TOKYO—Thirty five years after its debut, Sony Corp.'s Walkman is enjoying a little comeback. The ZX1, as Sony's gadget is called, is in many ways the antithesis of Apple Inc.'s slender iPod, and the Walkman's own svelte predecessors. Sony says each ZX1 is manually carved from a block of expensive aluminum, which helps reduce noise. "The message for our designers and engineers was: please create a good product without worrying about the cost," said Kenji Nakada, Sony's sound product planner.

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