooth 5.0 for wireless connectivity but also has a 3.5mm jack for standard headphones.

The unit itself was designed after CD jewel cases of the era and is offered in a semitransparent blue or fully transparent clear shell. It features an LED indicator, a micro USB port to power the unit, a AA battery compartment and even an integrated magnet for sticking the player to compatible surfaces.

NINM Lab is also tossing in a speaker cover for those times you don’t have headphones with you or want to let others in on what you are listening to.

Long Time No See has already generated more than $30,000 in pledges from over 300 backers in its first day, easily surpassing the company’s goal of just shy of $13,000. A pledge of around $89 is needed to guarantee you’ll be among the first to own a unit when they ship in December.

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Most Generation Z will never know the struggle of having an early CD-player as a "walkman" if it didn't have a good enough music buffer and skipped like crazy if you were doing anything more than walking. They were crazy expensive initially, but once more started coming to market with longer buffers, listening to the music while walking or jogging was easier.

And there were the scratches on the disks.

And the battery vampirism...

I still have a few CD-players in my basement.
 
Most Generation Z will never know the struggle of having an early CD-player as a "walkman" if it didn't have a good enough music buffer and skipped like crazy if you were doing anything more than walking. They were crazy expensive initially, but once more started coming to market with longer buffers, listening to the music while walking or jogging was easier.

And there were the scratches on the disks.

And the battery vampirism...

I still have a few CD-players in my basement.

MiniDisc all the way for me! Total epic love affair. The Walkman Original (cassette) my dad brought home from overseas in the Navy will always have a fond space in my memory. Sony is the key for me. Both these items and CD Walkman I had all were Sony. Quality. Much loved. Where did they go? Pure nostalgia. Good times!
 
MiniDisc all the way for me! Total epic love affair. The Walkman Original (cassette) my dad brought home from overseas in the Navy will always have a fond space in my memory. Sony is the key for me. Both these items and CD Walkman I had all were Sony. Quality. Much loved. Where did they go? Pure nostalgia. Good times!


I still have a working minidisc player with working packs of disks.

Apple iPhone/ ipod completely killed MP3 players and everything else.
 
Both my Panasonic units worked until the day I stopped using them, I wonder where they are now and if I toss in some batteries and a CD they'd still work. Time to go digging through my past...
 
I still have a Panasonic portable audio CD player.

But with the advent of mp3 with CD quality and higher than CD quality bit-rates than can be conveniently carried in hundreds of files within a small smartphone, which also functions as a media player, these CD players can no longer be considered "portable".

It's more inconvenient to carry the player and separate CDs, now.

Those days, yeah..I enjoyed moving with one of my favourite CDs while I also carried my trusty Nokia 3310.

These players were quite a thing, though. Those days. With clear, high quality audio.

And now, I just listen to it in my bedroom out of nostalgia. But not as often as those days....
 
Most Generation Z will never know the struggle of having an early CD-player as a "walkman" if it didn't have a good enough music buffer and skipped like crazy if you were doing anything more than walking. They were crazy expensive initially, but once more started coming to market with longer buffers, listening to the music while walking or jogging was easier.

And there were the scratches on the disks.

And the battery vampirism...

I still have a few CD-players in my basement.
I coughed up an extra $100 for a 10 second anti-skip buffer instead of a 3 second one. Skip buffers helped a lot, but they killed the battery life, at least on the yellow Sony waterproof model I just had to have. And yes, as shocking as it may be to today's kids. I actually had a job and paid for it myself at 14.
 
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