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One thing no "new" mp3 player has done correctly is audio books. None of them do bookmarking as well as rockbox. Also, new mp3 players usually have terrible bat
by mkoryak 4y ago
One thing no "new" mp3 player has done correctly is audio books. None of them do bookmarking as well as rockbox. Also, new mp3 players usually have terrible battery life. Because of these reasons, I bought myself about 7 sandisk sansa players on ebay and have gotten very good at fixing their shitty headphone jack problem.
With a rockboxed sansa I get about 60 hours of battery life and bookmarking on stop with a list of recent bookmarks per file.
Can this sony do any of that? Hardware music player have gone down hill.
- bpye 4y agoI'm surprised there hasn't been a successful open hardware project for a portable music player. Rockbox, a low power SoC, some decent DAC, a basic display - epaper would be kind of neat - and preferably a standard battery - something like the Nokia BL-5C.
- dangus 4y agoI don’t find it surprising. It’s a solved problem. Every phone has a music player built-in, you can even choose which one to use from hundreds of options. Offline, streaming, self-hosted cloud, the options are nearly infinite. Even if you don’t love the lack of headphone jack in the typical phone [1], the solution is an adapter that costs less than $10. What open hardware project can compete with that? [1] Non-audiophiles are perfectly happy with AAC/AptX codecs over Bluetooth, the bottleneck is still the quality of your headphones, IMO, and the convenience of never tangling a cable greatly outweighs missing out on the audiophile ghost whispering that they supposedly hear
- NikolaNovak 4y agoI mean, I don't disagree with your main point, but I hundred percent disagree with the notion audiophiles are the ones missing the 3.5mm jack. I miss it awfully and it's due to sheer convenience. Every one of my headphones used to work seemlessly with every one of my devices. I had cheap headphones (and later headsets) in each car, at the office, in the backpack, at home, and nice headphones at home, and they each and all worked with every phone and device immediatelly and without hassle or issues. They never ran out of battery, never disconnected, never had any lag, never garbled music, and were never obsoleted due to new codec or BT version or incompatibility or the eventual death of lithium ion. And they never wanted me to pull my little remaining hair if I dared to switch headphone or device. Labeling those who vehemently miss 3.5mm as audiophiles is a straw man or phenomenal proportions.
- SECProto 4y agoYup. I am definitely wouldnt call myself an audiophile, but I like my over ear headphones. I switch them easily between my desktop, my laptop, and my cell phone. They never die. Then I take my phone to my ten year old car and plug an aux cable in (it has Bluetooth but it is garbage - slow to connect, bad quality for music (regular skipping etc). Then when I travel to family's houses and want to play something over their stereo with an aux input, I can easily. I like aux because it's easy. It just works.
- amelius 4y agoThere are still times when you want Bluetooth. For example when you want to pair with someone else's Bluetooth speaker at a party.
- SECProto 4y agoYes, fortunately including an aux port doesn't preclude also including Bluetooth. To quote the article: > It has NFC for pairing with wireless headphones, but it also has a headphone jack so you can choose. Shock of horrors
- Pawka 4y agoThere is also value of 3.5mm input on the speaker - it reduces battery drain a lot (useful when camping for example, mine lasted longer almost 50%). All three BT speakers I was able to find in my flat (different brands) have the line-in connector. Checked just now because I was curious.
- astrange 4y agoIf you had nice headphones they probably didn’t work perfectly with everything, since most nice ones need a headphone amp to sound like they’re supposed to. The analog interface also means inconsistent volume, and using them on a walk means cable microphonics.
- jazzyjackson 4y ago
- applefangirl 4y agoThe worst part about listening to music on the phone is nervously waiting for the next spam call to interrupt it.
- dangus 4y agoYou can turn off all notifications for unknown phone call numbers. You can turn on do not disturb. Solved problems.
- toastal 4y agoMost phones don't have expandable storage which can get limiting if you're using the device to do more than just music
- marlor 4y agoThe pre-Android Sony Walkmans (like the NW-A55 mentioned above) have decent battery life. I typically get around 30 hours from my SONY NW-A45. In a world where many modern “audiophile” players only get 8-10 hours of playback, that’s not bad. However, they really are terrible for podcasts and audiobooks. There aren’t any real bookmarking features to speak of. For that, I use a Rockbox-compatible player (my preference is for a refurbished old HDD-based iPod with a new battery and SD card storage).
- agumonkey 4y agoI miss these little buggers but they were a little too fragile (battery, or lcd, or audio jack). Time to make an esp32 clone I guess.
- visiblink 4y agoI have a Rockboxed Sansa Clip+. I like that I can set it to turn off automatically, so I can fall asleep listening and not have it play all night. I also like that it will pick up right where I left off the last time. That's nice for podcasts and books. I suppose that might be what you meant by bookmarking. You can buy a one-foot 3.5 mm extension cord with a right angle plug for a few dollars to avoid repeatedly stressing the jack.
- leeoniya 4y ago> I have a Rockboxed Sansa Clip+ +1, it's a great audiophile quality tiny little player. i recently got a HiBy R3 Pro Saber, but still frequently come back to my Rockbox'ed Clip+ for its much smaller size.
- INTPenis 4y agoCan you tell me if the Hiby has a sleep feature? I'm looking at the store[1] but can't see it listed as a feature. 1. https://store.hiby.com/products/hiby-r3-pro-saber https://store.hiby.com/products/hiby-r3-pro-saber
- roboyoshi 4y agoI had one for a week and returned it. IIRC there was no sleep/standby feature. You either lock it like an iphone screen or turn it off. But it starts pretty quickly when you turn it off, so that's not the problem. For me it was just too slow and instable. There is a github repo with all the issues (https://github.com/vext01/hiby-issues https://github.com/vext01/hiby-issues) - check that before you buy one.
- INTPenis 4y agoWhen I say sleep I mean that you listen until a timer runs out and it pauses whatever you're listening to automatically.
- 4y ago
- paulcarroty 4y agoBought Sansa Fuze+ several months ago and should say about good battery life on Rockbox - ~24h display on and 30-40h playback.
- t0mas88 4y agoCool to hear Rockbox still alive! I wrote the original graphical UI code for the playing screens many many years ago. Back in the iRiver H120 times.
- kinleyd 4y agoRockbox was very cool. I used it for many years.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y agois, not was.
- olyjohn 4y agoHow would he know if it still is if he hasn't used it in a long time? To him, it was cool and that is proper for him to say.