Recommend me a Mobile Choons Gizmo!

[smangus]

Hi All

If you could benefit me with your digital wisdom I'd be most grateful, I'm considering buying a portable mp3 (+whateverelseformatwise) player for my daily commute etc. I have a phone which is ok but the memory is ltd (32Gb) and built in so not expandable :doh:. So after consideration have decided to purchase something dedicated for portable use. All music will be ripped from my CD collection to PC if that makes any difference and I haven't got much preference for any format FLAC,MP3 etc so am not fussed about this.:)

Can you recommend a player for me? Anything considered , budget about- £150-200 maybe a bit more at a stretch for the right unit.

Any advice and comments gratefully received!

Cheers Andy

edited to add , would prefer something not Appley, thanks.

[Sherwood]

How important is sound quality? Very good or excellent SQ?

[smangus]

Very good should do it , although it's a subjective thing. if it costs slightly more for excellent then I'd consider it. I'm not really au fait with the differences between formats so much , maybe I should do some research! lol :cool:

[LC1979]

2nd hand iPod 5.5 gen with new battery, ssd and Rockbox installed. Not easy to beat with that budget.

[struth]

2nd hand iPod 5.5 gen with new battery, ssd and Rockbox installed. Not easy to beat with that budget.

Interesting... i see that is a change of operating system. Whats it like in comparison to ios? Does it still do chromecast , spotify etc

[WAD62]

Hi All

If you could benefit me with your digital wisdom I'd be most grateful, I'm considering buying a portable mp3 (+whateverelseformatwise) player for my daily commute etc. I have a phone which is ok but the memory is ltd (32Gb) and built in so not expandable :doh:. So after consideration have decided to purchase something dedicated for portable use. All music will be ripped from my CD collection to PC if that makes any difference and I haven't got much preference for any format FLAC,MP3 etc so am not fussed about this.:)

Can you recommend a player for me? Anything considered , budget about- £150-200 maybe a bit more at a stretch for the right unit.

Any advice and comments gratefully received!

Cheers Andy

edited to add , would prefer something not Appley, thanks.

Time for a new 'not appley' phone then, with an expandable SD card slot (up to 200GB), and Poweramp for FLAC, a Samsung S5 would fit the bill...oh and it makes calls too :)

P.S. If you're going to the trouble of ripping your CDs do it to FLAC, with DBpoweramp, it's something you only want to do once...

[smangus]

2nd hand iPod 5.5 gen with new battery, ssd and Rockbox installed. Not easy to beat with that budget.

Thank will I need ichoons to use it though?

[smangus]

Time for a new 'not appley' phone then, with an expandable SD card slot (up to 200GB), and Poweramp for FLAC, a Samsung S5 would fit the bill...oh and it makes calls too :)

P.S. If you're going to the trouble of ripping your CDs do it to FLAC, with DBpoweramp, it's something you only want to do once...

yeah but other than the memory my phone is fine fancy a separate gadget :eyebrows:, Thanks for the FLAC heads up, is DB Poweramp a programme?

[WAD62]

yeah but other than the memory my phone is fine fancy a separate gadget :eyebrows:, Thanks for the FLAC heads up, is DB Poweramp a programme?

I think the Fiio portables are pretty well respected...

http://www.ea-audio.co.uk/fiio_music_players.html

...yes DBpoweramp is ripping, tagging, etc. software...

https://www.dbpoweramp.com/

...not free, but well worth it IMHO

Check sum digit accurate rip DB comparisons, automatic tagging from 5 amalgamated sources, art work, batch conversion etc.

It also worth investing in a good quality external cd/dvd drive, the bigger the better, makes the task much quicker and more accurate

[LC1979]

No, hence the Rockbox firmware alternative. More flexible in terms of file format, but can't recall off the top of my head if it does flac as haven't used it in a few years, would have to check! Apple music devices used to be pretty good in terms of sound quality, and that was one of the best. Only limitations were storage capacity and battery life, both easily remedied!

[smangus]

Great , thanks Will/Luke, I will investigate.

:thumbsup:

[LC1979]

Interesting... i see that is a change of operating system. Whats it like in comparison to ios? Does it still do chromecast , spotify etc

Rockbox goes on the iPod instead of the original firmware, allows more flexibility and some say better sound quality, though I can't be sure on that. Still a great portable player by today's standards.

[mikeyb]

My Motorola X Play mobile beats my Fiio X3 Mark I. I use Hi-fiMan IEM's I won't go back to my Fiio now.

I have a 128gb card in mine and listen to it every day. Great battery life too.

[smangus]

The Fiio stuff looks interesting, as does ibasso, choices , choices! :)

[Yomanze]

Sansa Clip, 64gb micro SD card, and a pair of Jays V-Jays headphones. Serious sound, ultra portable, well below budget.

[fatreg]

i second the Sansa Clip idea, I have one of them running rockbox, a 64gb card to fiio e05 headphone amp powering some Ultimate Ears TripleFi10s, big bass and plenty loud enough!

Exc headphones, whole unit was sub £70

[mikeyb]

Thirded, I used to own a Sansa Clip and it was ace, cheap but it sounds great.

[HackneyRF]

I'll add my backing for the Sansa Clip. Terrific portable gadget. Sounds smashing with a Fiio too. Great VFM factor.

[fatreg]

Another way of looking at this, is rather than carrying the music, steam it, I use an app called Subsonic, which streams any folders I specify on my home network to the internet, an app on my phone then streams the music, I have circa 250gb of music at my disposal through subsonic, I am only limited by mobile signal or wifi, but over 3G works fine, over 4G/Wifi it's brilliant, you can spec if you want it to transcode anything, mine transcodes all FLAC/ALAC to 320, I use this at work and munch through data, roughly 1.2-1.4gb a DAY! but on 3 I get unlimited data so it's win win for me.

Then the appley thing you have works and the 32gb isn't an issue and no need to buy any hardware, subsonic premium (the bit that let's you stream) is $12 a year

[lovejoy]

Another vote here for the Sansa Clip and a large capacity MicroSD card. I've gone through a LOAD of portable players and phones. Never thought iPhones sounded any good. I have a Motorola X Play which is pretty good - attached a Meridian Explorer2 to that which made it a whole lot better and then eventually replaced that with a Pioneer XDP-100R which is £500 worth of player. It's a great bit of kit and does MQA but I keep on coming back to the little Sansa Clip. It plays louder than the Pioneer, OK it doesn't play hi-res material but there's no player I've taken on my travels that I've enjoyed more. It's an absolute bargain and the battery lasts ages between charges too. A good set of IEMs on the end of that and you can't go wrong.

[smangus]

Hi all

Thanks for the views, my home comp is not set up for streaming, the Sansa seems to have the most votes so far. Any other ideas? Happy to consider leftfield stuff.

Cheers Andy

[wee tee cee]

Sansa clip is a great wee player and as mentioned expandable with a sd card. I use an I pod classic with 80 gig storage sounds pretty good even with big cans as the extra space lets you store everything lossless.

The best portable I have tried sonically is COWAN a real cut above. I have the wee no frills jobbie but the sonics are really good-well worth a look.

[nthall]

A used Android phone with USB audio and a portable DAC/Amp, is what I usually recommend.

Sent from my Z981 using Tapatalk

[Rothchild]

Another way of looking at this, is rather than carrying the music, steam it, I use an app called Subsonic, which streams any folders I specify on my home network to the internet, an app on my phone then streams the music, I have circa 250gb of music at my disposal through subsonic, I am only limited by mobile signal or wifi, but over 3G works fine, over 4G/Wifi it's brilliant, you can spec if you want it to transcode anything, mine transcodes all FLAC/ALAC to 320, I use this at work and munch through data, roughly 1.2-1.4gb a DAY! but on 3 I get unlimited data so it's win win for me.

Then the appley thing you have works and the 32gb isn't an issue and no need to buy any hardware, subsonic premium (the bit that let's you stream) is $12 a year

Yup, I do this too. It's really easy to setup a subsonic server using an SBC (like a raspberry pi) and the DietPi installer (www.dietpi.com) works great, I stream audio from my home network to my phone (or any other internet connected computer) and then play it in the car with the phone connected over Bluetooth to the car stereo, some sort of magic!

[sq225917]

I've gone back from a fancy ibasso dx80 to a gen7 ipod with sd card conversion. No difference in sound quality to speak of but I do get 40 hours off a recharge now.

[Theadmans]

I've got a Fiio X3 2nd Gen - sound quality is excellent. Even powers my Sennheiser HD650s reasonably well. Takes a 128GB micro SD Card.