Maxell Japan has launched a portable ‘Walkman’ cassette player, but its retro audio tech is boosted by modern convenience.

For The Verge’s YouTube channel, I talked to the companies making these modernized players — We Are Rewind and Fiio — to figure out why we can’t make cassette and CD players like we used to.

Fiio’s DM-13 Bluetooth CD player has a large square design that resembles a Sony Discman from the late 1980s, even though, by 2001, we had super slim round CD players from iRiver, Panasonic, and ...