This makes me want to bust out my first gen iPod shuffle.

You determine what’s acceptable but what you accept, and people keep buying things that are objectively worse.

I have an old iPod shuffle. No screen, works as a USB stick, just plug it in, put some songs on, and it works.

It's been a while, but I was deep into SanDisk Sansa mp3 players. The Fuse was my favorite. uSD, FM radio, up to 8gb.

We really have gone backwards.

I have a Rio Volt SP-250. A CD-MP3 player I've had since 2001. The in-line remote died somehow but the unit itself works flawlessly and is in excellent condition. It runs on AA batteries; originally they were rechargeable but they were Ni-MH cells. I don't know where its charger went, but I can run the thing on Alkaline batteries or charge Eneloops in a separate charger.

It long outlasted the iPod it replaced and is still serviceable to this day.

I am finally this weekend sending my old Creative Zen Vision:M to the recyclers as it will no longer charge. It was one of the last players to have a mini-hard-disc before solid state became the norm. It carried me through many a bike ride, that thing. They made cool gear.

Honestly why the fuck is simplicity avoided now? Every product wants to be the most complicated shit ever, and therefore fails constantly. This device illustrates that simplicity means less failure. Awesome post.

The Life And Times Of Scrooge by Tuomas Holopainen

Damn I forgot about that album. It's so awesome. Thanks.

I was trying to move to Finland back when that came out and just got an overflow of memories.

I am pretty impressed that it can power 80ohm Beyers (DT770?). I finally had my old phone die and I was forced to get one without a headphone jack. I listen to music on a little MP3 player called a Mixxtape now. It definitely can't power my Beyers properly.

My Creative mp3 fit in my pocket and had a joystick to control the music through my jeans. No voice commands, no touch screen, no touching my headphones, just sitting on the bus and fast forwarding or skipping as I desired.

I like music players with an interface and I hate using my phone. I've had a fiio Ive used since 2015 or something. Love everything about it.

I hate that apps like Spotify show album art. I don't care for album art or little animations. The fact that this is not customizable at all reeks of incompetence.

Don't get me started on playlists or how "liking" stuff works. I'm shocked there really isn't anything else out there that's toppling Spotify over like the garbage can of a service it is.

Still have a sandisk clip sport. When it dies I'm gonna search for something alike..... Sooooo much better than a phone and a app

I had one of these. Used it for running until it stopped holding charge. Perfect size and weight, and you could drag and drop mp3s without any hassle.

You can still get things like this, for example my running setup is the Shanling M0 mp3 player (which is barely larger than that Zen Stone) and pair of Moondrop Chuu II IEMs, total cost about £120

I'd like some ear protection headphones that can play opus files from SSD.

It would also be cool if they had a microphone to work as a headset and a radio and walkie talkie function build in. Now that I think about it, it would also be cool if they'd also pick up speech and filter it from the ambient noise so I can listen to people yelling at me while still being protected from ambient noise. Maybe it could also work as a hearing aid that gives you super human hearing? Obviously it should have HRTF virtual surround sound and orientation tracking. Wait, it should be integrated into a bicycle helmet. Adding some eye protection would be nice too, and breathing mask that just clips on. And a head-up display for 1-2 lines of text to read eBooks while we're at it.

This is rather interesting

It’s not a perfect solution/alternative, but if you’re on apple hardware you might want to take a look at MiniMoon music player.

I’ve been using it for a good while now on my phone and while it has some quirks, the dev is responsive and its updated regularly. Full version is a one time fee and it supports FLAC audio. Getting your music synced and sorted might take a bit of time but I’m glad I got off subscription-based music services.

https://www.plastaq.com/minimoon