Fosi Audio’s Nostalgia Tech - Yes & no.
Plenty of people have asked for my take on the first item here. No one asked about the second.
https://youtu.be/_EdhrIRLRwA
It’s an odd one this as Fosi Audio sent these things over and told me that they just wanted to know what I thought about them. They didn’t ask for a video, they just wanted feedback. So this video is my idea. If I’m taking my time to play around with some tech that I didn’t already have, then that’s got to be made into a video, otherwise it’d be a wasted opportunity.
You might have noticed that I’ve had a run of review samples arrive recently - I think it’s just due to the time of year. The problem with this though is that whenever there’s a pattern of similar things featured, all I’ll hear is ‘so this is all you’re doing from now on then’.
It won’t help matters that I’ve also just received one more audio device that I agreed to take a look at months ago. I’m looking forward to playing around with this though, I wouldn’t have agreed to accept it if I wasn’t genuinely interested in it.
After that one there’s nothing in the ‘review sample’ queue - so I’ll just be getting back to the stuff I’ve bought and stacked up around my feet.
The things I’m tripping over include a BGM system (or two), a rare 'portable' stereo system (that’s rather large and really getting in the way) and a music to flashy light jobby. Those are some of the ones I can remember - there are a few mystery boxes here as well. Then of course there’s still a storage locker packed with poor decisions.
The AWOL Vision projector people also got in touch about their upcoming high-end UST model. I know some people would really be looking forward to hearing about that one ~.
I don’t know whether that will come off though, but I would like to try it out just for my own curiosity.
When it boils down to it - Techmoan is a channel about my curiosity, for better or for worse.
Have a good week.
UPDATE I needed to rework a bit of the video due to missing a multiple-button-tap feature on the DAP Neo. I’ve deleted the original video and replaced it with the one above. I also took the opportunity to add a couple of informational overlays here and there.
Comments (73)
If Apple was smart, they never would have stopped making iPods to begin with. They stopped making interesting designs and then stopped altogether...a lot like Sony and CD players, come to think of it. Apple should also not have tinkered with iTunes itself either.
Mat, you are an inspiration to me. In 2022 I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and my first thought was that I was a goner. My second thought was I will have to shut down my Patreon support for you. But I saw you be forthcoming about your health situations and I stood up and I’m still here, having beat pancreatic cancer AND still a Patreon member enjoying your content. Like so many others I encourage you to set your own pace, we will be here. And when you have to make the choice to end this, we will always have your YouTube legacy and please know we always want what you decide is best for you. Thank you Mat.
Bill, so happy that you’ve beaten the odds on the pancreatic cancer. That’s one of the ones where I’d assume like you there was little to no hope, I’m extremely happy to be proven wrong. In the great scheme of things I’ve got nothing to complain about, but I’m sure you understand perhaps more than most how things can pile up and get on top of you. Thankfully having a slower pace seems to be working. I’ve had two projects fail this week, but with no mad rush to hit a deadline this situation hasn’t weighed on me in the way it would have before. The next video will be along just as soon as I can get something to play ball. Take care.
Oh my, that iPod nano clone looks infuriating. I still have my second gen iPod touch 2nd gen from 2008/2009 hooked up to an old dock and it works great still. Can even use it for internet radio with the fantastically simple but effective radiofeeds.co.uk website
Out of all the CDs i expected to see on your nixie tube setup there, Ice Cube - War and Peace weren't one of them. Can see you now singing along to "Cash Over Ass" haha
Ice Cube is older than I am. It’s like my dad listening to Frank Sinatra.
Feels like the gapless playback not working is because of the anti skip buffering
I wonder if it’s possible to get both things working together. No idea, just wondering.
As nostalgic as I am about CDs, I just can't justify the extra effort it takes to listen to. I just rip the CD, host is locally or in the cloud and can stream it to my receiver or any other device in the same quality as directly from CD without leaving my chair. Comfort beats everything.
Another part of Sony disappears: "Sony is exiting the aftermarket car audio category. In a letter to dealers dated Sept. 30, 2026, the company said it is leaving the business altogether, with product continuing to ship through Dec. 31, 2026."
I saw something about this the other day. However in my 55+ years I’ve never got a car stereo fitted, I’ve used the stock unit. So I guess it’s not going to change things much for me.
CDs and records, mostly from small bands on bandcamp, are the majority of the gifts my family exchange each year. Right now, my closet holds 45 CDs and 12 vinyls (and 1 minidisc) for my family members from their favorite bands. My wife bought me all 5 CDs from a local band at their show on Saturday, so I know I'll be getting several too :D
The iPod Nano clone appears as if it were developed by a team who saw a PHOTO of one, but never actually used one nor understood how the software worked.
Wow. Sonos headphones!!! I thought you were a Sonos hater (no shade— like what you like, of course).
I don’t tend to hate companies, just individual products, although with my recent LG experience, I might make an exception. I bought the Sonos headphones to work with a soundbar. They have a nice feature where they can send the audio from the soundbar to the headphones with the click of a button. In the end though, after changing my system around, I don’t need the soundbar, so I’m left with these rather expensive headphones, although I did buy them reconditioned and they seem to be pleasant enough.
Another great video, Mat. Just a few comments. There are some CD players on the market that claim to be gapless, but they are only gapless if you play the CD all the way through from the beginning without any skipping or scrubbing. Unfortunately, that is not the case with the DISC Nano. Even starting a CD at the beginning and letting it play all the way through, I hear gaps between tracks. Hopefully something they will address in a firmware update. I mentioned in the chat a while back, I used a MagSafe stand (from UGreen) with my Nano, and the magnet was so strong that it pulled the faux leather backing off of the unit. It seems to have been stuck on with what is basically a giant square of double-stick adhesive tape. A bit of Gorilla Glue seems to have sorted that situation. Shanling has made a DAP (the Q2) very much in the same style as the Fosi, in that it has a scroll wheel like an old iPod. The UI for that one was also apparently disappointing, but someone has made custom firmware for it to make it function very much like an old iPod Nano. https://youtu.be/cc581MRAtp0?si=cJFrTkO710an1g1Z Hopefully someone will do something similar for the Fosi, or they will do it themselves. I have to wonder how much of the look and feel of the old iPods is patented, so DAP makers may be limited in how much they can mimic them.
I thought the same about the iPod interface. I suspect there’s a ‘wheel with embedded buttons’ patent somewhere. Although Fosi don’t seem to be too concerned about things like this since the player comes pre-loaded with copyright music.
Shame about that mp3 player, wouldn't mind a reasonable cheap one with sd card option, but for me i like to just be able to skip forward and back without looking, like you could on the original ipod, with skip forward and back keys within the wheel. Have to say 3rd gen ipods had far better batteries than the 4th gen like in this video, most of my 3rd gens still work 4th gens are dead, shame cause they had a larger memory.
It looks like we have a similar taste in tech items, so I'm happy to watch videos about the old and new. I agree there seem to be a lot of people who are hard of understanding.
It's a shame, as in currently in the market for a small inexpensive DAP with physical controls :( Rather enjoyed that CD player though
Check out cd from library, duplicate in my superscope psd340, label maker the artist, title and year, stick it in my binder. I pay taxes which purchase those cds, so they are mine to copy. Also, no gapless playback is a deal breaker
Between the 90's and now I have probably spent 30K on CDs, all of which I still have. If they could suddenly be worth something, that'd be great to make a bit of money back.
Music Magpie will give you a tenner for them.
The lack of gapless playback is annoying enough, but the fact that it fades out and in, even on the digital output, means that you aren’t listening to the raw bits off the disc. There’s some kind of digital processing going on in there.
The CD player had my interest piqued until the gapless-less playback. Bummer. As far as a CD resurgence, I can report that I have purchased more CDs this year than last. Then again, it's three vs last year's two.
Unfortunately, as expected, Chinese brands can make a thing that looks pretty, but not a thing that can actually solve a problem. Hopefully the DAP has enough memory to put Rockbox on it. With the CD it's even more disappointing, as the format has *no concept* of tracks per se — it's a list of timecodes to the side of a long continuous audio stream. So if you want gapless playback, you just kick off at one end of it, and just leave it be. Which means that whoever wrote the software for this player went out of their way to break it.
I really can't understand why all those Chi-Fi brands try to dabble with everything. Fosi make great budget amplifiers. It's not like they developed a DAP or that the product bring anything new to the market. Instead a severely overpriced ipod-retro-knockoff, that claim HighRes audio capability while only doing SBC transfer via Bluetooth and limited to a 256GB MicroSD. For the asking price of 90 or 140 Euro you can pick up pretty good Chinese DAP that you can Rockbox to your hearts content. But then I will probably not buy the new NW-WM1ZM3 either. :)
Definitely the second hand market. I think I've bought one new CD this year, and that was in Jumbo Records in Leeds. Brian Eno's Ambient 2, by the way, itself a 45 year old album! A few years ago, I managed to collect a complete set of original Now That's What I Call Music CDs from NOW 8 to NOW 100 (before those reissues came in!) within a year, for around a pound each. Still on the hunt for an original NOW 4. Some lucky bugger on a forum I'm on found one for 50p last week in a charity shop.
I suspect with those, most of the fun is in the chase rather than the playing.
The magnet in the bottom plate is a genius move. While I was watching, I thought "That'd look pretty standing upright... It's too bad that it only has two edges and both of them are taken up with buttons and plugs." If I were in the market for a CD player, the ability to display it on a stand like that would convince me to get this one.
I’ve gone and bought a black version of my Anker stand for that very reason. There’s still something very pleasing about a magnet. Or I’m just easily pleased.
I feel like the resurgence in popularity of things like cassettes and CDs is kind of like when certain musicians and actors who were A-list in the 80s, and whose careers were effectively over by the end of the 90s, are suddenly playing sellout tours again and getting regularly cast in real movies again. Yeah, they're playing 1200-seat theaters instead of 10,000-seat arenas, and they're appearing in supporting roles instead of as leads... but, wow, their careers are alive again! They're being appreciated! Same thing with CDs. People are buying secondhand CDs for the music now, not as trash to be upcycled into window ornaments or whatnot.
I think that it’s interesting with this ‘resurgence’ the artist and the record companies don’t get a penny. I’m sure they’re not happy about it. When people collect old game system cartridges it’s retro gaming, is this retromusic-ing?
I like the simple, distraction-free UI of the DAP Neo, but I see that sifting through 64GB worth of MP3s like that is a bit of a hassle.
Audio glitch "iterations" is cut short @ 23:33 The CD player is very nice especially for the price but sits awkwardly between personal and hi-fi.
Loved the video though, as always!
I want to hear about that fridge. Never even heard of that brand.
I believe it’s an old Australian Brand (correction NZ) but yet another name that was bought by a Chinese company to stick on their stuff to give it some undeserved brand recognition. It’s probably a Hisense (correction Haier) or something. The only reason I chose it is because it fit through the door.
That Hungarian Forint display was quite unexpected to say at least :D
Something else that might account for some of the "CD Comeback" that I think would be missed by the RIAA are the large numbers of boutique and DIY labels (and artists) that sell direct. Also, CDs are the most affordable to reproduce and so indie artists sometimes promote themselves by sending you their professionally duplicated CD for free if you cover S&H, with the option to pay more if you want to support them. There's got to be enough of all that going on to move the needle a bit.
Some time ago, I started buying CDs again. The first thing that caught my eye was the absence of the embossed "Compact Disc" logo. On the other hand, one still comes across new releases that include CD-Text.
Proper techmoan, I love it as I love them all. Keep going Matt
So funny: today I got 2 CDs for free at an organ excursion (no Hammond organs :-P), the reason: nobody wants them anymore, you can take them if you still are old-fashioned enough to have a CD player... My answer would be: "I'm modern, I play records and tapes" :-P
Well, I picked this up a couple weeks ago (first time I ever bought anything before you presented it) because I was indeed inspired by your Sony video 11 years ago (has it been that long?!). Anyway, when you demonstrated that the device was not gapless I quickly pull out my Cars CD and sure enough, playing "Bye Bye Love", Moving in Stereo", and "All Mixed Up" all had a noticeable silence between them. Damn it! I'm wondering if Fossi simply does not know what gapless is, or is it there in a hidden menu. I say hidden because my unit is on repeat, so it plays the full CD over and over again, unlike yours. Also, it will play automatically when switched from off to on, without pressing play. On the plus side, aside from its aesthetics, it sounds amazing. There's an optical out too, but the built-in 32 bit DAC really makes the music pop. I made a short video on this with the BB-777 vs TDK 3 Speaker using the DISC Nano. https://youtube.com/shorts/CYP1H19NJdY?feature=share
It’s quite probable then that my player is also on auto repeat as I haven’t let a disc play to the end. I think it probably auto starts playing as well.
The products might attempt to be 'vintage', (and fail), but the video itself is vintage Techmoan, (really, that's meant as a compliment). Three points: 1) I think the CD comeback is classic confirmation bias, which is a fancy way to say, "wishful thinking." 2) The CD player reminded me a little of the updating of the Soundburger phonograph you coaxed me into buying for my daughter. It modernized the original concept, making it more relevant. 3) The iPod looked like they designed it down to a price, thinking that making the scroll wheel multifunctional would make it too expensive. Although, I wonder if Apple would try to threaten to sue if they would have copied all the functionality. Anyway, thanks for letting us check on Bees-Knees. That cat must love you to be allowed to be seen with you wearing those headphones.
It turned out that the cat just wanted the chair I was sitting on. The other two identical empty chairs wouldn’t do.
Of all the CD players in the all the world the last one i'd try to recreate is the D88. The DAP seems a bit clumsy, I would love a DAP but i've found nothing in the price range of the Fosi that runs Android or has an interface and the features of PowerAmp which is what I have used on my phone for ages. I have my hi-fi for serious listening, I only need something cheapish for day to day listening. The price of the Fosi is great but the interface is not. I did use a cheap Android phone for a while with a small screen but it wasn't ideal.
Shame about the gapless playback or lack of I should say on the CD player, would be a deal breaker for me. Hopefully they can tweak the firmware to fix this cos I did like the look of that, especially on the MagSafe stand. It would make a nice little desktop system with a pair of active speakers either side.
The balanced output on the CD player is a nice touch, and £100 sounds like a pretty sensible price, hopefully the gapless playback can be fixed with a firmware update. I've very much a physical media kind of guy and still by new CD's and 4K Blu Rays, mainly because I want the best quality version of something. But I'm certainly in the minority if the office I work in is any thing to go by! I can only think of one other person that buys any physical media (she's a big film fan and buys Blu Rays), I don't think there is anyone else that still buys CD's in fact people think it odd that I do 😄
I think the only reason I don’t buy more than a couple of CDs a year is just because there aren’t more than a couple released each year that I want to listen to.
Definitely will not kill our cat lol
What's that magsafe stand you have?
It’s an Anker MagGo.
Glad you provided a fact-based correction of the supposed CD comeback. Your proposal that it's more of a used CD boomlet sounds very plausible. Similar to a video a few years ago regarding the Cassette Comeback (the phenomenon, not the YT channel🙂). As I recall your explanation was that while cassette sales were increasing, the total current sales were only a few percent of what cassette sales were at their peak year of 1992. The Fosi gadgets seem to be alright for what they are. The CD player might be a budget-friendly way to start the CD habit if you're a younger person interested in the format, like your nephew. The MP3 player could be a good budget-friendly portable music system if you're okay with the lack of features and the difficult controls, but if you want one for nostalgia, that will fade quickly. If it's nostalgia you're after you're better off buying a non-working model for display only.
I have about a dozen working MP3 players but none can reproduce the nostalgia of coming home with a new CD and playing it. Related to buying CDs it was interesting that at Sainsbury's supermarket you had to collect the CDs (as opposed to the cases which were all all display) from the cigarette counter. Several times I was in the queue thinking "is spending £12 on this CD extravagant", only for the person in front to spend £25 on cigarettes.
Oh, I take it you can't slide the spindle into the middle to play GameCube discs, err I mean 8cm CDs?
That was only a feature on the Sony so you could play 8cm CD singles (if you had any) with the player in your pocket.
Excellent video! It never ceases to amaze me how many of these new budget cd players fail to do gapless play.
The worst thing is that even new $1000+ CD-Players often can't do gapless. That would be reason enough for me to send it back as defective.
The scene at 22:05 needs trigger warning😆
It’s a rather absurd scene.
“Techmoan is a channel about my curiosity” And that’s why we love it
Love these 'interrupted' starts.. and a "classic" techmoan..
As someone who's built a CD collection over the last few months, I'd say only 10% has been new purchases; the rest has been from the likes of Vinted and eBay where you can very quickly amass a solid 90's and 00's collection for £1-£2 a disc. The driving force behind it was wanting to listen to music when walking but not bring my iPhone, just a nice hour each day to be disconnected. Some high quality CD rips and a modded iPod mini later, I've got a great little device. New battery, microSD adapter to replace a broken old hard drive and an afternoon of tinkering on a pretty low-stakes mod (in contrast to trying to dismantle an iPod nano with a soldered, dead or swollen battery). The Click Wheel really is a fantastic navigation tool and the basic iPod software is so snappy due to its simplicity.
There's also the new CD market, which is pretty good value. You often see crazy things like a band releasing an album on vinyl for well over twice as much as the CD version because materials and pressing plant time for new records are a seller's market these days and because they know the market will bear that price as people have now become conditioned to thinking it's normal to pay well over 30 quid for an LP. Entertainingly, the situation is almost completely reversed to the way it was when I was 18 when a new release on LP would be around £6.99 while the CD cost £14.99. There's also an environmental win to buying second hand, of course. Producing vinyl records uses large amounts of energy and fossil fuel-derived PVC and a 12" record has many times the carbon footprint of a new CD, but avoiding something new being manufactured at all is even better.
Small sample size for you, but 2 of my 3 kids are still buying physical media. One is very much into old movies and buys DVDs all the time, but also buys vinyl and CDs. The other makes mix CDs with their friends. So, yeah some kids are definitely buying physical media still.
$312m USD of new CD sales in 2025 definitely isn’t nothing.
What I have heard about CDs making a comeback is indeed less about new CDs which would appear on the RIAA's spreadsheets and more about the second-hand market. Because the second-hand record market has become so ridiculous (on discogs, for instance, a 12" copy of "Different Class" by Pulp will set you back anything from 75 quid to many hundreds of pounds) it's pretty much impossible to get hold of a lot of albums unless you have lots of disposable income (and no self-respect either, I guess). If you just want to listen to music and don't want to have the streaming companies deciding what you're allowed to listen to or taking it away without notice then let's be honest, CDs are brilliant. They're also flexible - you can rip them to FLAC or AAC or whatever depending on your obsession with quality but you can also take the disc and just stick it in a CD player or a Discman and listen to it there. And while it's possible that you'd buy a second-hand CD and it would be too damaged to play, most sellers will simply refund you without any questions asked because it's only a few quid. It'll either work 100% or not at all, which is different to, say, dropping 200 quid for a 1980s pressing of Hunky Dory that's full of crackles and pops and that's fine because the vendor only listed it as "Good condition" rather than "Near Mint Awesome +++" which would have cost three times as much anyway. Buying records has become a hobby for the wealthy and trust-fund kids who want to show off to their mates. People who actually want to listen to music have figured out that if you want a physical object to play music from then a CD fits the bill perfectly -- for the very reason that CDs displaced vinyl in the first place.
Yes history is really repeating itself. I suppose some knowledge gets forgotten and needs to be reacquired through experience.
Watching/listening while unpacking from yet another work trip, and didn't have eyes on screen when this happened: "Unlike the original you don't have to tiptoe round this one to prevent it from skɪ...." [muted pause triggered my phone's alarm reminder to take my pills] 😅 I chuckled, naturally taking this to be a techmoan sarcastic moment (which I love BTW)!
I just watched your last oddcast and it left me a bit depressed. I can relate to almost everything you said at the end of the video but man would I miss you on Patreon or Youtube if you gave up.
I needed to give everyone a heads up just in case one day it all gets a bit too much for an old man with more illnesses than many dead people. Today is not that day though.