Hello fellow lemmings <3
I have been struggling with how to listen to music in a while now. I am on spotify but I don’t want to be. I despise the app for being inefficient, battery hog bloated crap that I don’t need in my phone and that’s not even beginning with my issues with the company.
So I have been looking into other solutions for my music needs.
I tried setting up my own server for streaming music, but it’s too much manual work, that still uses a lot of resources for a subpar experience. Going through the albums and sorting them and fixing the metadata and all that because musicbrainz insists this live track is the same as the studio one is not fun and I’m just over it.
So I’m going back to the roots, physical music player. I am looking into buying a device just like those old mp3 players but I’m not sure which way to go.
For me the most important feature (other than quality ofc) is it having FOSS software. I won’t be tweaking with the hardware but being able to modify the software, at least to a degree, for me is the main attraction. If it already has an active community then even better.
Do you guys have similar experiences or anecdotes? Perhaps device recommendations? Other solutions are also welcome I am still shopping for ideas
Thanks y’all!
Take a look at the Fiio Echo Mini. They’re under $100 and have every feature you requested. They just so happen to also look and sound amazing.
Buyer beware though. The controls are very mid-00’s meaning it will take some time to build muscle memory and get used to the menu navigation.
Edit: I just noticed your FOSS mention. This one doesn’t have that but I’ll leave this here only because I don’t know of any FOSS options that aren’t DIY or prohibitively expensive.
The Echo Mini is pretty good and they’ve been updating the firmware to add stuff for a while now. My biggest gripes with it would be there is a hard limit of a little over 8000 songs even if there is enough space for more on your SD card. It’s something to do with how it indexes the library. It also doesn’t really support playlists, although I think the most recent update allows you to play everything within a genre so you could do some shenanigans with that.
Yeah a bit of FOSS issue, but while we’re on this topic if I can’t find my ideal device I have been eyeing the hifi h2 thingy. Seems to do the job but yeah the echo mini looks adorable