I had a 6th gen iPod Classic that I used for almost 15 years before it finally died on me a few months back. Dedicated music players nowadays are a niche market, so it was really hard to find a replacement. I ended up getting a FiiO M5, and while it's definitely got some pros -- much better sound quality, can pop in a 512GB/1TB SD card for effectively infinite space for compressed songs, can play FLAC/WAV/OGG -- the ergonomics of the iPod were just so much better. It's funny how seemingly little things can be so frustrating: there's only enough space on the screen for 4 names at a time, the scrolling isn't adaptive so it takes forever to get to the bottom, the play order isn't consistent with the song display order within a folder... I used to love just browsing my music collection on my iPod on the train to work, but with the M5 I'll just pick an album or playlist and press play. It's just not as fun to flip through music.
I don't consider myself an Apple fanboy, but the iPod was a rock solid product that got all of the little things right. Given that the market for standalone DAPs is tiny because most people today just use their phones and music streaming apps, it's unlikely that we'll ever see a music player that compares to it.
It's a shame that personal music players are still so niche. The hardware coming out of China right now blows any phone out of the water in terms of usability, performance, and battery life, all at a fraction of the cost.
We're in a Renaissance age of mobile listening thanks to ChiFi. I love carrying around a second device that has no persistent connection to the internet, no notifications, and can drive any headphones I throw at it... With sideloaded Audible and Tidal to boot.
Media used to be this easy and pleasurable to consume before phones got it the way.
Battery life? Usability? Renaissance?? Have I been trying the wrong DAPs?
I'm also really into single-purpose electronics. My whole library is FLAC, so these players should be right up my alley. Except they tend to be heavy and expensive, and when it comes to UI, either they're using Android poorly, with incredibly bad battery life (HiBy R5/R6, Fiio M9, A&K anything), or they're using a custom UI with pre-iPod UX sensibilities. And even when they use Android, they try to graft their own UI onto it, so that in the end you have the worst of both worlds -- just watch what happens to the volume settings on any Android-based HiBy DAP after connecting with Bluetooth.
The communities that buy this stuff are much more into the technical and theoretical sound quality than how it actually comes together as a product. The marketing reflects that; the product pages are all litanies of incremental DAC processor upgrades, circuit diagrams, and cryptic audio codecs. And because this is what folks care about, it's hard to find reviewers who even mention into UX.
If you have a rec I'm all ears, because I'm on the verge of resuscitating my original Pixel just for this.
but then I am forced to use the Apple Music app, which is sadly moving away from library management to streaming. It's still a good advice for the many people with old iphones in their drawers.
For me, physical buttons are the best UI. Completely agree with the screen UI being ugly but being able to play/pause, switch songs, change volume, and rewind my book using a clicky button beats any touchscreen UI imo.
I'm using an AK SR25 right now and absolutely love it. It's pretty small.
My HiBy R3 has solid battery life (north of fiften hours of continuous playtime) and nice physical buttons, but I agree the custom UI is very sub-par, and I get somewhat more mileage of it as a high-quality bluetooth DAC than as a DAP.
Korean, not Chinese, but I'm a massive fan of Cowon products. The (sadly discontinued) Cowon J3 was legendary, rightfully called the best DAP of all time by many. Currently have a Cowon Plenue D2 in my pocket.
Phones come with like 128 GB of storage. Not all is usable but that accommodates like four days of continuous uncompressed music. How long do you really go without a network connection and need music for?
Also I think they playback with hardware don’t they? They aren’t running the CPU. It uses a trickle of charge just like your iPod.
IMO a person who wants to store music on their phone locally doesn't want to supplement streaming, they want to replace it entirely. If they didn't then you're right, all of the major DSP's offer local storage through their apps and the 128/256/512 GB options available from iPhones is fine. (no idea what the limit is like for Android phones, I'm sure it's much more)
Well, if you use Bluetooth you're no longer using the DAC inside the DAP, so it's not "driving" the headphones in the sense that GP meant. That said, most DAPs support bluetooth these days, with trendy codecs like LDAC, aptX-HD, etc. However, eschewing the device DAC kinda wastes a lot of the money you spent on the DAP.
For Bluetooth usage a year or two ago I would have recommended the Shanling M0. All these devices have awful touchscreens and the M0 is no exception, but it's tiny, light, and has long battery life. Unfortunately, in this space the manufacturers tend to discontinue products in favor of new ones within a year.
Speaking of ChiFi, the latest Fiio flagship portable DAP, the M17, looks like what happens when your industrial engineer has a mental breakdown and completely loses his shit.
The thing is thick and dissipates so much heat that they have an official active cooling stand to go with it. How is that portable? What makes the whole situation funnier is that they spin it as a feature, calling it "Desktop tier heat dissipation" (you can't make this up).
I'd love a suggestion or three - my old ipod nano is dying and I would find sifting through the junk/good on alixpress or other sites almost impossible without recommendations.
I also prefer it not to have internet, notifications, etc, so that sounds perfect.
If building your own isn't acceptable, I like the Sony Walkman series quite a bit. I have a WM1A and a ZX300 and I have minimal complaints other than they cost way too much. There are also a bunch of Chinese brands making players with decent DAC's, but they all use the same Android interface with minimal tweaks for the most part, the battery life and UX sucks.. Definitely wish there were more high quality off the shelf players for the non-audiophile who doesn't want to use their phone for everything.
Apple iPod! By far. There are some outright strange things about the Sony app like not being able to manage a queue of songs easily without creating an adhoc playlist, the navigation is sometimes frustrating, and the default desktop app they provide to sync songs to the player in a manner that will keep lyrics and song art intact is absolutely atrocious. But pretty much everything else is good and there's nothing else on the market so...
Fiio does have the X5 which has a similar jogwheel but I agree with you that the lack of exponential scrolling does make it annoying. Not sure if that's patent-encumbered (fuck UX patents) or what.
Rockbox does have exponential scrolling, but only supports a limited list of hardware. There is an "unstable port" for the Fiio M3k but that's not what either of us own ;)
Might be a good project for someone here who wants to play with embedded hardware! It's one of those situations where once you get it up and going on a particular set of hardware, you will benefit from a lot of "passive" development from others, both past and future.
iPods have made a bit of a comeback. Checkout r/iPod there's people modding them by adding bluetooth and USB-C. There are adapters to replace the hard drive with MicroSD. (iFlash)
They (iPods) are relatively simple and new replacement parts are readily available. Pick up an old iPod off ebay and install a new battery. It's a fun little project, I've done it a few times now.
I don't consider myself an Apple fanboy, but the iPod was a rock solid product that got all of the little things right. Given that the market for standalone DAPs is tiny because most people today just use their phones and music streaming apps, it's unlikely that we'll ever see a music player that compares to it.