<story><title>New Sony Walkman music player</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/new-sony-walkman-music-players-feature-stunning-good-looks-android-12/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dsr_</author><text>The best MP3 (and FLAC) player ever made is the Sansa Clip+ with Rockbox firmware.&lt;p&gt;$50 when new. Size of a matchbox -- not the car, the small thing that restaurants and bars used to hand out as advertising. MicroSD slot for storage. 20+ hours of playtime, recharged via USB. Appears as a USB Mass Storage device, too. 3.5mm headphone jack. Small 2-part monochrome OLED display. Physical buttons: D-pad, OK, Menu, power, and volume up and down. After a day you don&amp;#x27;t need to look at it to pause&amp;#x2F;play, skip a track, change the volume or turn it on and off.&lt;p&gt;With Rockbox installed (ten minute process), you can play FLAC, use a parametric equalizer, customize the display, change playback speed for audiobooks, and generally do a few dozen things more than the factory firmware.&lt;p&gt;Rockbox lets you do the same on a large number of devices, but the Clip+ is the best.</text></item><item><author>mg</author><text>I am a huge fan of standalone mp3-players.&lt;p&gt;So much so, that at some point I made a comparison site for mp3-players. But nobody cared. I made comparison sites for smartphones, laptops and monitors which became quite popular. But for mp3-players, it seemed like I am the only person on planet earth who uses them.&lt;p&gt;Personally, I still use a Sony Walkman NWZ-E585. For me, that is the best mp3 player ever made. It has a nice form factor, feels very good haptically, the navigation interface is ok, the sound quality is great, the noise cancelling too, and you can access the storage without having to install propriatery software on your computer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jrockway</author><text>Yeah, the Clip+ with Rockbox was just incredible.  Got me through a lot of workdays in the corporate &amp;quot;no software allowed on your computer&amp;quot; days.&lt;p&gt;I was using mine in the very early days of Android existing.  Some people had them, but I didn&amp;#x27;t yet.  I got my first Android phone, moved my music over, and was ... massively disappointed.  My favorite phone incident was sitting on some flight, trying to listen to music, and my phone wouldn&amp;#x27;t play it through the headphones, speakers only, annoying everyone nearby.  I didn&amp;#x27;t listen to music on that flight and promptly switched back to a device that did not have a physical speaker.&lt;p&gt;Over time, phones rebuilt trust and I got a lot of use out of that, until Google Play Music got shut down and deleted all my music (no problem, I have it all locally).  Now I have no idea what people do and simply go without.  I guess people don&amp;#x27;t have music libraries any more and just listen to the radio for $10&amp;#x2F;month?  No thanks.  (I use foobar2000 on my desktop, and don&amp;#x27;t listen to music away from my home anymore.  Thanks technological progress?)</text></comment>
<story><title>New Sony Walkman music player</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/new-sony-walkman-music-players-feature-stunning-good-looks-android-12/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dsr_</author><text>The best MP3 (and FLAC) player ever made is the Sansa Clip+ with Rockbox firmware.&lt;p&gt;$50 when new. Size of a matchbox -- not the car, the small thing that restaurants and bars used to hand out as advertising. MicroSD slot for storage. 20+ hours of playtime, recharged via USB. Appears as a USB Mass Storage device, too. 3.5mm headphone jack. Small 2-part monochrome OLED display. Physical buttons: D-pad, OK, Menu, power, and volume up and down. After a day you don&amp;#x27;t need to look at it to pause&amp;#x2F;play, skip a track, change the volume or turn it on and off.&lt;p&gt;With Rockbox installed (ten minute process), you can play FLAC, use a parametric equalizer, customize the display, change playback speed for audiobooks, and generally do a few dozen things more than the factory firmware.&lt;p&gt;Rockbox lets you do the same on a large number of devices, but the Clip+ is the best.</text></item><item><author>mg</author><text>I am a huge fan of standalone mp3-players.&lt;p&gt;So much so, that at some point I made a comparison site for mp3-players. But nobody cared. I made comparison sites for smartphones, laptops and monitors which became quite popular. But for mp3-players, it seemed like I am the only person on planet earth who uses them.&lt;p&gt;Personally, I still use a Sony Walkman NWZ-E585. For me, that is the best mp3 player ever made. It has a nice form factor, feels very good haptically, the navigation interface is ok, the sound quality is great, the noise cancelling too, and you can access the storage without having to install propriatery software on your computer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hyperpl</author><text>I agree. There was something magical about these especially how good the sound quality is for its size and portability. I use mine at the gym and when running since you can barely feel it. It has a nice selection of apps too.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve collected 3 over the years in case any of them die off. While the battery life is still good I should probably get around to researching replacement batteries&amp;#x2F;cells while I still can.</text></comment>