Audio Video News

The audio cassette just won’t die. The latest attempt at reviving the ’70s relic comes in the form of a Bluetooth-enabled digital music player that doubles as a legitimate cassette — legit as in it will actually play in some cassette decks.

Dallas-based Mixxim launched a $10,000 Kickstarter campaign in 2017 to fund its patented MIXXTAPE and ended up raising $121,550 from 1,795 backers in 30 days. The player is now available with free shipping for $75 on the company’s website when you use the promo code MIXTAPERY during checkout (regular price is $100).

Behind the nostalgic cassette casing is a music player with 8 gigabytes (GB) of internal memory that can be expanded to 256 GB with a microSD card and a lithium-ion battery said to provide more than 6 hours of continuous playback. The player has a headphone jack but also supports Bluetooth-enabled wireless headphones.

As Mixxim puts it, “MIXXTAPE is retro design and cutting edge technology magically fused into one totally righteous device.”

The idea is you transfer music, podcasts, and audio books from your PC/Mac to the player via a USB-C cable (supplied) and use its touch control panel to manage playback through a 1-inch OLED display. Supported file formats include FLAC (16 bit), AAC-LC, MP3, WAV, WMA, M4A, OGG, APE, and ACELP.

Yes, you can pop MIXXTAPE into a tape deck (if you can find one) and it will play — but only in decks that don’t have tape-movement sensors. Guess you won’t know until you try…

"It was imperative that MIXXTAPE not just be a digital music player that looked like a cassette,” said inventor Paul Burns. “It had to actually play as a cassette. Originally it was a combination of many little pieces that made cassettes what they were: the sound, the physical object, the customization, the personalization, the accessibility, the secrecy, the community. Also, music was much more than music files and virtual avatars. It was tangible, meaningful, and personal. MIXXTAPE brings that back in its own way."

For more information, visit mixtapeboss.com.