FIIO first cassette player CP13 is officially released!

[Trickness]

This thread is like a cautionary tale for product designers. It’s kind of like Steve Jobs said, you can’t ask consumers what they want, you have to give them something they don’t know they want.

The reality is to deliver a product that would have all these things: excellent transport & frequency response, on board EQ, Dolby S (), recording capability, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, built-in DAC, streaming capability, portable and affordable is fantasy. I would guess a product that does all these things would be pushing $2000. That is, if it was even possible to develop a new transport that was as good as anything Sony made 40 years ago.

I think the iPhone has just made us expect too much out of our devices. It’s like everything has to be….everything these days.

I dabbled in cassettes a few years ago, bought a Willy Herman serviced Nak that sounded very good, although nowhere near as good as CD or digital files. The currently available tape formulations are meh, NOS cassettes are crazy expensive and who knows if they are even viable. Sold the deck after owning it for six months for a pretty decent little profit.

It would be fantastic if somebody actually made a Walkman that was as good a cassette player as what we had 40 years ago. And as much as some people might think all these other digital functionalities are necessary in today’s market, all that other crap doesn’t matter if the little box doesn’t sound good, and if the physical media is garbage.

Then again, Crosley stays in business, so I guess there’s a market for people who don’t know any better.

 

[L0rdGwyn]

I think FiiO should just focus on quality mech, quality head, focus on playback. Record function on a portable is always going to play second fiddle to a full sized 3-head deck. Removal battery seems like a reasonable request.

 

[rkt31]

Most deck sound not so good because of quality of prerecorded cassettes. So a high quality recording facility with dolby snr is must for able to make analog master tape.

 

[Chuck Dee]

Most deck sound not so good because of quality of prerecorded cassettes. So a high quality recording facility with dolby snr is must for able to make analog master tape.

Somewhat unrealistic and over-optimistic to expect this from a portable device.
Just buy an old Sony TCK***S deck if you want to make Dolby S encoded recordings.

 

[Chuck Dee]

Assuming FiiO is 'ready-for-market-deployment' after developing this product, then here's what we defintively know :

W&F = 0.15% RMS
...which in my opinion makes it unsuitable for anyone wanting to listen to classical music or where long note decay exists. This limits it to certain music genres. Needs to be better than, or at least 0.10%RMS.

Modified Tanashin mechanism. 'A modified version of the mechanical movement now in production. We've changed a lot of things.'
It would be nice to know specifically what modifications are included, especially if they are an improvement to the known specs of the lamentable standard Tanashin mechanism.

Rechargeable 'phone style battery' giving 13 hours pb time.

3.5mm output jack no output spec yet provided. mwRMS?

No EQ for Type IV cassettes
No recording or DAC/ADC capability
No Dolby chip/facility of any kind
No direct-drive mechanism


It's positive, pro-active and progressive of Fiio to canvas opinion, requirements and wishes from potential end-users/consumers, but I can't help feeling it's a bit of an afterthought when it's obvious this is a product that's gone to manufacturing already. Maybe FiiO can confirm that?
I doubt any suggestions we make here on a consumer level will have any impact on what eventually appears on the shelves.
It would have been much more productive and helpful to Fiio if they had canvassed opinion before going past the final prototype (ready for manufacture) milestone, before tooling and mass component ordering had been finalised.
I realise Chinese manufacturers have a faster product development curve than most other countries but asking for opinion at this stage is sort of pointless and only serves to garner unrealistic expectations and potentially I'm sad to say, dissapointment.

The customer feedback loop is vital when developing further iterations of any product. The value of that feedback includes data for user-scenarios, component failure rates as well as data regarding general improvements. Having worked with Product Development managers over the course of my career I would earnestly suggest to Fiio to engage in a more realistic and productive regimen of end-user/consumer communication and development and this forum as well as a few other tape-oriented forums would be your ideal hunting ground.

 

[rkt31]

Somewhat unrealistic and over-optimistic to expect this from a portable device.
Just buy an old Sony TCK***S deck if you want to make Dolby S encoded recordings.

Problem is that people demand exorbitant ptice of such decks. Not available easily.

 

[Chuck Dee]

Problem is that people demand exorbitant ptice of such decks. Not available easily.

A good-condition Dolby S 3-head deck e.g. Sony TCK815S will cost between €200-300 or cheaper depending on how hard you look.
If you think that's an exhorbitant price then your expectations are unrealsitic.

However, the main point is that FiiO are definitely NOT going to include what you keep asking for here in a portable device.

 

[rkt31]

A good-condition Dolby S 3-head deck e.g. Sony TCK815S will cost between €200-300 or cheaper depending on how hard you look.
If you think that's an exhorbitant price then your expectations are unrealsitic.

However, the main point is that FiiO are definitely NOT going to include what you keep asking for here in a portable device.

Can you please share the link of working snr deck available for €200-300 ?

 

[Chuck Dee]

Can you please share the link of working snr deck available for €200-300 ?

It's against forum rules.
You'll find one if you look in the obvious places.

 

[tbrobison]

Will there be noise reduction Dolby B, or C? I would love a cassette player with Dolby C, metal bias, as that is what most of my audio cassettes were recorded with back in the 80's.

 

[Richsvt]

Did I miss what the cost was projected to be?

 

[kevinkar]

So you want analog to digital conversion with tape? almost all original analog recordings are already available in digital format. You can do that everything with those. With cassette playback conversion in digital will ne retrograde step. A good clean cassette playback should give a flat frequency response with high s/n ratio. Any eq in analog or digital domain will oy degrade the sound. No wonder high end decks avoided this feature even if they had, there was a bypsss mode. Almost audiophile would want this new fiio player to have a clean well measuring output even if it comes at a cost of leaving unnecessary features not contributing to sq. Dear @FiiO we want high end sq from this player not the unnecessary features. We want a reasonably priced alternatives to all those insanely expensive naks, aiwas, Sonys, Tandebergs etc etc.

Uh, no. You're missing the point of my post and making it into something I did not say.

I already have everything I own in FLAC, WAV, MP3, etc. and it's all contained on two small micro SD cards in my Fiio X5 and in the SD slot in my car and all on my cellphone and can play it all already entirely in the digital domain except for that last DA conversion so I can hear it. But I do also have quite a bit of mixtapes from friends I have not listened to in years but do have my Sony Walkman and ES decks should I decide to (and actually do from time to time) so it would be interesting to have a modern equivalent I could use rather than keep putting miles on my old Walkman.

I did not say I wanted an AD converter for tape. I said to just "Take an existing DAP and add a tape transport to it". If they sent it through a converter or an EQ stage, it's not going to ruin the sound anyway and might actually enhance it a bit for some old worn out tapes. The point being they already have the electronics for the DAPs they have which all sounds fine and, if they just add a tape transport and put it in a case, they're done. Much cheaper than designing something like a Fiio Walkman from scratch.

So no, I did not say take an analog tape, convert it to digital, mess with the sound in an unappealing way, convert it back to analog and send that to my headphones.

 

[ExTubeGamer]

Sometimes you just want to use a tape recorder and record random stuff and drop the tapes in dark alleyways.

 

[FiiO Willson]

[用户=84589]@FiiO[/用户]
请开发一个模拟磁带卡座。

If CP13 doesn't lose money, I think we'll look into doing tape decks

 

[FiiO Willson]

Assuming FiiO is 'ready-for-market-deployment' after developing this product, then here's what we defintively know :

W&F = 0.15% RMS
...which in my opinion makes it unsuitable for anyone wanting to listen to classical music or where long note decay exists. This limits it to certain music genres. Needs to be better than, or at least 0.10%RMS.

Modified Tanashin mechanism. 'A modified version of the mechanical movement now in production. We've changed a lot of things.'
It would be nice to know specifically what modifications are included, especially if they are an improvement to the known specs of the lamentable standard Tanashin mechanism.

Rechargeable 'phone style battery' giving 13 hours pb time.

3.5mm output jack no output spec yet provided. mwRMS?

No EQ for Type IV cassettes
No recording or DAC/ADC capability
No Dolby chip/facility of any kind
No direct-drive mechanism


It's positive, pro-active and progressive of Fiio to canvas opinion, requirements and wishes from potential end-users/consumers, but I can't help feeling it's a bit of an afterthought when it's obvious this is a product that's gone to manufacturing already. Maybe FiiO can confirm that?
I doubt any suggestions we make here on a consumer level will have any impact on what eventually appears on the shelves.
It would have been much more productive and helpful to Fiio if they had canvassed opinion before going past the final prototype (ready for manufacture) milestone, before tooling and mass component ordering had been finalised.
I realise Chinese manufacturers have a faster product development curve than most other countries but asking for opinion at this stage is sort of pointless and only serves to garner unrealistic expectations and potentially I'm sad to say, dissapointment.

The customer feedback loop is vital when developing further iterations of any product. The value of that feedback includes data for user-scenarios, component failure rates as well as data regarding general improvements. Having worked with Product Development managers over the course of my career I would earnestly suggest to Fiio to engage in a more realistic and productive regimen of end-user/consumer communication and development and this forum as well as a few other tape-oriented forums would be your ideal hunting ground.

Hi,Friend,

I didn't realize that you were so concerned about CP13, and in fact much of it is as you say

1, our goal is to bring the tape drive back into production, and make a mass-produced portable product that is better than others
As for the W&F you mentioned, this is currently around 0.15%~0.2% in our tests, but not yet to 0.10% RMS.
The positioning of our products is an ordinary consumer-grade products, do not need to be too entangled in this indicator.

2, The cell phone style battery allows us to listen for a long time, maybe more than 15 or even 20 hours if the volume is not too loud, because greater than 13 hours is what we tested under the condition of 40mV output, and I think a lot of people listening to music should be within 10mV output.

3, the output power is still in the final adjustment, we want to do 350mW output

4, the sound part, we use the more acclaimed ear amplifier chip, and made some improvements.

Regarding the progress, we are now making the final adjustments, and we expect to be able to release the product worldwide before January 20th.