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The music player you wish you had in the early 2000s
- NotYourLawyer 3y agoLooks like 3 iPods stacked on top of one another.
- mtillman 3y agoI just bought a new sealed 5th gen a few weeks ago. It’s still a great looking device and it still sounds good.
- taspeotis 3y agoMore like 1 iPod? https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/IPod_(1st_generation) https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/IPod_(1st_generation)
- ffgjgf1 3y agoWhich had a hard drive. The last gen classic is much thinner (and probably had better battery life than the Tangara). It’s hard to understand why does it have to be so bulky but I assume it’s intentional (e.g. full size SD slot).
- Minor49er 3y agoThis looks promising. Pretty much all modern portable music players are janky Android devices with awful hardware and software. I've been looking for something to dethrone the Zune HD for me, which has a small form factor and intuitive interface
- devindotcom 3y agoI still have mine but left it in a drawer years ago because it wouldn't sync any more. Is there a modern solution?
- stndef 3y agoScott Hanselman released a video[1] not too long ago that covers reviving a Zune in 2023, if that's of any use! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-ZPx-h5ApU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-ZPx-h5ApU
- ido 3y agoThey still sell the iPod touch
- LeoPanthera 3y agoThe iPod Touch was discontinued in May 2022.
- Minor49er 3y agoI use GMTP to put files onto the device on Linux
- IWeldMelons 3y agoSansa AFAIK is still non-Android.
- szszrk 3y agoSansa, Fiio, there are some nice options both for tiny sports players and "hifi" market.
- ABoredBirb 3y agoCheck out Cowon products. Big fan since the J3. Sadly they haven't made anything quite as good since, but the Plenue D2, that i have now, is very decent.
- mingus88 3y agoSony Walkman. It’s wild that 40+ years after they pretty much invented the portable music player, people need to be reminded that they still exist The NW-a30 I bought years again sounds exactly like what you are looking for. The software is not android, it’s snappy and intuitive and Sony has decades of experience making these devices
- jbushell 3y agoThe newer Walkman models seem to all just be android skins unfortunately.
- antisthenes 3y agoI just looked at the choices. An 8gb for $79 (why is 8gb of storage still a thing when stores are giving away 32gb flash drives for free?) or a $799 player that costs more than my phone and desktop computers combined. Nah. This ain't it.
- em-bee 3y agothe most important use of my phone is to play audio. to the point that i almost considered getting a pinephone so that i could run something else besides android and get a better FOSS audio player (and a keyboard). but i decided against it because it was just a bit to expensive for what it offers. now if only i could find a decent FOSS audio player for android. it is critical that the player interface orders files by directory structure and displays the filename because a lot of audiobooks and audio drama series or podcasts use the series title in all files and don't have a file specific title (and those that do mess it up by not having episode or chapter numbering. this often makes the individual chapters/episodes indistinguishable from each other. unfortunately most available audio players assume that the title is enough to pick a file, but that really only works for songs, not audio books, audio drama or podcasts. sorry for the rant.
- yencabulator 3y agoHave you tried https://github.com/mdmt1/sabp_native https://github.com/mdmt1/sabp_native ?
- tetrisgm 3y agoInteresting. I wish something like this aimed to be Roon Ready or like an open source version of what Astell & Kern offer, where people can make their own DAP. As it stands, it's going to be a fun nostalgic device.
- jszymborski 3y agoSD-card capable with Opus support, that's all I ever want frankly, and this has it. Will certainly be interested to see what price this launches at.
- daeros 3y agofor me it was sd cards and mp3 and flac support, any insight into why you prefer opus?
- manmal 3y agoOpus is Vorbis‘ successor. Vorbis should no longer be used for encoding, except if you need to stay backwards compatible. Eg if you needed to shrink a FLAC collection I‘d use Opus.
- jszymborski 3y agoI rip/buy all my music using FLAC, and then put what I want for e.g. flights on my phone in Opus since you can get muuuch smaller files w/o degrading quality. The general consensus on MP3s is that 320kbps VBR is universally transparent quality, whereas that number is about 120kbps VBR for Opus. Honestly, depending on the music and how good an ear you've got, Opus at 96kbps is pretty great.
- arp242 3y agoWith a decent encoder (and most are decent these days) VBR at V0 should be transparent too, and is much smaller than a fixed ratio of 320kbs. I'm not entirely sure how it compares to Opus, but it's a better target than 320kbps fixed rate.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoYou can’t have “320k VBR” for MP3, because 320k is the maximum available bitrate. You can either have 320K CBR, or VBR at some lower average bitrate. As long as you’re using LAME, MP3 is transparent far below 320k. There’s never a need to go that high. For archival purposes, use FLAC, not MP3.
- riffic 3y ago[flagged]
- mitthrowaway2 3y agoIt does have bluetooth though? And based around an ESP32 with WiFi.
- yaomtc 3y ago> Less space than a Nomad Where'd you get that from? > Uses a standard, SDXC card for storage. Available up to 2 TB
- bentley 3y agoIt’s the comment Slashdot’s Rob Malda made in response to the original iPod.
- alphager 3y agoI, too, hover around 40 years of age.
- soperj 3y ago"Proudly inspired by Apple's original iPad, this pocket-sized music playback device is fully open and hackable — and crowdfunding soon." I think they meant iPod. iPad was a MadTV gag in the early 2000s.
- dot5xdev 3y agoNeat! I recently bought a Sony NW-A306. I wish the battery lasted longer. Also, Android is slow and janky. On the other hand, it's Android so it runs Spotify. Hope Tangara is better!
- DeathArrow 3y agoWell, I did not wish to have a music player like that in early 2000s. I enjoy listening on large speakers at home or while driving. I am not listening to music while walking or going somewhere. I rather watch the surroundings, interact with people or think.
- DeathArrow 3y agoWhen reading the title I automatically thought about Winamp.
- shzhdbi09gv8ioi 3y agoCool, rockbox? Oh, not rockbox... Well, rockbox was cool and we had it in the early 2000s. Don't know whats with the revisionistic headline. https://www.rockbox.org/ https://www.rockbox.org/
- beAbU 3y agoI had a classic iPod mini that I modded with a 64GB CF card, so no more mechanical hard drive, and it had rockbox installed. It was the perfect music player, and I had it in the late 2000s. It even had DOOM on it!
- tetris11 3y agoI still use my Sanclip Plus because of rockbox. What a great project
- ZoomZoomZoom 3y agoHow come it haven't died still? They're are notorious for their internal memory crapping out.
- tetris11 3y agoHonestly, I use it only on big road trips I take a couple of times a year -- so it's not constant use, though it is regular use.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- thaumasiotes 3y agoThe music player I had in the early 2000s was also identical to the music player I wished I had. It was a Zen Stone; a tiny device with flash storage, a USB port, and an audio jack. I plugged it into a cassette tape adapter and used it to play music in my car. It had no screen, so most of the device was covered in buttons that could be easily used without looking at it. The company followed up with a sequel model, the Zen Stone II, that was worse in basically every way, a trend that more or less continues to this day. Every time someone puts a screen on a music player, they decide that using the music player should require looking at the screen. (As here, where the buttons are images shown on a touchscreen!) Why?
- herbst 3y agoWhy does it have no buttons? There are plenty of good rockbox able MP3 players on the market. What I need is buttons with feedback.
- andai 3y agoThe cool thing about mp3 players and phones with physical buttons is you could control them in your pocket with one hand while riding a bcycle to school. I remember texting someone on a T9 numpad, once you got the hang of it you could do it with the phone behind your back! Later I had the worst designed mp3 player created by man which despite having physical buttons, still required you to look at the screen to use it because button presses were (a) context specific (required sequences) and (b) not idempotent (the first press was ignored and brought the device out of sleep mode).
- greenbit 3y agoI wish interface designers would understand this, the value of physical buttons. There seems to be this universal push to make everything as much like a phone as possible - flat, smooth touch controls, and while that's dandy for a device that you're already going to be looking at, it's an absolute hindrance in other contexts. Because now that device that you could have operated in your pocket, or while keeping an eye on something else, that device now demands your attention. Cognitive load is incurred where it need not be. You get the same problem sometimes even with physical buttons, when some bright spark decides it would be clever for some control range to "wrap around". Where once you could just hold the button for a second to get to the end of the range, and know where the device is w/o looking, and then tap N times to get what you want, now you have to stop whatever else you were trying to do, look at the device's display, and adjust the thing under full attention. Not everything needs to be a touch screen, or present 'smart' controls.
- pseudalopex 3y agoIt has buttons. 2 on the side and a click wheel.
- pachico 3y agoReminds me of my old and loved ARCHOS GMINI 220.
- throwaway81523 3y agoNon rockbox, non easily swappable battery (though it uses a rectangular cell with a JST connector), looks like an early ipod, no speaker(?), costs $249? Um no. There are still plenty of Sandisk and other players around that can run Rockbox. I still have a Cowon D2 that had a Rockbox port that apparently wasn't really complete. Its main drawback as I saw it was not supporting SDXC (i.e. largest supported SD card was 32GB) but in retrospect that's not so bad. I don't remember whether the Rockbox port supported the SD card at all. The player had 16GB of internal flash and a full sized SD slot. It had an excellent DAC and plenty of drive power in its headphone amp, while still having around 50 hours of play time on its 1600mah(?) lipo cell. Replacing the cell with a phone battery of the era wasn't too difficult. It was a great player and would have been even better if they had opened up the hardware docs enough to get Rockbox completely working. The player I wished for in the early 2000s had an SD slot, had an AM/FM receiver, and ran on an AA cell. Today, realistically, it should also have bluetooth. Depending on its size, maybe it could use an 18650. On rockbox.org there is a forum thread about porting rockbox to Android and apparently there are significant technical obstacles to doing that. I don't know what the obstacles are. I don't offhand know of Android music player apps that I really like, but there are some usable ones. And phone hardware is good enough for this purpose that the whole induestry of dedicated audio players is now close to wiped out.
- xattt 3y ago> Non rockbox, non easily swappable battery (though it uses a rectangular cell with a JST connector), looks like an early ipod, no speaker(?), costs $249? Um no. > No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
- throwaway81523 3y agoYep, Slashdot is "news for nerds" and the ipod was the player that Steve Jobs was able to sell to hipsters. It was not the player that nerds wished they had. This new thing seems close to silly. There have been a bunch of such projects on the rockbox forum and all of them bogged down. I suspect there are retrophiles out there who still want to use rotary dial phones. That is fine, but enough vintage rotary phones are available on ebay for those who want them, that someone trying to crowdfund a new one would face an uphill battle. This music player seems about the same way. Aren't there FIIO players that come a lot closer to the nerd dream anyway?
- teruakohatu 3y agoI want this device! > lasts a full day on a charge The iPod Classic could do 36 hours of playback so I wonder why this can only manage 24 hours. > 2200-mAh battery with a standard, 3-pin JST connector For years I have wanted a MP3 player with a 18600 battery. If the developers are reading this, consider a version with a 18600, even if the form factor is not as ergonomic. > Firmware supports MP3, FLAC, Opus, and Vorbis codecs No audiobook (m4b, directory of MP3s) support yet. This would be a nice feature to have.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoNo AAC is also absurd.
- MrBuddyCasino 3y agoIts weird because I've done AAC decoding on the ESP32 so I know for a fact that it works.
- m45t3r 3y agoMaybe an issue with patents? All the formats there are open source with the exception of MP3, that from what I remember had its patents expired a few years ago.
- bionsystem 3y ago>> lasts a full day on a charge > The iPod Classic could do 36 hours of playback so I wonder why this can only manage 24 hours. It says a full day, not 24 hours (so probably 8-12 hours). I had an archos with 80Gb mechanical hdd in early/mid 2000s that I believe lasted more than that. Sadly it died (went into a washing machine) with a lot of my favorite music inside it, including some dj sets that I can't seem to find anymore (not sure of who played and what year...). It was an amazing piece of hardware, better than (unmodified) ipod of 8Gb at the time.
- flir 3y agoThe form factor up around that kind of battery size is actually pretty ergonomic (though I do have big hands). I've got a phone in that range (just under 1lb) and it's nice. Solid. I like the heft of it, it feels like I'm carrying around a filofax. Maybe not for joggers though.
- peanut-walrus 3y agoLooks like something you would order for $15 from aliexpress. Am I missing something about this?
- pixxel 3y agoHipster-flation.
- fold3 3y agoTo be fair, It's more comparable to MP3 players in the 50 to 100 usd range. (See zishan, f.audio, hiby, shanling, fiio, xduoo) The difference is it is using open source hardware and software. Chinese MP3 players have little repairability, limited to no modding and a terrible OS. This tries to fix that. Still expensive in my opinion but I'm waiting to see if people make interesting things out of it.
- pat64 3y agoI get over 2+ weeks of playback time on my modded iPod classic with Rockbox and a half tb of storage. That’s the player I wish I had in the 200s.
- bwoodward 3y agoI tested mine and it came out to around 65hrs w/ rockbox playing FLACs. I've also got a Sansa Clip+ that is super small and great with Rockbox.
- arp242 3y agoSansa Clip+ was very close to audio player perfection as far as I'm concerned. Simple but functional, no frills, had exactly the features it needed, no less and no more, and at a very reasonable price. Rockbox made it better, but even without it was pretty darn good. I don't recall what happened to mine (lost? broken? gave it to someone? don't recall), but I wish I had bought 20 of them when I could to last the rest of my life.
- user3939382 3y agoI had an RCA Lyra RD1021, it was almost the size of a matchbox. I’m still tempted to use it while running instead of a phone.
- crotchfire 3y agoI can't imagine trying to use a phone to listen to music while running. The Sansa Clip has physical buttons. I can operate it without having to look at it.`
- palemoonale 3y agoWay too chunky. And no AAC?
- carlosjobim 3y agoI got a Shanling MP3 player when looking for features like these, and I've been very satisfied: 3,5mm jack, no Android, physical volume button, SD card, all audio formats, high quality Bluetooth, high quality output, good price and sturdy. Battery is not great, but it's okay.
- sandreas 3y agoThis is great news and the device looks promising. I wonder if rockbox[1] could be ported to it, but since Rockbox does not natively support Bluetooth or Wifi, it might be not the right firmware for this device. One thing I really miss on all NON iPod / NON Android devices is the ability to control playback via headphone remote[2]. I did a lot of research how to build such a thing myself and found out that it would be too much work to design a PCB that fits my needs and build a custom firmware for it with my skills. My personal approach would be much smaller, something about the size of the iPod Nano 7g. However, my conclusion also was, that an ESP32 is NOT the perfect chip for this[3] - more the Allwinner T113-S3 (discontinued) on the X-Boy-Plus[5] or the new ArtinChip D21x/D13x in the CyberPad 1[4]. My personal opinion is, that it is hard to build a custom device that has decent battery life, supports Wifi+Bluetooth, is still powerful enough to play all audio codecs and does not have a completely custom firmware that cannot be used in anything else but this device... Recently I found a promising article, where Flutter has been ported to run on a small RISC-V device[6], which would make at least the software development part a decent experience. For now, I'll stick with my iPod Nano 7g, as an alternative my Fiio M6 (discontinued, Android 7 with Custom App support). For more modern Apps I use the Unihertz Jelly 2e (Android 12), that has a custom media button, has an Audio Jack and is still available in shops today. Repair process is also ok and I think there also might be LineageOS Support. The apps I use are Substreamer[7] with Navidrome[8] and Audiobookshelf[9]. [1]: https://www.rockbox.org/ https://www.rockbox.org/ [2]: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/3640 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/36... [3]: https://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,54269.msg252243.html#msg252243 https://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,54269.msg252243.h... [4]: https://mangopi.org/cp1m https://mangopi.org/cp1m [5]: https://github.com/hsinyuwang/X-Boyhttps://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf https://github.com/hsinyuwang/X-Boyhttps://github.com/advply... [6]: https://systemsdigest.com/videos/tiny-flutter-future-dart-flutter-small-devices https://systemsdigest.com/videos/tiny-flutter-future-dart-fl... [7]: https://substreamerapp.com/ https://substreamerapp.com/ [8]: https://www.navidrome.org/ https://www.navidrome.org/ [9]: https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf
- rabbits_2002 3y agoone day of charge seems kind of paltry for a purpose-built device
- dsr_ 3y ago2200mAH and a 120mA average usage is about 18 hours of playing. My typical usage when I had a commute and a weekly exercise habit was about 2 hours a day, so this would last more than a week.
- RadiozRadioz 3y agoSokath, his eyes uncovered!
- TruthWillHurt 3y agoWhen the walls fell in my opinion.
- walteweiss 3y agoI use a hand-me-down low-end shitty Samsung Android smartphone for that. • I found some LineageOS (not very stable, but it works well for audio, which is 100% of the life reason for the device). • Put Voice for Audiobooks, • AntennaPod for Podcasts, • NewPipe for downloading YouTube interviews, lectures or other primarily voice content. • It rocks Olauncher Lite/Simple/Whatever (some no-bullshit fork, cannot recall the exact name) with three swipe actions (left, right, double-tap) for the three primary apps. • all of that is from F-droid for sure • the hardware has microSD card shot, I don’t know the maximum amount, but I use the 8 GB card I had lying around, and it has been quite plenty for me. Usually, I don’t listen to music. Only while working with my computer or laptop, for focus / eliminate the noise outside. So I use the smartphone for some farm work (I own a tiny city farm) and for driving, when I’m in mood for listening to something (sometimes I just listen to nothing, when I’m low on energy). It has a Bluetooth module and a Jack. I listened to wired headphones, but I broke the two of them that I have (Sony and Marshall). Now I have two pairs of Bluetooth headphones and I listen to them, nothing in my workflow changed. I like this workflow very much, as you can re-create it with any Android smartphone. E.g. I have some tiny HTC (Beats branded) Android 4-something smartphone and apart from LineageOS (which isn’t necessary, it’s just me, I enjoy/prefer to not have unneeded bloatware) all the other software is available. I am not sure for Voice, as it’s quite new. But NewPipe and AntennaPod (both old versions, but still) work very well. If you have any more modern device (which would be very cheap to buy secondhand if you don’t), it’s very convenient. I like Samsung devices for that purpose, as apart from being aesthetically ugly (I mean older devices, prior to Galaxy S9 from circa 2017), they’re quite good, usually have microSD card support and are flashable. E.g. Samsung Galaxy S3 or S4 (I have both, both physically broken, destroyed by the kids), they are very capable of the task. My current one is a low-end Samsung Galaxy Grand, something like that. But if I’d buy another one, I’d go for the Galaxy one instead. It’s not open source, but all the models I mentioned have swappable batteries (mind-blowing!) and are cheap to repair. That system works for me very well and I’m happy to share that with others, maybe someone would use it too.
- yzydserd 3y agoThe music player I had in the early 2000s was great: a 2001 IOmega HipZip that took 40MB Clik! disks. I'd pop 3 albums on 3 disks for a day of listening around the city. No complaints at all. Nostalgia. https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/gfk65j/do_vintage_mp3_players_count_heres_my_iomega/ https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/gfk65j...
- hypercube33 3y agoI had an iRiver 350 slim so 700mb cds but it fit in my pocket and ran all day. The UI was wayyy better than any other CD MP3 player I could find and let you just store albums in folders and use the multi line remote to browse and play. I wish they'd taken it to SD card storage but my palm pilot could so I ended up using that
- nunez 3y ago> Bluetooth audio support (SBC codec only) That's unfortunate
- AdmiralAsshat 3y agoNot heard of CrowdSupply before. Why'd they go with this over the more well-known Kickstarter?
- endorphine 3y agoWhat DAC will it have? Is it a good match for high-end (300$) audiophile headphones?
- LeoPanthera 3y agoNo AAC support, and bluetooth limited to SBC. At $250, this is a poor spec.
- jazzyjackson 3y agoYou can still buy an iPod on ebay, with new battery and upgraded DAC and more flash. I don't know who would buy this at double the price.
- simonblack 3y agoMy Cowon Z2 still works very well. And it has the capability of MP3, Ogg, and Flac playback. Oh, and it has an FM radio too. Oh, and I forgot. Video too.
- Projectiboga 3y agoBluetooth SBC only? None of the other high fidelity BT tech? OK there are taking that 'early 2000s' too literally. I hope there is a way to drop higher codecs into this.