Over the last few years, there’s been a pretty serious resurgence of physical media in the audio space. It’s likely no surprise to most that vinyl kind of helped spearhead this revival, but even CDs and cassette tapes have (at least somewhat) risen back to prominence.
That said, it can be tough to find modern devices capable of playing these obsolete forms of tech, least of all ones that really capture the spirit of the physical media golden age of the ’70s to the ’90s.
In an interesting team-up, two Japanese outfits — one, an audio electronics brand and the other a musical group (famous for anime DanDaDan’s end credits sequence) — have a solution brewing. The Orion x Zutomayo SCR-B9(Z) Boombox might be the ultimate retro stereo for physical media audiophiles.
Master blaster
As its name suggests, this boombox is a modern revival of Orion’s legendary SCR-B9 “radical cassette” models from the ’70s and ’80s. While not an exact replica of those models, it does have much in common.
For instance, it has an integrated AM FM radio tuner, cassette player and a ton of other bells and whistles. It also has an integrated CD player, should you prefer discs over cassettes (or simply to utilize both).
