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For those of you who carry mp3 players and headphones, what equipment do you carry and why? And where do you get your music from (real niggas don fuarrrk wit streaming services)? I have an Xduuo X3ii and some Koss KSC75's. The player is pretty cheap and has survived the beating it's been given for about 3 years now, but the KSC75's are a new addition and are very cheap and nice sounding. I'm considering upgrading the player to the X20 but am looking at options.

I have a 6th gen ipod nano. The one with just a square screen a clip on the back and power and volume buttons. The power button is broken and needs repairing which apparently is common failure to occur with this. I haven't been downloading anything lately but in past i got music from random forums and blogs i came across. My eabuds and headphones change too often to be worth mentioning. If I wasnt so focused on minimizing e waste id consider getting some other mp3 player since my old ipod nano doesnt have enough storage for me and using my phone drains the battery too much.

I've used those same Koss earclips for a long time myself. They're great for audio while running. All the music players sold these days suck and I'm indecisive, so I just use my 3DS to play audio files.

>>53588 I'm almost certain a 3DS is worse.

>>53590 It's pretty big but it gets the job done.

For Music either TPB for albums or YouTube with some kind of mp3 downloader for individual songs. I have an old iPod Classic that's like 30GB but its still working. The non color screen version. I dont know what gen that is. My headphones I bought some real nice earbuds for $80. They fit in my ears nice and sound great. I pulled on the cord to unplug them from my phone one day and the outer cover of the audio plug came off and the wires are exposed. This sometimes creates static sounds. I still use them but I have to be careful unplugging them now.

I use an odys MP X30, the 4gb version, it belonged to my bro, who used it since 2012. I found it again recently, in a drawer of old stuff, and decided to give it a go. The screen has a little glitch, but it doesn't hamper the function at all. As for headphones: the same old, cheapo silvercrest on-ears I've owned for 3 years. Fixed multiple times with soldering iron and insulating tape. Sound quality is good, but I somehow fvcked up the wiring, and now it's mono. Gotta fix that on the weekend. I used to download from YouTube, but since most downloaders get pulled or YouTube develops countermeasures, I've moved on to downloading from russian sites. Some of them are region restricted, but I've found that an Asian VPN location circumvents this. I use yandex.ru, and then just type in the title, artist and скачать, which is russian for download. I mostly choose lightaudio.ru or z2.fm, but still recommend ublock or other popup blockers.

I've got a FiiO M6 and a pair of Shure SE215 IEMs. The interface on the FiiO is soykafe, I wish it had more physical buttons and not a half-arsed Android-based OS, but it's small and the sound is excellent. Shure SE215 IEMs are expensive but fantastic, vit's ery reliable and you can replace individual drivers or the cable itself if any of them break.

>>53590 i can confirm it has a nice audio player

>>53590 Used to do it before i got a phone lmao. Good times.

I use Ipod Video with rockbox and Shure SE215 In Ear monitors. Overall I find this combo very enjoyable, though I am interested on trying other earphones in future. I download my music usually from SLSK or from halfchan archived sharethreads. Why? My reason is that my laptop 3.5mm output is broken and I don't have a smartphone, so it's nice to listen to music on the go though I don't usually bring my Ipod everywhere.

I want to buy one, any recommendations for a piss cheap one? I live in third world country and have no phone. I use a KZ ZSN Pro earphone that I bought at Aliexpress from China. Paid some fuarrrking bucks but it´s worth it.

I use a Fiio M3k or M5 depending on the day, and whatever cheap headphones I have laying around. Usually earbuds, but I have nicer over-ears if I'm sitting down. The M5 was purchased because I like to use bluetooth headphones when I run, and it had bluetooth, unlike the M3k. They're both fantastic. No complaints. They replaced a modded but falling apart iPod 5th gen. Truly a much better experience than a smartphone. I also use newsboat + rsync to move podcasts over every once in a while.

I used to carry an iPod 5th gen with Koss KSC75 until they both broke. I now use my smartphone with a pair of QKZ VK4's and I use Soulseek to download all of my music.

>>53626 As someone who's used the KZ ZSN Pro X, I suggest that you buy a pair of QKZ VK4's when the Pro's break. IMO they sound much better than the Pro's and are considerably cheaper. The iPod 4th gen and iPod 5th gen can be obtained (relatively) cheaply, but honestly if you wanna be budget friendly just use your smartphone with a music playing app.

>>53584 Started with a 4th gen ipod nano now i have an 160 gig ipod classic running rockbox, with some dollar earbuds from daiso. Switched from spotify because i didn't enjoy the way it formulates what you should listen to next. Acquiring music wise its a mix of soulseek, jpopsuki and cd ripping.

>>53584 What in particular makes(made?) Classic iPods and Sansa Clips so popular and culty online? In my shallow understanding, they didn't have any "audiophile" features or high-fidelity DAC hardware inside. Was it only because of free Rockbox firmware and upgradeable SSD storage (on iPods)

>>53670 >ipod classic just looked it up. over 300 bucks for an old piece of single-purpose-tech. I think i'll prefer using my old cheapo player, and n!ggerrig a magazinepouch for micro-sd cards, so i can swap them out on the go, depending on the needed playlist.

What actually makes a good high resolution audio player? Like what would be required to be the best sounding ? Im not audiophile enough to know. Considering making one if the particularly good quality ones are too expensive.

>>53676 Audio is stored digitally and when it hits your ears it's analog(ue) sound waves, air vibrations made by your headphones. The chip in the device you're using that translates it from digital files to analog(ue) sound and pushes it through the headphone jack is called the DAC (Digital to Analog(ue) Converter). Look for a media player that advertises having a good DAC and is well reviewed. Also look for codec and media format support, and battery life. Generally the user interfaces are all pretty bad, but usable. If you can get your hands on a decent DAC and build your own PMP, do it, it'd be a fun project! Not sure you'd get something as compact or cheap as the smaller media players mentioned in this thread but it'd be your own, and that's special.

>>53679 Apparently there are different kind of DAC methods. One source I read said delta-sigma modulators are the best but Im not sure.

I'd had ipod touch 5th gen. I carried it with Shure SE215 until ipod is gone. I can't still find good mp3 players which can replace the ipod position. Any good recommendation for me? A cheap and small thing is better.

i don't have a "real" mp3 player, I use either my old phone or my current phone afaik most mp3 players can't handle lastfm so I'm not really interested regarding that regarding getting music; either deemix or soulseek depending or where it's available. Occasionally I buy on bandcamp too headphones are marshall basic soykaf

>>53747 My ipod nano 6th gen updates plays to lastfm using the lastfm program on windows as soon as it gets connected. So standalone audio players work with lastfm just fine.

>>53584 I had an old no name MP3 player that was quite good, then I was gifted an LG G8x, right before LG stopped making phones. Combined with a Shure SE215, best combo ever. The quad DAC is something else. I just wish I could load an alternative OS or degoogle it. PMP's are great but finding replacement batteries is tough, I don't like carrying extra stuff either. Modern phones mostly don't have 3.5 mm jacks, so I would end up needing a USB C dac, which can make the port loose or end up breaking etc. There is the ROG phone 5 for those who want a good dac and 3.5, it will end up costing a lot either way. So better to wait a while before getting it.

I was using a cheap Xduoo before the wiring inside snapped. As a replacement, I got myself a Walkman A25 and it has been working well with little issues though I feel like I paid more than I should. As for headphones, I change depending on the situation. I live in a humid area so if I'm not dry I stick to earbuds or speakers. Otherwise an AudioTechnica ATH-WS1100. The standard earpads were nice until the skin started to peel off, sweat and trapped heat ruins any chance of me using pleather. I switched to mesh fabric and it seems have reduced the problem so far.

Soulseek is good to find music, you can find even the most obscure stuff there, though is not good to discorver new music. If you want to use it to download music, you need to know the name of the song, or artist, or album. Audio quality is not an issue, only if what you want to download is some really unknown stuff.

Sansa e260 running Rockbox OS and a few different earbuds. Rockbox OS means I can play .FLAC files, and they sound better than any other formats.

>>54006 Can Rockbox play audiobooks? (Will it remember how far through a 10 hour mp3 file you are and resume at that point if you play something else and come back?)

>>53679 I just lurk mostly. Though wanted to tell you that this was an interesting read, so thx for sharing. I don't uze MP3's for music. Smartphone instead. Though one of my oldest MP3 players is the most reliable USB storage device. Too bad the SD card reader is broken, and that it's only 1GB

>>53999 Seconding soulseek. It is especially fun because you can browse through a user's shared files.

This's what I use nowadays. The KPH301's blow away all the IEM and OEM's I've tried.

>>54200 forgot the video

>>54201 i fuarrrking love this website https://files.catbox.moe/vfk7uy.mp4

>>53584 pic related is my weapon of choice (AGPTEK U3). i have it on hand in the event that i'm without power and need to start using batteries. i'd like to invest in a rechargeable mp3 player so i don't have to drag my fuarrrking phone everywhere i go, and this thread has given me some ideas. for my headphones, i just have these apple earbuds i stole from some kid in high school. they still work like a charm though, which is a complete mystery to me. youtube-dl is almost indispensable for this sort of thing. you can just load up everything you want to listen to in a playlist and download all of it in one fell swoop instead of having to dick around with some youtube to mp3 site. would recommend. especially considering the fact that youtube has given me much better music recommendations than any other site or service i've ever used. sometimes the datamining works in your favor.

>>54221 Pic related is mine.

So many plebeians not using Rockbox'd players with carefully downloaded lossless/ripped CDs converted to Vorbis/Opus with album ReplayGain applied to save a bit of battery. >>54006 >FLAC sounds better Nice placebo. Vorbis/Opus/AAC in VBR mode at a sufficient bitrate are completely transparent in 99.99% of cases (audience clapping, white noise or castanets can still trip some codecs). In general, I really recommend https://www.audiosciencereview.com/ and https://hydrogenaud.io/ for people completely oblivious to psychoacoustics and general audio science as starting points.

>>54223 cant see soykaf with that horrid light

>>54225 If you can't hear the difference in compression levels and bitrates, you probably fuarrrked your ears with loud music or something. Not my problem.

>>54229 Studies using blind testing don't support your delusions.

Man. Why are you all fiddling with bad 128k mutt rips. Do your ears a service and obtain good quality cd rip flacs and transcode them to mp3 v0 or opus or something.

>>54229 I don't think people can recognize the difference over MP3 320Kbps. If you can, you are a lucky guy. But I'm still prefer FLAC/WAV even there're more efficient formats like Opus/AAC/Vorbis etc.

>>54231 >other people's ears not workings means yours doesn't 'mkay.

>>54234 I've been hearing this for years and I used to believe it, but it's flat out untrue. I can ALWAYS tell the sound quality of a file, and particularly when a file is encoded badly or is <1000kbps. I can't tell the difference between files 2000kbps and up, though.

>>54239 With really good speakers you can tell right away mp3 vs flac, audio quality even in cheap speakers and headphones improved so greatly you dont even need expensive ones. Dont go down the rabbit hole with audiophiles about room acoustics, you would need to be filthy rich to afford a proper setup. When it comes to great media enjoyment everything matters.

>>54239 Unless you're doing a double blind test you could easily be falling for a placebo effect.

>>54239 Use ABX to open your eyes/ears. >or is <1000kbps Do you even know what you're talking about? FLAC routinely compresses to less than that. Anyway, anyone claiming to hear the difference between something like Opus/Vorbis/AAC at 256k (completely overkill, 128k is often enough for both Opus and a good AAC-LC encoder) is delusional; especially if this person claims that the difference is "obvious". >With really good speakers you can tell right away mp3 vs flac, audio quality I use Genelec 8030C speakers with room correction via DRC-FIR/brutefir and Shure SRH1540 headphones with its LF response corrected via Oratory1990's latest measurement. I archive everything in CD quality FLAC (because hi-res is snake oil) and can tell you that well-encoded lossy is transparent, at least for modern codecs (Opus and AAC, Vorbis can have some pre-echo issues). PS: Even though MP3 as a format is obsolete, LAME did an incredible job of pioneering lossy coding based on a psychoacoustic model.

>>54243 >double blind test Okay Mr. Scientist, here's what usually happens: 1. I download some music from soulseek, making sure it's flac (soulseek doesn't list kbps for flac files, just bit/sample rate) 2. I click on the file and let it open in fb2k; I haven't seen any details of the file. 3. The sound feels like a wall hitting my ears, I can't distinguish instruments from one another, it hits my ear like a wall. 4. I say to myself "it has to be about 800 to 900" 5. Check the file 6. it's 870 This happened when I got a Gorillaz album. I know that isn't a "double blind" test (even though that testing technique would be uneccesary for a test like this and you're only bringing it up to sound smart and discredit me), but I think it works. It used to be the same for 320kbps files a few years ago, but I've been listening to high quality music for a while.

>>54240 I'm done with that stuff; I have speakers, a stereo, and headphones that I love.

>>54248 >FLAC routinely compresses to less than that There are formats other than FLAC, and what you said is generally untrue. >especially if this person claims that the difference is "obvious". Which I never did. It's obvious to me because I've trained my ears to be like that; there are a lot of people who don't know the difference between good audio/speakers versus bad ones, much like there are slobs that can't tell the difference between craft Malbec and box wine.

>>54249 I never said it's not possible. There likely are people with better hearing than what an average person can get to when having ear training. Just saying there also are people who think they hear a difference when they don't if they know what they are listening to. Also not much point in sounding smart on an imageboard where I have no online identity built up. I'm just another Lainon.

>>54223 You do know that lasers don't make for great photography lighting, right?

>>54249 > The sound feels like a wall hitting my ears, I can't distinguish instruments from one another, it hits my ear like a wall. oh goddamnit i repeated myself

>>54259 He's hacking the Gibson leave him alone

whaddya think of this? This used to be my old kit with Blons (which were absolute garbage, mind you)

>>54390 Where do you keep it for listening? Seems rather big to use on the pocket, even if it's a winter coat.

>>54390 Dang that's pretty frigging cool. Liking the hardware and the way you strapped it together. Personally I dislike earbuds. There was only one kind of earbuds I loved and actually wore, but something pulled on the wires too hard and killed em. Since then I rock headphones. Are the knobs a pain to deal with when you store it somewhere on you?

>>54393 mi bolsillo :) >>54395 I don't waer earphones anymore either; they hurt my ears and I'm nervous when I cant hear my surroundings. I switched over to some Koss overears about a year ago now and they're better than the moondrops I was wearing before. The knobs are fine because they all stick up the same way, so putting was in my pocket is pretty easy.

Rockbox'd flash modded ipod Mini 2nd Gen with a pair of Audio Technica ATH-EQ300Ms. I like how light they are, often times they don't even feel like they're there at all. Does take a little bit of breaking in before you get to that point however. As for my music, I have a collection of .m4as from when I used my phones to download music from youtube with newpipe, and I have a bunch of music that I bought from bandcamp after I got the ipod.

>>54390 That is cyb as fuarrrk I never had an mp3 player, i listen to music on my smarthphone. I got a good piece of some known good soykaf brand that i cant remember now, i found them once and other good headphones too.

>>54417 shame on you lol

>>54390 audiophiles be like

>>53584 used to carry a zishan z2 around with earbuds like ve monks but I find it too bulky and just using a btr5 now when I upgrade my phone I am gonna go and get a usb c dongle dac for it and use foobar. I only carry my phone and a small wallet these days and if I am out for longer a btr5 and nicehck mx500 pk1's or ve monk plus

>>53584 I used a sansa clip+ for quite a while with thinksound ts02 earphones but eventually I accepted the smart meme and bought a non google poweramp licence to use with my phone. Current earphones I'm enjoying the most are unironically kbear stellar earbuds I got for £3, really nice sound to them and they're incredibly comfortable, I've tried most of the iememes below £100 and I have to say the iem market has really lost its way, nothing is comfortable anymore

>>53584 Headphones emit too much EMF, it's not healthy and I recommend not using them.

>>54485 You comment in every thread in anyway computer related with these little whining non comments about emf Please with get a less annoying hobby

>>54485 headphones emit microteslas of magnetic fields but there is never enough research around fields and its effects on humans and "bad" doesn't mean it's dangerous, our body synthesizes dangerous chemicals too. wireless energy (requiring no "wires") is somewhat taboo of a discussion that science/academe try to avoid. coils and stuff actually have weird effect and is the cornerstone for certain occult practices. what's not healthy though is cell/radio towers and sat/military radars for sure, it's all about the power.

>>54229 The "audible differences" is usually only about frequency cut offs which different codecs have. For opus and mp3 it's about 22kHz but there's a method to feed mp3 encoder 48kHz resampling for full resolution with SRC but this means you're still limited to 320kbps which means while you maintain higher resolution/frequencies you lose some of the details. This is the vertical axis but a good compression (complexity) means there should be less distortion. I can say using opus or mp3 is probably inferior to other codecs which support higher modes of sample rates but this means it's biased. The bitrate (320kbps vs 2000kbps) can only be audibly tested for its horizontal axis, it means higher bit rate means it can be stretched and sound not-so choppy and as clear but let's not forget about the possibility of digital and analog jitter. Lets say you slow down a 2000kbps audio to 16% of that it would sound the same as a 320kbps audio so it's great for audio remixing but you can't slow down a 320kbps audio down to 16% of itself and expect horizontal data (over time). The only difference when comparing bitrates is more modern codecs that support 320kbps is probably much more higher quality than a classic mp3, this is due to different computational complexity and techniques used but some can probably attribute the to the problems (like pre-echo) revolving the resampler which you can't typically pick when compressing audio with their respective audio encoder (e.g, lame, vorbis probably defaults to src normal quality) >>54229 Or it could be incapable equipment, some audio equipment have high frequency cut offs so it's not possible to tell the difference between 48kHz/44.1kHz with those. But that's not really the tip of the iceberg, the real problem in music world is the excessive use of dynamic "radio" replay gain for CD quality since every record typically align with the loudness of other well-known releases so they're forced to put gain (otherwise they use microphone with built-in gain presets), and they also apply voice compensation ("vocal compression") for speakers, since music are meant to be played over mall or car ambient speakers so they should have equal loudness and require no volume level tinkering each song and this means all CD releases are in one way or another kinda fuarrrked in its own way, and have distortions you can inspect in any soundwave viewing program. And let's not forget about autotune.. and the fact they layer audio by panning volumes which doesn't sound good on headsets.

>>54435 I havent seen that image a million times already, wow

>>54500 I used to get headaches whenever I used planar magnetics lol

>>54528 you can buy one of the cheapest emf meters you can find (the one with Teslas) and it does change magnetic fields which is somewhat bad for probably those who have inclination to electromagnetic sensitivity (like bees/birds/sharks) so the headache is probably caused by the alternating EM fields, you can even probably put a compass near the device and see how much it interferes with the natural field.

>>54229 Post abx too short too short

>>54532 I used to have one for positioning my cables and computers around my room so they wouldnt interfere with my radios or sleeping/sitting areas. I'll try to find it and see what it measures when my headphones are driven by a couple of amps

Got an iPod 5th Gen Video in the mail today. It's quite ironic how it's the most freedom respecting in terms of both repairability (plenty of parts online, easy to open) and software (Rockbox). Can't find many like that today. Looking forward to doing a HDD to SD card mod and then loading the device with early 2000s screamo-core-wave-tunes-by-some-old-dude.

I've got a Sony NW-A25. It's my fourth Sony MP3-player. I've also got a cute little Creative.

I was thinking about repairing and upgrading my iPod 5th gen. Looking to see if you guys have any recommendations? I am already going to fix the battery and hard drive.

I've got a Rockboxed 5.5g iPod Classic in a chink U2 shell with 4x64GB microSD cards installed along with a set of PortaPros >where do you get your music from Torrents, Soulseek, ripping CDs

>>54705 >Torrents, Soulseek, ripping CDs Good man. Do you do any vinyl?

>>54571 Why would this iPod that is Rockbox compatible be any more or less freedom compatible than any other Rockbox compatible device?

>go to physical music store >browse physical music CDs with my fingers, make my own choices and never have anything nerosuggested to me by The Algorithm >pay with physical money >leave with CD in my hands >I own it now, I didn't lease it, my abilty to listen to it cannot be taken from me by a Corp that decides to ban me for whatever reason >walk home >put CD into my Gnu-Linx PC >rip the CD into high quality .FLAC files >copy files to my Sandisk Sansa e260 running Rockbox >Listen forever

>>54839 I'm looking at freedom from both sides, not just software. Repair parts are hard to come by if at all and for better or worse there's an absurd abundance of older Apple repair parts. Though I guess it's not as comparable as a truly modular device made to actually *be* repairable, but those are basically nonexistent.

>>54840 What's the point in making it FLAC format when the format on most CDs is mp3?

>the format on most CDs is mp3 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LPCM I.e uncompressed

>>54858 Are you joking, kid? CD-DA as defined by the Red Book only contains stereo 16 bits 44.1 kHz PCM. MP3 on CD has no standard by itself, it's just a CD-R/CD-RW with a bunch of MP3 files at the root.

>>54832 No, I don't have a decent record player yet. I've got a cheap one that can rip straight to an SD card but only MP3 so I've never bothered

I'm sick of the tech rat race in audio stuff, I had big Sennheiser cans and different IEMs and all that crap and honestly absolutely none of the stuff people say is amazing is worth it, the koss headphones I bought with my Sunday job when I was 15 are way more comfortable and about as good sounding as them, if I sit with both beside me and swap between them I can sometimes tell the difference and see where my other $200 are going but in real use there's no functional difference None of this soykaf matters, anything past basic entry-fi kit is a waste of money

>>55123 you have small ears

>>55123 Sennheisers sound like soykaf and IEMs are horrible when it comes to imaging and soundstage, I'm not surprised your Koss headphones outperformed both. I push DSD files through open AEON 2's with an Asstell&Korn player, and it sounds better than my old xduuo and much better than my old samsung

>>54843 Indeed for any given mass-produced produce, spare parts are cheaper and easier to find than for any given right-to-repair respecting Louis Rossman and iFixit certified, assembled from non-conflict minerals and without slave labor electronic gadget sold to virtue signalling reddtors at small production batch. E.g. you'll find spare parts for any old Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi device in any part of the world at classifieds or street repair shops in comparison to eh, ordering Fairphone camera for €79.95 from Germany by airmail? How sustainable! read in Captain Sweden voice

>>55185 What does that even mean? My hearing is fine, I got it tested less than 2 months ago

>>55208 I cant even understand what you said. ESL?

>>53584 used to hip carry a sansa clip with rockbox. microsd and all the loseless files you could want. it even played doom

Just got a ipod gen 5 video off ebay and installed rockbox. Thanks for the recommendations lainons, really liking it so far. It's about time I get off the Spotify yoke; the 320 kbps already sounds miles better than Spotify. Question: what's the best format for music files? My intuition is to torrent FLAC and then convert it into something manageable. Also, how do you all organize your music? Foobar or something?

>>55228 >best format for music files? opus >Also, how do you all organize your music? Manually. Everything's stored like Music/Artist/Album (year)/tracks

I had a iPod 5th gen and some off brand serviceable over ear headphones but the hard drive on the iPod died and now I gotta mod in some flash storage.

I have rejected all in ear and wireless memes and returned to earbuds the way God intended and I'm really incredibly impressed for the money I spent. Might look into mmcx modding these for fun, I wish they were slightly smaller in ear though, they're comfy but like 0.2mm off being perfect wear all day comfy I only wish there was a sanitary way to get iems and earbuds second hand, iems at least you can change the tips but earbuds you can't really do anything, I hate buying stuff new.

>>55273 Earbuds are just as bad. On/Over ear or bust

>>55291 these are pretty bad, I hed them for a week before I returned it. Evevrybody I asked, headphone people or not, said they sounded like soykaf

>>55291 I have a pair of porta pros actually and while they sound good they're uncomfortable to me, even with yaxi pads and the parts express band I can't seem to stand anything other than small in ears or earbuds for long periods of time