I think phones have generally taken over MP3 players because you can do everything an MP3 player does on your phone.
But I recently bought one because I just like a single device having that unique purpose of playing music.
studying with it in my local library rnThats so cool.
Considering moving away from having a smartphone and using an mp3 player and a little dumb phone for privacy reasons.
Me too, but it’s very hard. So much stuff is becoming hard to do without the smartphone. I’m torn. But yeah, it would be cool to just have a dumb phone, mp3 player, and camera.
Yea, I’ve thought about it more since my original post and it’s looking less likely that I’m going to be able to do this.
I can’t really give up Whatsapp as annoyingly that’s the only way most of my family will communicate. So I’d need a modern dumb phone capable of running Whatsapp, kind of negating the point.
Graphene OS it is!
I keep my 160GB iPod Classic on life support.
I think the clickwheel design is, in my view, the single best one-thumb no-looking-required input scheme for an MP3 player I think anyone has ever made. Plug it into, say, my car stereo AUX port and I can pick it up with a free hand to control volume, select tracks, and even navigate mostly by memory without having to look at the thing. I can just tell where I am based on the feel of the control. Infinitely better than a featureless flat slab of a touch screen that gives you no sensory feedback.
I like its solid build quality. Full metal chassis with that sexy anodized aluminum finish. I miss that. Despite having a spinning disk hard drive, it never skips, and I’ve never had read or write issues. Though I’d probably try to mod it over to some kind of flash NAND storage someday. There’s also a USB-C mod available that I’d like to do someday, since Apple 30-pin connectors are an endangered species now, and even then, carrying around an outdated proprietary cable for only one device is something I’m eager to never need to do again.
I’m also pretty heavily conditioned to not have tens of gigabytes of music stored on my phone eating up all the precious space. But that’s mostly a holdover from my previous phone, which had a 32 GB onboard memory limit and no SD card expansion slot. I guess now that I have a proper memory expandable phone and, and now that half terabyte microSD cards are relatively inexpensive, that’s no longer a huge concern…
Also, Rhythmbox can sync to it. Maybe other software too. So I don’t even need iTunes to use it.
After seeing a DankPods video on modding an old iPod, I’m pretty tempted to pick one up. I like the idea of picking up some quality IEMs to last me maybe a decade with it. I hate how disposable some tech has gotten.
I have one that’s dead. I think I accidentally broke it by setting it on some desk piece that I had no idea was magnetic. Rip chunky buddy.
I think the clickwheel design is, in my view, the single best one-thumb no-looking-required input scheme for an MP3 player I think anyone has ever made. Plug it into, say, my car stereo AUX port and I can pick it up with a free hand to control volume, select tracks, and even navigate mostly by memory without having to look at the thing. I can just tell where I am based on the feel of the control. Infinitely better than a featureless flat slab of a touch screen that gives you no sensory feedback.
can’t most of these things be achieved easily by physical buttons too? of course everything is better than touch screen buttons
Yes. I used an iPod classic forever but my newer car didn’t play nicely with the old software. So a few years ago I bought the newest iPod touch 256GB from 2019. This software works much better through the USB cable so I can read and control the iPod through my head unit.
I just love having a dedicated music player always plugged into my car. Phones are a hassle to have to set up every time getting into the car and then my music getting interrupted by texts and whatnot. I also listen to a lot more podcasts than music on my phone while I’m at work. But I like the fact that I can hop back in my car at the end of the day and my music automatically resumes from where I left off earlier, no matter what else I had been listening to on my phone in between. That’s the best experience for me.
That’s a good ass use case. Never thought of it that way.
One of my kids has one, a little screenless one, specifically because it doesn’t have a screen. That one kid in particular gets addicted to screens.
I’m looking at mp3 players for family road trips for this same reason. My kids go full zombie in front of any screen.
I have an old SanDisk player with RockBox that I use for exercising outside.
Not having a phone with me is part of the good getting out to exercise does me.
I miss my e280… With Rockbox, it got me through high school, getting to play Pokémon Silver on it
I got a used Fuze v1 off of eBay that works only as long as it boots rb from SD card, the internal flash now dead
I’ve got a hoard of 2 Fuze v2s and 3 Clip Zips that I got on ebay a few years back. I can’t imagine how much they probably are on ebay now.
yeah I hate having them in my pocket. It’s so bulky. MP3 players on the other hand are like credit cards weightwise, and you can still use normal fucking headphones with them
I do, they have better battery life, are lighter and smaller and actually have great sound quality (my alliexpress 20 dolar mp3 player have better sound than my desktop pc)
edit: I use it mostly for flac, not having so much going on electronically makes the sound extremely clear even on cheap devices with good headphones
20$ Chinese DAC is better than your PC?
probs better than the $2 DAC that came with the PC. I’m still not convinced DACs have any noticeable difference to sound quality, though.
I mean, there is a limit on where you don’t notice anymore. Personally I believe it’s the unwanted noise and hissing that you don’t want in a DAC.
Its a small difference in SNR but its kinda noticeable with good enough headphones (I have a Philips SHP9500)
My sister does. Her phone doesn’t play nice with her car, but the player does.
Any Rockbox fans here? I got it running on my sandisk clip+, and it’s still customizablento this day
Rockbox spoiled me for all other music player UIs.
Same, I can’t do anything else
Rockbox + sandisk is fantastic
I would use one if I was still curating mp3 libraries. Honestly, the lack of tracking and spying makes going back to ripping mp3s and having a stand alone player rather appealing.
Soundbound, soundcloud downloader, youtube downloaders, torrents.
Thanks. I’ve used all but Soundbound in the past, will look into it.
Soundbound doesnt work out of the box. The dev is really careful to avoid it being discovered. You need to add a list of addons, then it works great.
I have one as some work places you can’t use your phone. Plus the sound quality is better, especially with FLAC files.
Yes, a waterproof one for swimming. It’s life changing, but it means having to scour the seven seas for music as I don’t buy CDs or have an mp3 collection any more.
I use YouTube to mp3 website to strip audio from YouTube videos and load them onto an mp3
Sounds like more steps than getting high quality audio in an album format but good to know the option exists.
Oh yeah. You’re definitely right. I just meant if there was something you couldn’t find. I have stuff that people will post there but won’t be anywhere else
Use stacher.io
It’s a desktop program, so much easier than websites, and you can select entire playlists for download.
You could check on telegram, there are a few bots for download music for free.
I have a Deezer subscription and use an application called Deemix to download all my music in FLAC format. I’m not sure if there’s still a download available for Deemix, but there are alternatives as well
I own a digital audio player (DAP), but it’s not limited to MP3s—I play a lot of Ogg, Opus, & FLAC files too. The device I use offers Bluetooth pairing in both directions as well as being a digital audio converter (DAC) via USB on devices where the built-in DAC is poor quality. I like that don’t have to wear down the battery of my phone for music, & while my phone has SD card support, 3.5 mm headphone jack, & a great quality DAC, there may be a future where these audio requirements are removed from all phones, laptops, & other devices on the market. My biggest issue with the device is being Chinese, they’ve made modifications to the Linux kernel which run on the device but don’t publish these modification which is a violation of GPL-2.0 (other smaller complaints are the UI uses flags for languages, the edges of touch screens do action yet the screens not big enough so if not careful you can exit a scrolling view, & it could definitely be lighter weight).
Not quite what you’re asking, but I still use my minidisc player.
I still use my iPod classic for jogging, and I have an iPod touch as backup. My watch can do emergency calls so I don’t need or want a phone with me.
