Cool to hear Rockbox still alive! I wrote the original graphical UI code for the playing screens many many years ago. Back in the iRiver H120 times.

Rockbox was very cool. I used it for many years.

is, not was.

How would he know if it still is if he hasn't used it in a long time? To him, it was cool and that is proper for him to say.

I'm surprised there hasn't been a successful open hardware project for a portable music player. Rockbox, a low power SoC, some decent DAC, a basic display - epaper would be kind of neat - and preferably a standard battery - something like the Nokia BL-5C.

I don’t find it surprising. It’s a solved problem. Every phone has a music player built-in, you can even choose which one to use from hundreds of options. Offline, streaming, self-hosted cloud, the options are nearly infinite.

Even if you don’t love the lack of headphone jack in the typical phone [1], the solution is an adapter that costs less than $10. What open hardware project can compete with that?

[1] Non-audiophiles are perfectly happy with AAC/AptX codecs over Bluetooth, the bottleneck is still the quality of your headphones, IMO, and the convenience of never tangling a cable greatly outweighs missing out on the audiophile ghost whispering that they supposedly hear

I mean, I don't disagree with your main point, but I hundred percent disagree with the notion audiophiles are the ones missing the 3.5mm jack. I miss it awfully and it's due to sheer convenience. Every one of my headphones used to work seemlessly with every one of my devices. I had cheap headphones (and later headsets) in each car, at the office, in the backpack, at home, and nice headphones at home, and they each and all worked with every phone and device immediatelly and without hassle or issues. They never ran out of battery, never disconnected, never had any lag, never garbled music, and were never obsoleted due to new codec or BT version or incompatibility or the eventual death of lithium ion. And they never wanted me to pull my little remaining hair if I dared to switch headphone or device.

Labeling those who vehemently miss 3.5mm as audiophiles is a straw man or phenomenal proportions.

Yup. I am definitely wouldnt call myself an audiophile, but I like my over ear headphones. I switch them easily between my desktop, my laptop, and my cell phone. They never die. Then I take my phone to my ten year old car and plug an aux cable in (it has Bluetooth but it is garbage - slow to connect, bad quality for music (regular skipping etc). Then when I travel to family's houses and want to play something over their stereo with an aux input, I can easily.

I like aux because it's easy. It just works.

There are still times when you want Bluetooth. For example when you want to pair with someone else's Bluetooth speaker at a party.

There is also value of 3.5mm input on the speaker - it reduces battery drain a lot (useful when camping for example, mine lasted longer almost 50%). All three BT speakers I was able to find in my flat (different brands) have the line-in connector. Checked just now because I was curious.

Yes, fortunately including an aux port doesn't preclude also including Bluetooth. To quote the article:

> It has NFC for pairing with wireless headphones, but it also has a headphone jack so you can choose. Shock of horrors

If you had nice headphones they probably didn’t work perfectly with everything, since most nice ones need a headphone amp to sound like they’re supposed to. The analog interface also means inconsistent volume, and using them on a walk means cable microphonics.

There are plenty of nice headphones with low impedance among grado, sennheiser, beyerdynamic etc, you kinda have to go out of your way to choose a high impedance “home stereo” style ‘phone

That’s funny since when I ordered a Beyerdynamic headphone on Amazon they sent me the high impedance model I hadn’t asked for.

Although the best one I own is a Stax which needs an entire speaker amp.

Wait, aren't Stax the electrostatic high-voltage headphones? I think at that point, "Convenience" is deeply crossed out as a selection criteria, and a portable phone while jogging is not a likely scenario :).

They actually made IEMs once. Beyond the technology being hard to manufacture, Stax's products are mainly just inaccessible because they have the traditional Japanese business approach of being run by 800 year olds who are actively offended by the idea that anyone they don't know might want one of their products.

their portable 'phones are fantastic, but yes, their full size tube amp is taking an inordinate amount of space on my desktop

https://www.headfonia.com/baby-stax/

"Nice headphones" is of course relative. I have two sets of Sennheiaer hd380. They plugged into anything and everything and sounded nice to my ears. They are super comfy. They still plug into my computer, synthesizer, and most of my stuff - but not of course my wife's iPhone.

(My old galaxy s2 had microsd, replaceable battery, grippy exterior,and of course 3.5 mm jack while being smaller in every dimension so I am skeptical as to some of the arguments other than "apple did it so entire industry will copy it")

As indicated above - I'm not am audiophile but I enjoy listening to music, and miss the easy convenience of 3.5mm jack on my phone along with everything else. A headphone amp would completely counter act the convenience and practicality.

Are you still using your Galaxy S2 or is it possible it wasn’t perfect despite managing to list all those things on a spec sheet at the same time?

It was perfect for the time. It's definitely lacking in features today, which is by definition true of any phone from that era.

I still have them both with me and in active use - mostly as remote controls, kids games, etc.

Perhaps more pertinently, my daily driver is a Galaxy Note 8, which also has a 3.5mm jack and MicroSD card. There's really nothing that my 4-generations newer, work-mandated iPhone has, in terms of functionality and definitely battery life, that Note 8 does not. iPhones are about sexy impracticality, and that's clearly where market has gone (Unlike S2 & S5, Note 8 also cannot be held without a case) - I'm just a old grouch who misses the olden days :).

Most phones don't have expandable storage which can get limiting if you're using the device to do more than just music

The worst part about listening to music on the phone is nervously waiting for the next spam call to interrupt it.

You can turn off all notifications for unknown phone call numbers.

You can turn on do not disturb.

Solved problems.

I have a Rockboxed Sansa Clip+. I like that I can set it to turn off automatically, so I can fall asleep listening and not have it play all night. I also like that it will pick up right where I left off the last time. That's nice for podcasts and books. I suppose that might be what you meant by bookmarking.

You can buy a one-foot 3.5 mm extension cord with a right angle plug for a few dollars to avoid repeatedly stressing the jack.

> I have a Rockboxed Sansa Clip+

+1, it's a great audiophile quality tiny little player.

i recently got a HiBy R3 Pro Saber, but still frequently come back to my Rockbox'ed Clip+ for its much smaller size.

Can you tell me if the Hiby has a sleep feature? I'm looking at the store[1] but can't see it listed as a feature.

1. https://store.hiby.com/products/hiby-r3-pro-saber

I had one for a week and returned it. IIRC there was no sleep/standby feature. You either lock it like an iphone screen or turn it off. But it starts pretty quickly when you turn it off, so that's not the problem. For me it was just too slow and instable. There is a github repo with all the issues (https://github.com/vext01/hiby-issues) - check that before you buy one.

When I say sleep I mean that you listen until a timer runs out and it pauses whatever you're listening to automatically.

that sounds like a very niche feature, does it exist outside of ultra-tweakable firmware/OS like rockbox?

Sure, in VLC for android and audiobookshelf app for android.

+1 ... rockbox'ed sansa clip+ is the best, except for one thing: browsing. In every other way, it beats all the other options i've seen.

+1

Sansa Clip+s with Rockbox is the perfect solution. I went through three before being unable to pick up any more without paying triple price.

Why do great products disappear?!

Why are yours dying so fast? (Alternatively, why do mine hold up so well?)

I have had two Clip+ in the last 15 years. I retired the first one because I broke the clip off; it still works otherwise. I was using them about 2 hours a day until the pandemic.

I have had several clip+ses over the year, and the one thing that died every time was the onboard flash (which prevents the player from booting at all). I resurrected my last one where it was only corrupted and not dead, but I did not have other issues otherwise.

Now I am using an hiby R3, which is quite clunkier, but allows me to choose between microsd storage and streaming from the phone in high quality, while also having 2.5mm balanced IEMs (kind of a gimmick, but I like their sound a lot).

edit: and of course being able to finally ditch USB-mini is great.

For anyone affected by this, a simple trick to reviving a Sansa Clip+ that won't turn on is to hold the power and home button simultaneously for about 20-30 seconds. Let go and press the power button and it might turn on.

I'm not sure what causes these players to become unresponsive. It's happened to me when it tries to play an unusual file or after I've transferred music to the device and left it plugged into the computer for a while.

They are still my favorite standalone portable mp3 player, even with the stock firmware.

Yeah I had the onboard flash die once too. Apparently the trick is to never put media files there, but rather use SD cards for that.

One ended up on a trip through the washing machine and didn't survive. Another's jack broke (common problem that I didn't back then know how to prevent), and I broke it even more when being an idiot in trying to fix it. The last wore out its internal flash (I think).

The pre-Android Sony Walkmans (like the NW-A55 mentioned above) have decent battery life. I typically get around 30 hours from my SONY NW-A45. In a world where many modern “audiophile” players only get 8-10 hours of playback, that’s not bad.

However, they really are terrible for podcasts and audiobooks. There aren’t any real bookmarking features to speak of. For that, I use a Rockbox-compatible player (my preference is for a refurbished old HDD-based iPod with a new battery and SD card storage).

I miss these little buggers but they were a little too fragile (battery, or lcd, or audio jack). Time to make an esp32 clone I guess.

Bought Sansa Fuze+ several months ago and should say about good battery life on Rockbox - ~24h display on and 30-40h playback.