This is a journal that echoes what I had written 2 years ago called “Goodbye, Walkman“. Last week I ordered a Walkman A300 series which Sony released earlier this year in Ginza. It is happening, I am going back to Walkman after not owning one for around 4 years. Despite music streming services completely dominating how people listen to music, as well as everyday people solely using heir phone for playing muisc, I eventually decided to give Walkman a place in my life after struggling for days.
The Walkman A300 series is the successor to the A100 series, which is now a 3 year old device. The sound quality of the A300 series is as good as the A100 series, if not better. It runs Android and starts with 32GB storage. The size of the A300 series is as compact as the A100 series but with fewer color options. It would be perfect if there was a saturated, for example red, option like the A100 series, but unfortunately all three colors offered by Sony are dark. The battery power has been vastly improved. The OS experience is way smoother than the A100 series thanks to the new chips Sony adopted. I would say the A300 series is a perfect version of the A100 series.
Back to the story. Why did I cchange my mind and go back down the old road? I will assure you that there are a few reasons other than nostalgia. Before I list the reasons as usual. I want to give some context. For a while, the battery of my iPhone 11 was strugglling. Its maximum capacity dropped to 75%. The battery was running out pretty fast. It was fast enough to let me actually feel the loss. I was being forced to frequently charge it anywhere I went.
Now here comes to the first reason, the iPhone doesn’t have a headphone jack. The only way to listen to musice while charging is through wireless earphoes which I don’t have. Deveral years has passed since Apple removed the headphone jack from the iPhone, I still think it is a stupid idea. It is an annoying fact even without considering the charging problem. Sometimes I forget to bring the dongle, and when that happens I can’t help but give up on listening to music.
Listening to music on an iPhone is unexpectedly battery consuming. Nowadays, other than basic phone calls and messages, cellphones play a wide variety of roles in our life. Sometimes it could be fatal if we lost our phone at the wrong time. For instance, I am actively using my iPhone as an IC recorder to record meetings. It is essential for me to review the recording before starting to work on something. Under this circumstance, I think it is necessary to separate music listening from the phone to save some battery and storage.
I will admit, I do seek some nostalgia. Compared to the player itself, I am unhappy with the fact Aplle Music is just not able to properly handle the legacy music library I have been collecting since high school. Although Apple Music accepted my library and uploaded it to their data center, they ere all largelycompressed. I can easily tell the difference of the sound quality even in a double blind test. This issue is across every platform. On Mac, Apple Music will only recognize the original files the first time it uploads them, if I move to another Mac or even reinstall the OS on the same Mac, Apple Music will never recognize the same files as the same music anymore. On Mac I can comparably easily avoid this problem by adopting another decent music player software, but it would be way harder on iPhone due to its unique file management system.
After Apple Music started providing lossless streaming, I ceased to update my own library. However, I still shuffle songs from it. When I listen to these old songs, many of them released a decade ago, they remind me of many memories I would have not remembered. They make me realize what a long journey I have had and give the strength to move on.
A nostalgic music player with a nostalgic music library. It is absolutely worth the ¥46,000 paid. I am not sure if I will buy another Walkman or any other DAP in the future, but now I will have one.
