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I did a lot of research in this field and additionally in audiobooks. While I still think that the iPod Nano 7 is the perfect device for me, I recently got my
by sandreas 1mo ago
I did a lot of research in this field and additionally in audiobooks.
While I still think that the iPod Nano 7 is the perfect device for me, I recently got my hands on a HiBy R1. For 60 bucks it is a remarkable non Android device (in fact it is buildroot based with a publicly available toolchain and a modding community). I have to prepare for my iPod nano collection slowly dying over the next years.
I also use an old Android GrapheneOS phone (Pixel 4a) along with some apps as a backup:
Substreamer APP (cross platform)
DSub
Navidrome (Backend)
Audiobookshelf (Backend)
Prologue (iOS)
Voice (Android, Paul Woitaschek)
Navidrome backend even supports smart playlists while Substreamer App supports Offline Sync, this is very handy to use.
My workflow is:
1. Obtaining Audio CDs (cheap, high quality)
2. Ripping flac with EAC [1]
3. Tagging with beets music organizer
4. Convert inplace to mp3 v1 with beets
4b. Archive the flac (on disk and bluray)
5. Add to navidrome
6. Star / rate in navidrome
7. use a smart playlist to sync top titles and New Albums offline
8. use a shell script to download to USB for my old car without Bluetooth
Works pretty well and after the ripping step pretty much full auto. The only reason i still prefer iPod Nano 7 over Android is the limited remote of my cable headphones (longpress is not detected on Android) and the near flawless UX.
1: https://pilabor.com/blog/2022/10/audio-cd-ripping-hardware/ https://pilabor.com/blog/2022/10/audio-cd-ripping-hardware/
- GaProgMan 1mo agoI also have a HiBy R1, and have had it for the majority of 2026. Would definitely recommend it to others. Once you get past the need for a microSD card (and once you've bought a good quality one), it becomes a fantastic flac player. And, like OP said, it's great for (scroll based) distraction free listening. I haven't looked into the modding community for it, yet. Thanks for the tip-off on that.
- sandreas 1mo agoJust to give you a start: https://github.com/bidhata/Hiby-R1-Mod https://github.com/bidhata/Hiby-R1-Mod https://github.com/yetisoldier/Hiby-R1-Audiobook-Mod https://github.com/yetisoldier/Hiby-R1-Audiobook-Mod The latter also has great documentation in the repo. You can enable developer mode / adb by (this may differ in non 1.6 firmware versions): Go to about Tap 10 times on the version / HiBy Logo (dev options) Tab 10 times on "about" beneath the back arrow (enable adb) After this you can adb devices # list devices, should have the Hiby present adb shell # root shell on the device The root partition is readonly, so to store something, you need access to the micro sd card or use /tmp. As a starting point you could take a look at /etc/init.d/S92_03_start_music_player I managed to compile my WIP Rust / Slint music player app [1] to run on the HiBy framebuffer, but since it is WIP, I did not manage to go further yet. 1: https://github.com/yetisoldier/Hiby-R1-Audiobook-Mod/issues/5#issuecomment-5072136640 https://github.com/yetisoldier/Hiby-R1-Audiobook-Mod/issues/...