easymode

Is anybody here into MP3 players (or Digital Audio Players / DAPs as they're being called now that MP3 is a bit dated as a format)?

I was a teenager during the iPod years and I almost always had mine with me. My favorite MP3 player I ever had was a later model Zune, I literally used that thing until it fell apart :biggrin: keeping music on my phone has never really felt the same to me.

I'm aware that there's some revived interest in having a dedicated device for music and that there's a bit of a hobbyist community around it, but I'm not entirely sure where to start. So:

Do you have an audio player?
Have you modded another device into an audio player?
Do you recommend any specific models?

I'm trying to convert an old Android phone into a DAP via custom ROM. Trouble is, that i accidentally wiped the OS before unlocking the bootloader properly. Now the poor thing is on boot-loop, and the dream of seeing this through drifts ever further.

Nevertheless, i love DAPs and i hate that my 120gb iPod classic was stolen so long ago. A DAP would pair nicely with the AUX jack of my 2011 Toyota Corolla, a car that is great to cruise and doesn't get in your way.

Sure fuckin hope this thing works - https://github.com/samuelcaldas/Brutefo ... r-Unlocker

I had a FiiO (I think that's what it was) several years ago and never used it because it was bigger than my phone and the software was clunky.

I really need android because I also like to have audio books and my software of choice is Smart AudioBook Player. Beyond that, I listen to a lot of original video game music in formats like VGZ, SPC, MIDI, MOD, etc. so I need an app for those... then for my music, I prefer BlackPlayer.

So, I've just been using my Sony Xperia 5 III because it has a headphone jack and an SD card slot. I threw a 512 GB Samsung micro SD and it's almost good to go. I don't have a good sync method set up... but I do have foobar on my phone as well and it is set up to stream from a Foobar server on a VM at home. It's goofy, but it gets me by so long as their is web access.

The dream is that... maybe one day... we will get fooyin for Android and I'll be able to just use that rather than three separate players for all these formats. (If anyone is on Linux, this is the best player: https://fooyin.org/)

ward wrote: Mar 1st, '26, 05:27 (If anyone is on Linux, this is the best player: https://fooyin.org/)

Fooyin is lovely, but for me it was another transitional tool from Windows to Linux that scratched the itch of me really missing foobar. Once I realized that it was, by way of familiarity and comfort, holding me back from continuing to learn more about how to use Linux, and holding me back from learning multiple neat ways to do much of the same things, I decided to investigate Music Player Daemon.

MPD itself is pretty dry on its own and it's setup through config files and a little "systemctl enable/start/stop/status --now" (if your distro's init is systemd, that is), but pairing it with one of ~40-or-so console-based frontends makes it honestly worth it. RMPC is my pick for a frontend, about as rice-able as you want it to be and it has an Album Art Viewer. Bread On Penguins from YouTube has a lot of their dotfiles on github, including an RMPC config: https://github.com/BreadOnPenguins/dots

As usual, the Arch Wiki is your friend: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Music_Player_Daemon

fooyin looks interesting, will have to have a look sometime

for me the linux audio player I've been using for years and years is DeaDBeeF

I've thought about getting a DAP or turning an old Android phone into one. I'm all in on self hosting these days, but I wouldn't mind the redundancy...plus it would help me stay off my damn phone. i'll keep an eye on this thread!

I got my wife a gen 5 ipod video for her birthday last month and it was neat to play around with one again. That did get me to look around at what mp3 players are available now. Android based ones seem the most interesting to me because they could strike a good balance between having files locally on the device and having the option to use streaming apps (either a service or self hosted)

Offtopic question for ward - is your Sony Xperia 5 mark III working good? How long have you use it and did you game or only light action ( browsing, music, YouTube, chat... )?? Reddit is full of people with "light saber" problems with screen ( vertical lines across the screen ).
In Europe this phone is around $350, new, in box - and I need small phone soo...

Control_Denied wrote: Mar 4th, '26, 03:38 Offtopic question for ward - is your Sony Xperia 5 mark III working good? How long have you use it and did you game or only light action ( browsing, music, YouTube, chat... )?? Reddit is full of people with "light saber" problems with screen ( vertical lines across the screen ).
In Europe this phone is around $350, new, in box - and I need small phone soo...

I got it because it was small, has the headphone jack, and no notch. I hope it lasts forever, because I don't know what I'll do if I have to get a new phone. I have no idea why phones are so big... I don't want to lug around a pocket laptop. I does make a pretty good DAP as well.

I've had one issue: the fingerprint reader broke... I never replaced it, but I have to type out passwords a lot now.

The craziest games I play are Pixel Dungeon and Into the Breach. I don't game on phones though. BTW... and we are getting WAY off topic (I should punish me)... the game is amazing (if you can get an apk that has been de-netflixed... netflix owns it and requires you to login).

Idk if its been mentioned here yet but i personally highly reconmend an r4 from hiby. I recently got one as a gift from one of my partners and ooo its delightfully tasty with the amount of control you have with it. You have on the fly access to mseb, peq as well as a general eq board and plugins that can do.. Honestly anything. I'm not super verse with all the technical stuff you can pull off with it quite yet (will say that the spacializer and virtualizer plugins dont work the way you'd think) but its been really fun resurrecting bit crushed mp3s/wavs with it while making italo disco wobblely. Plus the back has space for stickers.

The one downside i have with it is that it also suffers from that classic mp3 flaw where if you max out the memory on it it will chug pretty hard. Its not the worst at it (i think my og mp3 player suffered from this more) but it is something to be mindful of .