[dbsf]

... before you make more innovative products out of it.

Is FW5 an innovative product? Mine is still struggling with LDAC.

 

[Raymate]

I will repeat a good quality transport and mechanism over the inferior one that’s going around these days will make it easier even for Fiio in dealing with customer issues on the longer run.

The mech does not matter that much. The Tanashin that is likely to be used is fine; it has good speed, and wow and flutter are low enough. It's the electronics attached to the mech that matter, and FiiO has the ability to make something good. The current Tascam and Teac are good examples of how they sound pretty good but use cheap mech. FiiO does not have the ability, I believe, to make a new mech from scratch; they will be using what is currently available, but they do have the ability to have some parts upgraded over the stock mech, nice brass flywheel for example. But people keep banging on about the mech, it does not matter. Sure, it would be great to have something new, but that's not going to happen. FiiO has the ability to get the rest of the device in order, decent electronics, and decent amp stage to make a deck sound at least as good as some of the decks from the past. As long as the motor is grounded correctly so we dont get motor hum and wow and flutter are within spec, it should be the best we can buy new. NR cant be Dolby but it could be a version of Dolby that FiiO could do in software, they have DSP knowledge to do something special. The mech does not matter.

I personally cant wait to order one, either the white one or the transparent dark model or both.

 

[Chuck Dee]

We have to have it before we can do it better~
It's the same with any company,
you have to make sure you don't lose money before you make more innovative products out of it.

That logic is fundamentally flawed in several ways and it's absolutely NOT the same with any western company!

Commercial success is derived from a product development path that that includes and derives value from consumer/market research as well as the full complement of technical aspects including all the usual engineering/electronics/ components/materials factors as well as a strong regimen of prototyping/design-for-manucture/testing/piloting/ and is subsequently therefore dependent on a fully-considered product market deployment and consumer-takeup.
It would have been better to have gone to market with something that was fully-developed in all aspects. As it is, it sounds like you're going to market with a rushed product that would have benefitted from a comprehensive and all-inclusive development path and saying 'yeah, well we'll bring out a better one later'. It's not the best strategy.

You're not exactly innovating anything here, or bringing something radically new to the market. You're essentially re-inventing the wheel and re-packaging a modified Tanashin cassette mechanism!
There's a whole wealth of market/product knowledge you could have referred to as well as existing working products that you could have reverse engineered for technical aspects and then reconstituted into your own design.

But you're a Chinese company with a traditional (too)fast development curve which misses out a lot of important and valuable components and personally, I think you run a 'risk to reputation' scenario with this product.
I really hate to be so pessimistic about the first decent-looking portable cassette player that's been released since the end of the Walkman era as it does look beautiful, but I can't help but think it's going to be considered as a half-baked product lumped in with all of the other also-ran portable players out there, due to a lack of foresight and development.

I doubt you will reach the sales performance to justify developing a further iteration but I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
Why not get it 'first time right'?
It's not too late to listen to some of the suggestions and opinions here. You asked us after all!

 

[JamesFiiO]

That logic is fundamentally flawed in several ways and it's absolutely NOT the same with any western company!

Commercial success is derived from a product development path that that includes and derives value from consumer/market research as well as the full complement of technical aspects including all the usual engineering/electronics/ components/materials factors as well as a strong regimen of prototyping/design-for-manucture/testing/piloting/ and is subsequently therefore dependent on a fully-considered product market deployment and consumer-takeup.
It would have been better to have gone to market with something that was fully-developed in all aspects. As it is, it sounds like you're going to market with a rushed product that would have benefitted from a comprehensive and all-inclusive development path and saying 'yeah, well we'll bring out a better one later'. It's not the best strategy.

You're not exactly innovating anything here, or bringing something radically new to the market. You're essentially re-inventing the wheel and re-packaging a modified Tanashin cassette mechanism!
There's a whole wealth of market/product knowledge you could have referred to as well as existing working products that you could have reverse engineered for technical aspects and then reconstituted into your own design.

But you're a Chinese company with a traditional (too)fast development curve which misses out a lot of important and valuable components and personally, I think you run a 'risk to reputation' scenario with this product.
I really hate to be so pessimistic about the first decent-looking portable cassette player that's been released since the end of the Walkman era as it does look beautiful, but I can't help but think it's going to be considered as a half-baked product lumped in with all of the other also-ran portable players out there, due to a lack of foresight and development.

I doubt you will reach the sales performance to justify developing a further iteration but I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
Why not get it 'first time right'?
It's not too late to listen to some of the suggestions and opinions here. You asked us after all!

Sorry I think there are some misunderstand about our CP13, we did a lots of work to make a decent cassette player which is better than any other mass-production cassette player . We have better S/N, better power output, better size and far more better W&F.

And I can understand that people can't satisfy with this cause they want more , at least it should have similar performance and features like some cassette player in 90s, to be honesty I am one of these people, cause my first hifi device is a AIWA J303 which cost my 12 moths salary.

But the situation is that for hifi cassette player , the main parts all were made in Japan and they are discontinuted in 20 years ago, so it is impossible to purchase it and make a new cassetter player now, all we can do is work with our suppliers and improve the design and better mateires .

Of course, it will be a better way to find a secend hand SONY/AIWA walkman if you are lucky and they can keep a good working condition. but it does not means we are doing something wrong,

In fact ,you can think it is make for my memory and we just share with someone who have the same good memorey with it and some people have nevery try cassette player and don't like to buy a secend hand device , especially it is made in 20 years ago.

 

[jamato8]

Sorry I think there are some misunderstand about our CP13, we did a lots of work to make a decent cassette player which is better than any other mass-production cassette player . We have better S/N, better power output, better size and far more better W&F.

And I can understand that people can't satisfy with this cause they want more , at least it should have similar performance and features like some cassette player in 90s, to be honesty I am one of these people, cause my first hifi device is a AIWA J303 which cost my 12 moths salary.

But the situation is that for hifi cassette player , the main parts all were made in Japan and they are discontinuted in 20 years ago, so it is impossible to purchase it and make a new cassetter player now, all we can do is work with our suppliers and improve the design and better mateires .

Of course, it will be a better way to find a secend hand SONY/AIWA walkman if you are lucky and they can keep a good working condition. but it does not means we are doing something wrong,

In fact ,you can think it is make for my memory and we just share with someone who have the same good memorey with it and some people have nevery try cassette player and don't like to buy a secend hand device , especially it is made in 20 years ago.

Some are a tough crowd here. All you can do is find the best parts you can and then those who will enjoy this player, will. :^)

 

[kevinkar]

Sorry I think there are some misunderstand about our CP13

You can never please everyone and there are a lot of members here who seem to think they have all the expertise and know what is and is not good. You are putting out a product that might not yet have mass appeal or have a large target audience but at least you are trying something so I for one and glad someone is trying to put out a decent portable tape player even if it is only able to use current parts from suppliers. Many here don't know how much money it takes to make a brand new product with brand new parts these days. And until we actually use one and hear it, no one can yet tell how good it might sound. Or how bad either!

So you don't have anything to be sorry for.

I have a very good Sony ES deck that sounds amazing, especially when using metal tapes. I also have a late 80s Walkman that actually sounds as good as the ES deck when playing those same metal tapes. However, I know from experience that tape is clearly not a true high definition medium but, though it might not have the dynamic range or clarity of a modern HD player, it can still sound very good for what it is and that's what I'd go for - a NEW device that sounds as good as my almost 40 year old Walkman.

Given the right electronics and processing, it might actually sound very good using what some here think are inferior parts. I'm not so sure my Walkman was using top of the line parts anyway and it still sounds great compared to the ES deck so I'm willing to see how good yours is.

 

[JamesFiiO]

Yes, I don't think the cassette player will become a popular audio device now, even we have receive very good feedback and can expect a resonable sale volume, but it sill a mission impossible to ask the supplier to rebuild the parts, I have to say that most of them are died .

Anyway, I still think it is a very interesting thing to make a new cassette player, and we will try our best to make is as better as we can.

 

[FiiO Willson]

The mech does not matter that much. The Tanashin that is likely to be used is fine; it has good speed, and wow and flutter are low enough. It's the electronics attached to the mech that matter, and FiiO has the ability to make something good. The current Tascam and Teac are good examples of how they sound pretty good but use cheap mech. FiiO does not have the ability, I believe, to make a new mech from scratch; they will be using what is currently available, but they do have the ability to have some parts upgraded over the stock mech, nice brass flywheel for example. But people keep banging on about the mech, it does not matter. Sure, it would be great to have something new, but that's not going to happen. FiiO has the ability to get the rest of the device in order, decent electronics, and decent amp stage to make a deck sound at least as good as some of the decks from the past. As long as the motor is grounded correctly so we dont get motor hum and wow and flutter are within spec, it should be the best we can buy new. NR cant be Dolby but it could be a version of Dolby that FiiO could do in software, they have DSP knowledge to do something special. The mech does not matter.

I personally cant wait to order one, either the white one or the transparent dark model or both.

It's true that CP13 is somewhat of an innovation in the industry, as you say.

However, these are only slightly better than the current mass-produced products,
and not up to the level of some of SONY's previous products, especially SONY's DD series,
which I admit we won't be able to reach in the short term, as I recently bought a used SONY DD2, and I'm obsessed with him, and that's what I'm aiming for in the future!

As for your comment about using DSP for noise reduction, this is not available on the CP13 as we are trying to achieve a purely analog sound with the CP13!


If the CP13 performs well in the end, I think our goal is to reach, or proximity（I don't think there's any way to top that.）, the Sony DD series in the CP15 or CP17!

 

[Elegiac]

I've tried the best of the new players. And they are horrible.

What he said about motor hum and wow and flutter- that is what you absolutely must have improved upon, right out of the gate.

 

[rkt31]

The mech does not matter that much. The Tanashin that is likely to be used is fine; it has good speed, and wow and flutter are low enough. It's the electronics attached to the mech that matter, and FiiO has the ability to make something good. The current Tascam and Teac are good examples of how they sound pretty good but use cheap mech. FiiO does not have the ability, I believe, to make a new mech from scratch; they will be using what is currently available, but they do have the ability to have some parts upgraded over the stock mech, nice brass flywheel for example. But people keep banging on about the mech, it does not matter. Sure, it would be great to have something new, but that's not going to happen. FiiO has the ability to get the rest of the device in order, decent electronics, and decent amp stage to make a deck sound at least as good as some of the decks from the past. As long as the motor is grounded correctly so we dont get motor hum and wow and flutter are within spec, it should be the best we can buy new. NR cant be Dolby but it could be a version of Dolby that FiiO could do in software, they have DSP knowledge to do something special. The mech does not matter.

I personally cant wait to order one, either the white one or the transparent dark model or both.

Nr in software how is that possible with cassette? Will they convert analog of cassette to digital, do nr in digital doamin and again convert to analog?

 

[rkt31]

One thing is sure without Dolby nr and recording, this product will only sell if it is priced very reasonably and that too when playback competes in specs with dedicated decks. If it sounds noisy and compressed then there is no point. I think fiio should seriously consider a decent deck with dolby b c s and recording.

 

[InvisibleInk]

One thing is sure without Dolby nr and recording, this product will only sell if it is priced very reasonably and that too when playback competes in specs with dedicated decks. If it sounds noisy and compressed then there is no point. I think fiio should seriously consider a decent deck with dolby b c s and recording.

I guess we can pine for a reverse-engineered, open source Dolby facsimile noise reduction implementation that reproduces that technology but won’t infringe their trademark.

 

[electronicsdesign]

Why not get it 'first time right'?

I think what Fiio is doing here is making a so-called Minimum Viable Product (MVP). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product
It's a strategy more and more companies use, definetely not specific to Fiio or Chinese companies.

Personally, I don't have a problem with the idea of MVP itself, but rather what I would have liked to happen is Fiio starting to ask opinions here before
they actually started the development of the product. This way, the chances of our opinions really be considered would have been much higher.
Fiio, on the other hand, started this thread when the product was already designed, so pretty much nothing we say now will actually change the design,
it's simply too late for that to happen.

This is where I think Fiio can improve in the future. If they want to take our opinions into consideration, they should do it in a way that has real chances of
making changes to the design. Otherwise, our opinions will remain opinions with no real impact on the product design.

Nr in software how is that possible with cassette? Will they convert analog of cassette to digital, do nr in digital doamin and again convert to analog?

Yes it does require the analog to be converted to digital, processed in DSP and then converted back to analog.
DSP would be the simple way to implement many noise reduction systems (Dolby B,C,S, dbx) inside the same chip.
There won't be many PCB footprint constraints as there are with an analog implementation.

we are trying to achieve a purely analog sound with the CP13!

This is something I totally agree with. The entire idea of a walkman is to reproduce the analog experience.

One thing is sure without Dolby nr and recording, this product will only sell if it is priced very reasonably

It needs to be priced reasonably regardless. Such a product is mainly targeted at customers who either never used cassette before or are not willing
to spend money/don't have the knowledge to restore a vintage device. They want a device that simply works out of the box.

Recording, personally I'm against it because it won't be too useful if it can't record on TYPE II cassettes, can't record with Dolby NR or doesn't have an
external bias and rec sensitivity adjustment. The external adjustments are the most important in my opinion, because without that the unit can
only make recordings with flat frequency response on one tape only, which I bet is NOT what most people want.
That's why even a unit like the SONY WM-D6C is not that good at recording when compared to a deck with external/automatic adjustment.
Differences in magnetic properties between tapes (and even different generations of same tape) are higher than most people think.

 

[InvisibleInk]

That's why even a unit like the SONY WM-D6C is not that good at recording compared to a deck with external/automatic adjustment.
Differences in magnetic properties between tapes (and even different generations of same tape) are higher than most people think.

I happen to be a proud original owner of that unit which is still going strong, though very lightly used, to this day. It is my only remaining cassette player.

 

[Zeppo19]

Cool. I read there are some nice album releases on tape.

Next up portable SACD (or CD) player