I use my phone for - hehehehe joking joking

you’re definitely gonna get replies mentioning the Tangara, are you already aware of that?

I mean. You probably know I’m an iPod fan girl. A modded mini is my current every day carry. LCD screen you can see in daylight and a backlight when you need it. Mine is also modded to 256 gb. The built in DAC is actually pretty decent, too, more than happy with it.

I haven’t swapped it over to RockBox yet, but I’ve heard very good things!

Except that it uses MTP & uses internal storage, the Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra (they had a way of naming things) otherwise fits your description.

I loved mine until the hard drive failed, and I was not yet good enough at disassembling & reassembling tech to replace it with flash storage.

I haven't made the jump yet but the lovely @binarydigit put me on to this

binarydigit.city/a-simple-digi…

The MECHEN 30!

A Simple Digital Audio Player

I love it

^{BinaryDigit .𖥔 ݁ ˖ ✦  ‧₊˚ ⋅}

The Sandisk Sanza Fuze was my favourite of the old era, had a nice spinny wheel and a microSD slot for expansion. Used a nonstandard port though, and idk how readily replacable the battery was.

I kind of wanna take a look at the Tangara and see what it's like by comparison these days, because I don't know how much longer I can rely on having a phone with a headphone jack and support for Poweramp...

This is all, like, two decades old recall.

I used to like iRiver devices, because they did most of those things. Really difficult to find anything that did SD or MicroSD because removable media and mp3 players didn't really overlap. And a lot of players tried making themselves into walled gardens early on. My last player was a Sansa clip.

I believe the iRiver mounted as USB storage though. I mostly gave up on players because of the lack of removable storage, and the difficulty in finding one that did all of:

• Plug and mount as storage without drivers
• Removable media
• Ogg support

Both Amazon and Alibaba have players that do all the things that you are asking for, sub $40usd, many for less than the cost of shipping.

You may be better served by looking into Chinese markets like Alibaba, and finding something new that has more storage or removable storage.

if "vintage" is ok, Thomson/rca lyra m20 series.
They are old, probably have to resolder the shitty head Phone Jack. And mine literally slow burned the oled Display. And they run on and eat aaa batteries.

Cowon had some in the lineup. Some of them don't have sd card slots but they appear as normal Drive.

Obscure Chinese like shanling probably has something but i never bought stuff from them.

Edit typo and autononcorrect

not a wizard... I too spend time looking for the ideal DAP.

There are plenty of things that come close to what you want, like the older Shanling M1 that was controlled with a wheel...

en.shanling.com/product/223

and the old Sansa players that were plastic...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SanDisk_…

I have a Shanling Q1 and the volume knob is pissing me off bad.

I tend to feel like "has external storage" and "is built well" are mutually exclusive most of the time, but I also know there's probably some Creative Zen model that bucks this. Would have loved if my old Zen Vision:M did; probably would've replaced the teeny ZIF IDE disk with a CF to ZIF adapter and a decent SD and still be using it if so.

Definitely curious to find out! I've been thinking about similar literally this week so this is timely!

I feel ya. I keep a couple fm transmitter mp3 players in various auto glove boxes that tick all those boxes, buttons, sd card slot, not all of em have 12v plugs. Mine are plastic tho.

sigh, Ye old soundblaster mp3player...

But I do have this thing in my cart...

amazon.com/MECHEN-M30-Lossless…

If you want *the* guy, I would reach out to the rockbox forum (rockbox.org). That is a custom firmware project that supports all the best mp3 players from that era.

Peak imo was the sansa e200 series. Small, metal body, lightweight, sdcard, great interface. e280 has 8gb on board + sd card.

All the sd card mp3 players from peak era max out at 2gb sd card support.

Honourable mention: the Frontier Labs Nex IIe. AA batteries, compact flash card with no upper mem limit.

Sensitiver Inhalt Zum Öffnen/Schließen klicken

I miss the days of those sansa e200s with the detachable cap that covered the USB connection. You plugged it in, you dropped your mp3s into it, it parsed the tracks and was ready to play. The rockbox-able clip zips. The days where we had *dedicated* mp3 players that you could put in your pocket and played what you put in it. It was its own device, it didn't drain your phone's battery or took up your phone's storage.

It was simple times, and fuck do I miss it.

if you can find one: a Sansa e100.

If you yield the touchscreen ban, find a Sony Walkman NW-a55. They’re easy to import from Japan, a tool from Rockbox unlocks the language selector, and it has **hardware playback buttons*.

Legitimately wanted what you’re looking for a while ago, ended up finding the nw-a55, and other than the odd connector (which has ✨accessories✨) it’s a fuckigng fantastic piece of work.

You can read the manual here: helpguide.sony.net/dmp/nwa50/v…

in the late 2000s I was a fan of the Cowon players, which had FLAC, removable media, and buttons, and excellent sound.

Even their newer players, while more screen oriented, are still very much “load them up with files and go” although I’ve only personally used the older models.

I'm not _that_ person, but I can vouch for Sansa/SanDisk Clip+ or Clip Zip: they
- are tiny
- have goods DACs able to drive any headphone
- support FLAC
- support SDHC cards, so less wories about wearing out those old flash chips
- support RockBox

They used to be the audiophile player on the cheap, back in the days.
Nowadays, the battery and it's ability to be replaced might be a concern though 🤔

“Supports Ogg Vorbis” was how I fell into the weirder alt universe of players (iRiver, Rio). My favorite I recall being the Neuros II. It was a thin DAC wearing an entire heavy spinning laptop HDD as a backpack. The firmware was great, supported every format I threw at it. I still wonder if you replaced the HDD backpack with a modern SD or SSD how it would feel. Maybe my Neuros is still in a box somewhere for me to rediscover and try something like that.

wiki.xiph.org/PortablePlayers

I’m not an expert on the whole field, but I do own a player from that Peak MP3 period that’s a lot like what you described (except I believe internal flash storage only, no MicroSD). Importantly, it supports Ogg and FLAC too. Cowon iAudio 7, purchased in 2008.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAUDIO?w…

NetMD! you are looking for NetMD :P

Seriously tho I would talk to the rockbox folks
rockbox.org/

I think peak mp3 was mid 00s.
We have a shitton of sandisks here, because they broke. So no recommendation

I have fond memories of Rio.
So I really wonder what kind of tech you want. Flash based, miniature hardware bases? With Video playback, minimalistic like the ipod shuffle?

And bluetooth headsets were rare so old ones might suck.

Curious which one you find tho!