I dont see that. Vinyl records are now made for old dudes like me that finally can afford the long wanted records the pocket money wasnt enough for back then.
It is a hype for hipsters and collectors now earning a good salary and the industry is targeting just them and not the broad mass of music consumers.
Modern, electronic made music, is not worth bought on vinyl. You get a digital file pressed onto vinyl.
No Studer tape machine, no valve-driven amplifier and no quailified sound engineer anymore, just soulless bits and bytes.
Most of modern "artists" produce quick songs, using pre-recorded drum-tracks run by a computer and some of them not even master an analogue instrument like a guitar. Voices are compressed and pitched.
For that i can simply switch on every streaming service, its not worth buying it.
I have seen a review, its a cheap device and not comparable to the masterpieces of Sony, Aiwa and other brands back then.
Your used deck probably needs servicing like belt or idler rollers.
Everything is fixable in such old devices, the Fiio-stuff can only be thrown away because of lack of parts and service manuals.
Get an old Walkman, there are many revised ones for sale, in every price range.
They will sound better and will run some more years as the cheap china crap.
But who was listening to 40hrs of Music really? Was it more scrolling and skipping and looking on the display and not push the play button, looking out of the train window and just listening to the song of the artist?
Its about nostalgia. And to learn something. How mechanics have worked to produce the sound.
CD sound is way too perfect, to clear. I cant listen to Jimi Hendrix on CD.
A short sightend person seeing the world a bit differently, so much bright christmas trees instead of traffic lights....
Its not hard to find a good deck.
Keep in mind the devices are 40 and more years old.
Cleaning and replacing belts are neccessary, also demagnetizing and calibration.
There are tons of advisories and videos about that on the net.
Also a lot of service manuals are still available.
I got 4 usable decks here, bought on ebay for some bucks.
Sure, some models are overpriced or rare, like the Nakamichi Dragon which is a ultra high end model that brings no trade-off to modern made music on such cassettes.
Other models are expensive because there are collectors like me that want to complete their rack with a deck or record player.
If you got a deck, forget about purchasing newly made cassettes, i bought some of them, all crap.
The reason behind is that the materials gotten rare and industry tried to replace it.
I buy old TDK SA90 or so on the flea market. Those folks survive years of glovebox heat and rucksack-storage of teenagers.
And dont buy them on ebay, the same overpriced bingo-bongo there.