So I guess I'm a Hipster Now?

A few weeks ago I picked up my first dedicated mp3 player for what must have been more than 20 years. I think it was a 5th generation ipod classic. I remember this because I have a memory of getting a stern telling off in maths class as I didn’t realise that you could hear the click wheel clicking sound outside the headphones.

As I dove more are more into electronics I discovered the world of open hardware where, like open software, hardware designers open up their design so that you can make your own or modify it slightly, you know all the same goodness that comes from open software. The best site for this appears to be Crowd Supply which seems to do a great job at being what kickstarter used to be but with an open design twist.

WARNING! You can and WILL get lost for hours looking at cool things like this, this, this, this, this and this. Bonus points if you pull down KiCad and look at the designs directly. Bye bye many hours.

But the one that caught my eye was the Tangara which as the tagline says is “the music player you wish you had in the early 2000s”. I had long been thinking about how to consume music in a more mindful way and to be honest I had given up on the home brew streaming server setup I pieced togther last year. Instead I found myself hitting the offline download button and not using the server at all.

Since my server reverted to a glorified backup device, I started to look at dedicated mp3 players. Compared to the 00s, storage has now become relatively cheap and likely because the majority of folks using such devices would throw up at the thought of listening to an mp3 recording, they are now called Digital Audio Players, or DAPs, to reflect the fact they typically play much more than mp3.

This is where my electronics interest collided with music. But alas, you can no longer buy a Tanagara by its creators and although I toyed with the idea of making one myself by sending the open designs to a PCB assembly, I ultimately decided I just wanted to dip my toes into dedicated devices without spending time and money building one.

iPods are making a bit of a comeback but they are becoming expensive, especially when you add in the upgrades that are likely needed to make it useable. In the end I settled for a Snowsky Echo Mini, a cute little device which resembles a cassette tape. Dedicated music player, modern features for a fraction of a used iPod, retro aesthetic. Check, check, check. It plays great and despite a slightly cheap plastic feeling in the hand together with a slightly too short battery life, I would highly recommend it.

It wasn’t until I got it and proudly showed it off, like I had made it myself, to my daughter that I realised that she has absolutely not idea what a cassette tape is and why would she? They ceased to be a thing way before she was born.

Feeling that I had some duty to impart on my child critical knowledge, I bought a recordable cassette from a charity shop to show her. She quickly got bored of her dad’s rambling but the tangle of curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to see what the previous owner had recorded on it and therefore needed a player. I also wanted to get one so I could tear it apart, have a look inside and see how it works. So I stumbled across this at a car boot sale for a tenner along with “SOUNDS OF THE SEVENTIES 1974” and an honorary membership card to the Hipsters Club.

And I have quickly fallen in love with it.

The “cher-chick” of the play button. The snap of the stop. The jingly clap of placing a cassette into it. The weight and the feel of it in the hands. The “MEGA BASE” slider (fuck yeah!). As much as I like the Snowsky Echo Mini, I’m not likely to say that I love it.

And this is a cheap model that was cut off in the final days of the cassette era in 2004. The engineering that has gone into this thing is incredible. I would love to get my hands on a high-end model.

So how can I tear it apart and risk breaking it? I did start to open it up but the more I looked, the more I appreciated its engineering and condition and couldn’t bring myself to continue. I won’t even reopen it now to attach a picture to this blog.

And “SOUNDS OF THE SEVENTIES 1974” slaps. I’ve listened to it a few times now and found some great tracks.

This weekend I will go back to the car boot sale and look for more tapes and more players, hopefully one I am happy to take apart.