3 ms·
One of my frequent hobby horses is the area of portable music players (formerly called Walkmans or MP3 players, currently "DAPs"). I simply don't understand who
by raffraffraff 3y ago
One of my frequent hobby horses is the area of portable music players (formerly called Walkmans or MP3 players, currently "DAPs"). I simply don't understand who would want to buy any of the currently available players because they'll are so terrible to use. The good ones were killed off by a combination of streaming services and Android devices. There are no more light-weight, simple players with high capacity, physical buttons and good battery life. You know, the kind of thing you could put into your pocket take on your run without bruising yourself. The kind of thing that has a legible screen, sane menu layout, that can read tags from your files and let you simply drag playlists into them. I know that there are people out there who want the same thing, but manufacturers are instead releasing gigantic bricks with protruding knobs and weird edges, huge battery-draining touch screens, running some dreadful Android hack of an OS. "This one had TWO DACS!". Really! Well I'm not in a sound-proofed listening room with €10000 monitors, I'm on a bus with some IEMs. Reviews rarely discuss the most important aspects of a portable music device, and instead gush like wine critics about the ... I don't know, smell(?) or taste(?) of the music. I'm only half joking. The more prestigious the reviewer the more bollocks they write, and half the time I can't even find mention of the weight or size. Or when they do, they're plain wrong (eg: "The Shanling Q1 is a light weight portable device"... No it's f*cking not, it's an awful brick with a shitty OS, bad battery life, overly sensitive buttons. I don't care how well it sounds if I can't get playlists into it and don't want to use it because it's a heavy blob with a shitty interface.
13 years ago Rockbox on the Sansa Clip+ was great. If we could simply produce that with today's tech I'd take it in front of any of these ludicrous hulking house-bricks that cost an arm and a leg.
Am I off-topic?
- rmellow 3y agoYour comment sent me on a multi day journey into DAPs. Indeed, it's heartbreaking how otherwise capable hardware is ruined by bad design decisions (UI, form factor, touchscreens, ...) I found a workable solution after many hours: 1. Bought a Hifi Walker H2 on Amazon. It suffers from poor UI design, including typos. Otherwise, the hardware is great. 2. Installed RockBox on it. After a little customization, it resolves the crappy UI. The one pain point is RockBox will not support Bluetooth or USB DAC, if you care about these features.
- raffraffraff 3y agoSo I have an update! I bought the HiBY R2 II directly from their website it shipped immediately (on a weekend!) and I had it in my hands (in Ireland) less than a week later. It's basically everything the Shanling Q1 should have been. It's slimmer, almost half the weight, has a sane OS (so there's no need for Rockbox) and sounds great. Also had better battery life than the Q1 and you can play/pause using an inline remote on your wired headphones (and yes, Shanling screwed that up too). Bluetooth is rock solid. All in all I love it. I can even sync my music and playlists to it with MusicBee (on Linux) with very little messing around, and with a huge SD card it holds all my music. Edit: the walker was my next choice but I thought they were discontinued? Anyways, the HiBY is available.
- rmellow 3y agoMy own update: decided to dust off my old iPod and repair the fault LCD, battery and hard drive. The (minor) downsides: modern features like Bluetooth and USB-C are possible, but only through soldering. Rockbox unfortunately lacks polish, and it for some reason turns itself off after a while playing music.
- raffraffraff 3y agoFYI, a few weeks later with the HiBY and I absolutely love it. I'm getting another one to replace my wife's aging Sony walkman (one of the extremely simple, light-weight ones). She doesn't want me to, because she loves it's size and weight. But she regularly complains about syncing music and playlists to it. And with a 512GB SDCard you can just tell MusicBee to "sync everything", which is extremely simple compared to removing stuff you don't listen to and hand-picking the newer stuff that will fit. And of course, Wifi, Bluetooth, etc. In fact I might buy two, because I know they'll discontinue this thing and I don't know if anybody will make anything like it again.