In the fourth season of the American TV series "Stranger Things", the scene of Max wearing a Walkman and escaping from danger by listening to Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" once set off a long retro carnival.
Picture | Sony MDR-3R Stranger Things co-branded model, red ear pads and minimalist retro frameThe pair of slender bimetal beams and small headphones with bright orange foam pads in the lens are the symbols of this visual resurgence.
But you may not know that it has a boringly specific name in the real world - Sony MDR-3L2.
In 1979, it appeared as the original bonus headset of the first-generation Walkman TPS-L2. Together with the blue and silver tape player, it brought "listening to music" out of the living room for the first time. When young people walk on the streets, they have a private BGM for the first time.
Picture | The original 1979 Walkman TPS-L2 in the collection of the Smithsonian National Design Museum, and the original MDR-3L2 headphones that came with it at the timeNearly half a century after the first generation came out, Sony took advantage of the popularity of the final season of "Stranger Things" to bring this old product back with a new look, named MDR-3R.
There was no large-scale press conference, and there was no overwhelming acoustic publicity, but as soon as it was launched on the overseas official website, the regular version and the co-branded version were quickly sold out.
Picture | SonyIn the Japanese market, the two open-priced headphones are estimated to be around 8,000 yen and 10,000 yen including tax (approximately RMB 370 to 460 yuan). The recommended retail price of the regular version in Hong Kong is set at HKD 379.
Due to the lack of domestic supply in the initial stage of overseas sales, the price in the secondary market and purchasing channels was once nearly doubled, and a pair of entry-level headphones worth 100 yuan was hyped up as a "financial management product."
However, this premium carnival will most likely not last a few days.
Just these two days, Sony China officially released an official poster with contrasting blue and orange colors, accompanied by the copywriting "New voice, same as before", directly scheduled for November 17th at 12:00 noon. The arrival of the Bank of China version basically announced the end of the price increase bubble in the secondary market.
Picture | Sony ChinaThe retro look is almost the same as it was 47 years ago. The only difference is that the other end of the line was replaced by a now ubiquitous Type-C interface。
Shell 1979, Thread 2026
Looking at the headphones alone, Sony has almost completely reproduced the original structure from 1979 this time. The entire pair of headphones is very light when worn on the head - only 38 grams, which is about the same weight as two ordinary eggs and less than one-sixth of the weight of modern mainstream noise-canceling headphones (which often weigh more than 250 grams).
Picture | SonyTwo parallel stainless steel filaments support the headband, and the length is adjusted only by the friction of two metal sliders without any paragraph buckles; the earmuffs are round sheets without extra decoration, and are covered with iconic high-saturation sponge pads. Looking at the upper body alone, its materials and structure are almost the same as those of the past.
Picture | SonyInterestingly, Sony specifically stated in the footnote of the official specification sheet that "it is not recommended for use with a Walkman." A pair of headphones that were born with the original Walkman were reissued, but they cannot be used with the company's latest player.
Picture | SoundGuysThis is actually the reality that Sony has to face: if it insists on the 3.5mm plug, most modern mobile phones will not be usable; but once it is changed to Type-C, its own Walkmans with 3.5 and 4.4 interfaces will become completely outsiders.
After weighing the situation, Sony finally gave up its niche audio player ecosystem and moved towards the more popular mobile phone market.
Picture | SoundGuys. 23mm driver unit for MDR-3RThe drive unit has also undergone a modern makeover. Although the diameter of the diaphragm remains the same as that year's 23 mm, Sony abandoned the high-impedance, low-efficiency design for tape drives forty years ago and replaced it with a modern diaphragm specifically adapted to the low-voltage direct push of mobile phones.
It wears a retro coat from 1979, but inside it is a standard modern digital fast-moving consumer product.
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The sound is not "Hi-Fi", but you get headphones when you buy Feelings
If we look at today’s mainstream wireless noise-cancelling headphones, the acoustic performance of the MDR-3R is almost always on the mark. In the laboratory measurement of audio review agency SoundGuys, this pair of headphones only scored 6.3 points.
In the low-frequency range below 80 Hz, the frequency response curve of the MDR-3R drops significantly. The small on-ear sponge and the open back cavity mean that the drum beats and cello resonance in the bass cannot be gathered together at all, and have already leaked into the air before they are sent into the ear canal.
Figure | Sony MDR-3R frequency response curve measured by SoundGuys (B&K 5128)The sound insulation performance is also basically zero. It has neither an active noise-canceling microphone nor the physical seal of in-ear earbuds. Wearing it into the subway car during the evening rush hour, the sound of station announcements and the roar of the tracks will fill your ears without any obstruction;
If you try to turn up the volume to drown out the noise, this pair of headphones will act like turning on an external amplifier, "sharing" your music with the people sitting next to you.
Picture | SoundGuysThe workmanship is also far from exquisite. The double-rail slider, which relies on metal friction to pull hard, and the thin and brittle plastic cavity, feel light and airy in the hand.
If you consider it from the perspective of serious "practical consumer electronics", spending a few hundred or even increasing the price to nearly a thousand yuan in the secondary market to buy it is almost an unreasonable IQ tax.
But if you change it from the perspective of "fashion items", the whole thing becomes much more reasonable. It itself is a product with an extremely distinctive character and feelings that are far greater than reality——Or to put it more bluntly, Sony is "selling feelings and giving away headphones."
Its target user group may not intend to use it to study the three-band harmonic sound field in the first place. As long as its sound performance is decent and it's not too cumbersome to carry around, that's enough.
Picture | SoundGuys. The on-ear porous and breathable sponge pad determines its physical properties of being light and breathable but bound to leak sound.But to enjoy this relaxation, you must accept its various compromises. You can’t expect it to accompany you on your commute and squeeze into the subway, nor can you wear it to resist the roar of business trips.
It is most suitable for hanging on the collar of a sweatshirt as an accessory for taking selfies, flipping through books and listening to podcasts in a quiet study, or plugging in your phone at the table late at night to listen to a guitar solo.
Parameters rolled to the end, headphones return to purity
In the past few years, ordinary consumers have become somewhat tired of the industry's "cyber fighting crickets" regarding Bluetooth transmission protocols, active noise reduction chips and dynamic units.
Today, the marginal effect of acoustic parameters has become more and more obvious. The slight difference measured in the laboratory cannot be heard by most people in daily use.
The most direct example is AirPods. Even though its tuning is objectively mediocre in the eyes of audiophiles, not even "good-sounding", it has not in any way prevented it from becoming the standard for hundreds of millions of people around the world.
Because of this, apart from “pragmatism”, the audio market has begun to take on a completely different face——
Some people are trying to reduce the wearing burden of being extremely light and not clogging the ear canal, some are re-picking up the physical control of mechanical knobs, and some are simply making headphones a part of OOTD.
Looking at the Sony MDR-3R, you will find that Sony is not the only one who has this kind of "retro abacus". Under the old skin of old-fashioned industrial design, the modern solutions proposed by various companies are even more radical than Sony. The most extreme one is PORTA launched by Japan’s FINAL.
Picture | FINALOn the surface, it also has two small retro earmuffs connected by thin steel wires, and looks like a pair of ordinary wired headphones.
But in fact, the steel wire on the headband is not responsible for power or data transmission, but only serves as a fixed wearing rack; the left and right sides are independent true wireless earphones.When charging, you need to plug in the cord separately.
FiiO and Koss are more approachable. FiiO has reduced the price of stainless steel headbands, colorful sponges and physical mechanical buttons to hundreds of yuan, turning retro sentiments into easily bought desktop toys;
Picture | FiiOThe Koss Porta Pro, which has insisted on not changing its mold for forty years, can continue to be sold by changing its Bluetooth chip. For many people, buying them is like buying a set of blind boxes or pendants, which give them a sense of age.
Picture | Koss Porta Pro WirelessAnother group of manufacturers spent their efforts on "regaining the physical touch" and "wearing style".
For example, Nothing Headphone 1 goes in the opposite direction, cutting off the overused capacitive gesture touch on headphones and exposing the mechanical scroll wheel and dial directly outside the transparent casing;
Figure | Nothing Headphone 1 emphasizes the physical control feedback of the transparent shell and mechanical rollers and balls.Dyson OnTrac and Beats have made their headphones into modules that can be disassembled and spliced in contrasting colors like a mobile phone case. Picking out the earmuff shell before going out is just like picking up a hat or scarf.
Picture | DysonSwipe left to see more
Looking back, Sony MDR-3R is indeed not an epoch-making acoustic masterpiece. Its low frequency is incomplete, its workmanship is thin, and it also has the usual business calculations of film and television collaborations.
But in this era where headphones have to be adjusted for noise reduction and downloading apps at every turn, plugging a simple cable into a mobile phone to make sound makes it feel unusually relaxed.
Forty-seven years ago, the original MDR-3 accompanied the Walkman on the streets to prove that music could be so freely separated from the living room; now young people hang it around their necks again, more like they have found a kind of unburdened purity in a life filled with dense smart devices.
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