Portable CD players see a resurgence in the UK
By Darren Murph 
posted December 8th 2008 5:12AM
posted December 8th 2008 5:12AM
posted December 8th 2008 5:12AM
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I would really hope that's sarcastic, hoss. Considering you can buy a 128MB flash drive in a grocery store check out lane for $4.99, I doubt we'll ever see floppies as a ubiquitous storage form again.
Level 5: Let's see how you install RAID drivers in XP during installation with a flash drive.
rofl! please man?
Nvidia is like the prime company right now in silicon valley i did not even think i would use a '/sarcasm' for this one, and i would never have thought someone with a 'win' avatar would be replying like that.
Kids all over the UK are now thinking
"OMFG i hope i don't rip open the pressie on Christmas day to find a CD what do they call it?.... Discman?"
Pizza Express sucks - Granted, they're the only game in town for delivery, but they still suck. Roadhouse Pizza FTW!
/Yes, I've seen Futurama
//Nonetheless, I've only eaten at the chain in Kathmandu, having not been to the year 3000
Technology is cyclical.
Technology is CYLINDRICAL.
Some kids probably found a way to get high off of them somehow and word is spreading quickly, so all the kids are asking for them for christmas.
Bwahahah 50 pervent! Funniest typo ever!
I'm pretty sure some kids would be very thankful to get this on Christmas morning.
This is pretty absurd. Those people saying that this is good because CDs sound better, aren't more expensive than digital downloads, have cover art, whatever... how is that even relevant? Buying music on CDs doesn't mean that you need a CD player to listen to them. Buy the CD if you like it, then rip it in lossless format and put it on your MP3 player along with the rest of your music collection.
Carrying a single album at a time via a gigantic player with a big optical disc spinning inside is just flat out moronic considering the modern alternatives available.
You people are spoilt. There are people around the world who will be happy to get a CD player, even a cassette player! Sure they could get a cheap Sansa Clip, but that would mean getting a PC too. Stop and think for a second for once.
I had two of these Sony Discmans. I bought my first one in 1999 for a hundred pounds, after about two years the laser died and the unit couldn't play a single CD without skipping ever few seconds, the built-in anti-skip buffer was no help as the laser was too badly gone.
I chalked it up to bad luck, and bought another Sony Discman for about a hundred and fifty pounds, I made sure that I took particular care of this one so nothing would happen to it. Same thing happened to that two years later.
Pop in a little Blackstreet...
OMFG. CD players? They are big and passe, but still better than DRM crippled iPods.
Basically, the iPod is so good it can't be use to do any evil, including copyright infringement.
And iPods got the shittiest earphones I have ever seen.
"According to Currys over in the UK, however, it's being pressured to order up truckloads of 'em to satisfy the 50 PERVENT uptick in demand compared to last year." Engadget, I love you and your employees, but you misspelled "percent".
someone once stole my car, and when it was retrieved...the portable CD player that was hooked in thru the cassette deck was gone. Too much trauma, never again, Portable CD player.
To the people saying "compressed sounds fine", good for you. It's all down to the headphones, the music you listen to, your ears, the sound quality of your portable and the compression level you are comparing.
Just understand not all have your ears, or your equipment, and that buying lossless formats like FLAC http://flac.sourceforge.net and CD gives you the flexibility to get any format you want with a simple PC and some free software.
Making blanket statements about not hearing differences and nobody needing lossless in a portable, or those that are saying they do are doing it for bragging rights is pretty debatable, to put things mildly. Also not all of us listen to portables outside. Some love to listen with big 'phones indoors... in any room. Anyway, the point is buying music and receiving the best consumer-grade product often means buying the CD or FLAC http://flac.sourceforge.net
...after that it's whatever you want it to be.
So if logic were to rule the land, we could argue that lossless keeps the widest gamut of users happy. Those unhappy with it can convert it to what they want with ease (assuming they have basic tech knowledge and a computer). Those that don't can choose the ever-pervasive CD. Those happy with CD and also who know what they want in other devices (FLAC, Ogg, AAC, etc) can play and/or convert to any damn format with ease with no compromises.
This is in contrast to buying a lossy file like MP3, AAC, Ogg from the start, having no quality benchmark like CD to start with, and getting stuck on that one format *and* losing more quality when converting it from one lossy format to some other lossy file, as Company X's new product doesn't support Company Y's format (Nintendo DSi, for instance, not supporting MP3). Some will notice this second-generation loss and some won't. Point is, cumulative quality losses are occuring, and it's akin to making a photocopy of a photocopy. Some will find it objectionable, some not. Going from a lossless source avoids cumulative quality losses when converting to lossy, now and in the future, any format now and any format in the future (which more often than not are sonically backwards compared to CD).
Most people should be happier with lossless formats and formats that are quality benchmarks for the consumer market (ie. CD, FLAC) should not be ignored, IMO. They are anything we want them to be, in any device we choose to listen to our music in, with no or very little compromise compared to spending money on lossy 'originals'.
As for this resurgence of portable CD players: surprising, but the simplicity and price is no doubt a selling point, so is lossless. I can't see them being used by many people except those uncomfortable with computer interactions and/or those that want a simple good-sounding portable where size isn't much of a constraint and neither is not having every album on-tap. I often am in situations at home where a simple CD player and one-album listening session on a good pair of headphones is all I want and/or need.
Perfect, especially for the prices they go for now.
Wall text is wall.
Just write your own blog, buddy.
I couldn't have said it better myself. I rue the day when our musical history is going to be based on the inferior audio files we have produced for the sake of portability. Video quality gets better (HD and Blu Ray), but audio quality gets worse. The MP3 file is outdated and has served its purpose. Everything should only be sold as FLAC files. With a lot of CDs going out of print or being remastered poorly, we are in danger of losing peices of audible history. Why the majority of people who comment on a tech blog do not demand better, I will never understand.
i just can't believe this article, how can the data have been collected in a scientific way? did the writer just ring up and say 'have you got any portable cd players in for christmas' and the person on the other end said 'ooooooooooo, lots' ? Although i do like to listen to CDs on my hifi, my cd drive has gone and i may get a cd walkman, for portable use my ipod classic is fine but annoys me as it lacks a little midrange, as for quality, i'm fine w 320
They should make a discman that supports DVDs filled with mp3s. It could hold 4 gigs of music per disc, and DVD+-Rs are way cheaper than SD cards. I wouldn't buy one, but I think there could be a market.
"50 percent uptick in demand"
That means they sold two last year, and three this year.
I miss the days we used CD players, actually, but I use an Ipod Shuffle with some instrumental album that had 160+ tracks for $11. Can't beat that.
It's kind of a mess to have to deal with Cds anymore. With Mp3s though, we're really just throwing money around, so it's not a bad thing to get the CD. Preferable even, except we rip the CD right away and never use the CD again possibly, for fear we'd scratch it or something. Using a CD player in the car and it's sure to scratch, so it's even better to make a compilation CD for the car. This is where a portable CD player comes in handy, but it all depends on what sort of MP3 player you've got. If you have an Archos Media Player or Creative Xi-Fi, then why bother handling CDs?
I guess the recession is worst than we thought.
A good CD player properly cared for will always be the snot out of an mp3 player for audio fidelity, seeing as the audio is uncompressed. Until the standard is lossless digital audio going straight to the vendors and someone builds stronger signal insulation over miles of Internet line. Unfortunately, this means the user has to transport albums on his person instead of integrated into his playback module...
Sansa user, but I can understand a certain amount of loyalty to CD players. I still don't user iTunes or Zune, just rip all my audio from physical media--and at home, that goes into good audio equipment, uncompressed.
Wow, what loser would waste money on this? My portable MiniDisc recorder is a decade old, and i still have the first MD player that ever came out in 1983. FTW, I picked up a philips 2gb gogear for less than $5 early this year!
MiniDisc FTW =D