You might already be aware but there is a range of alternative music players on iOS that focus on listening to a local music library. Doesn't help with dongles - but may fix your software issues.

Here's a very in-depth showcase of your options: https://barrowclift.me/post/fourth-annual-ios-music-player-s...

For me the killer feature of the desktop music.app is still the option to transcode to a lower bitrate during sync. My lossless music library spans close to 2 TB (and growing) these days. SD cards are very expensive at that kidn of storage - so in contrast to the article sd cards certainly don't provide limitless space.

Anyway. To meet mobile storage requirements I need to transcode it to 256 kbps AAC and I don't want to handle this manually or manage a second lossy library. music.app / iTunes easily does this on the fly during sync.

I'm sure other software / hardare players can do that too - but if it's the same process why would I carry an additional device around? The iPhone is just very convenient for that purpose. Otherwise I really like Sony's Walkman range.

I religiously use Spotify for music on my iPhone. Are you against the subscription payment model, or are you considering this device because it’s better than Spotify on an iPhone? If it is better, how so? Genuinely curious if there are better music options than my current “setup”.

While Spotify covers most popular stuff there's a huge amount of music that isn't available on any streaming service. Plus, your content might disappear any day.

I use Spotify for previewing, exploring and making some buying decisions but my actual collection is mine. It's lossless, DRM-free and I plan to have it for ages to come.

This is it for me, I used Apple Music for a few years and eventually I noticed that some of my playlists would have tracks missing - sometimes a listing would be ghosted, sometimes it would straight up vanish. I called time, brought a A50 and haven't looked back: https://chanc.ee/posts/20200830-abandon-stream.html

Granted my music tastes are esoteric but silently modifying my playlists felt grievous. Now I make sure that subscription money goes on supporting artists directly.

But the nice thing about apple music is that you can add any song to it on your PC and it syncs it to all your devices. So if you have an esoteric taste, you can mix it in with the streaming service.

Subscription model doesn't work for the stuff I listen to. I want specific interpretations of specific operas, I want playlists by composer (no two album uses the same spelling for a classical music composer). I want playlists that skip the recitatives, etc.

And I already own the music, legally purchased on itunes and amazon. Why would I rent it?

Checkout the Fiio M5 : https://www.fiio.com/m5

Bag one if you can get it since it has been discontinued.

Sony specifically might not be the best option for a modern audio player. I've tried using A55 but exchanged it for a Shanling M0 eventually.

Why is that? The thing that terrifies me with less known brands is the quality of the DAC. I had so many shitty mp3 players before settling on ipods in 2003. Even today most laptops motherboard DAC are useless.

M0 is much lighter and cheaper and uses USB-C instead of a proprietary cable. The feature set is roughly similar (audio formats, USB audio, BT source/sink, etc.). It doesn't offer any media sync software, though. DAC should be good ("ESS Sabre ES9218P") but honestly I can't tell the difference between Apple's own 3.5mm-Lightning dongles and fancy audio equipment. At least it's not obviously noisy.

P.S. These players don't have very powerful CPUs, obviously, and this makes me wonder whether they can handle more complex audio compression formats (such as AAC encoding for Bluetooth) without cheating and using sub-optimal encoding settings.