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The music player you wish you had in the early 2000s

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Re: The music player you wish you had in the early 2000s

#82

Post by LeoPanthera »

ido wrote: post #46
devindotcom wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still have mine but left it in a drawer years ago because it wouldn't sync any more. Is there a modern solution?

They still sell the iPod touch

The iPod Touch was discontinued in May 2022.

Re: The music player you wish you had in the early 2000s

#83

Post by LeoPanthera »

jszymborski wrote: post #37
daeros wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for me it was sd cards and mp3 and flac support, any insight into why you prefer opus?

I 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.

You 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.

Re: The music player you wish you had in the early 2000s

#85

Post by antisthenes »

mingus88 wrote: post #67
Minor49er wrote: post #2

This 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

Sony 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

I 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.

Re: The music player you wish you had in the early 2000s

#87

Post by throwaway81523 »

xattt wrote: post #42
throwaway81523 wrote: post #31

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. 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 3…

> 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.

Yep, 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?

Re: The music player you wish you had in the early 2000s

#88

Post by jszymborski »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #83
jszymborski wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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.

You 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.

Good to know. I see "just use 320K" as the mantra in a lot of forums, but I also see people claiming they can hear the difference between Opus @ 128K and 192K, which I promise you I do not. Frankly, 96K and 64K are pretty great to my ears.
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