I’m looking for a BIFL (or at least last me for a while) music player that can play .wav files, has a lot of storage, is portable, and the parts are able to be replaced/upgraded. I’ve heard about using iPod classics but it seems like they’re unable to play .wav files. Any reccomendations?
If you replace the firmware on an iPod classic with Rockbox, it supports wav out of the box!
That’s cool but uh… that’s pretty far from out of the box.
You can source a modified iPod (5.5 Gen with Wolfson DAC) that comes with:
- Rockbox preinstalled
- an upgraded battery(3 days continuous playback, tested this week)
- 256GB or 512GB solid-state drive
With 4,756 CC tunes, it makes for an excellent compact jukebox.
Why wav, out of curiosity?
I assume they want full quality audio but don’t know that flac exists
I once had a debate with my audiophile uncle about how lossless compression results in identical inputs to the DAC, but he clung to the illusory superiority of WAV.
“okay. all i hear is words. i know the WAVs work and i like how they sound. can you please just make the WAVs work?”
I can see someone not caring about the wasted space in 2024, but does WAV have the ability to store ReplayGain tags?
Nah, I’m aware of flac, but I’ve had issues with compatibility that I don’t have with wav files.
What type of issues? Did you get error messages?
Lotta times in file players it’ll say unregonized file type
Which players? FLAC has been around for over 20 years, so players that don’t recognize it probably need to be updated :D
Apple music, Protools, Logic (although those two are DAWs), VLC
Wow, apple needs to update their garbage lmao
Damn, that’s embarrassing. Jeez!
Sony Walkman are the only company that takes making music players seriously today that I can think of. Probably not repairable so not really BIFL but worth taking a look.
75 for that ancient thing with 8 gb storage?
No, I meant one of the more premium ones in the page I linked. BIFL rarely, if ever means the cheapest option.
I got that, but I was just not expecting that awful valued pos. They must have manufactured way too much 10-15 years ago.
Without running afoul of the BIFL ethos, I wonder why you can’t just use your smartphone?
No smartphones are BIFL, but you’re always going to have one, and even if you insist on WAV instead of MP3 or FLAC, you can still fit a pretty big music collection in local storage.
No headphone jack, and I want a dedicated device so I’m not as reliant on my phone.
I have a OnePlus Nord w/a headphone jack, use Musicolet player, have SD card that supports up to 2TB if I remember correctly (I’m using a smaller card right now). Supports wav & flac (which is what I use). It’s a great player, and sometimes I use it as a phone. :)
I hope you meant 2TB not 2GB
Fixed. Yes I did.
A Qudelix solves the first part but not the second. Though you might be able to bluetooth it to your computer if you’re at home and your place is small.
No headphone jack
This doesn’t address the phone reliance bit, but you can stick a passthrough USB-C audio interface on the end of your headphones cable.
Stuff like this:
https://www.amazon.com/JacobsParts-Headphone-Charging-Passthrough-Converter/dp/B09HJQJSWY
Then you don’t tie up your USB-C jack.
Ooh, nice. I didn’t realize those exist. Is there any impact on audio quality?
Well, absent some kind of sample rate conversion that I wouldn’t expect running into, the audio is identical from a digital standpoint, so up until the point where it sees analog conversion, no.
Once you convert it to analog…I mean, it’s a DAC. Could be better or worse than a DAC built into your phone. Nothing intrinsically requires one be better than the other.
I had a phone with a headphones jack, some time back, that had poor power regulation on its internal DAC. If I was charging my phone in my car while playing back music, noise leaked into the audio. I wound up getting a tiny Bluetooth receiver with its own DAC and plugging that into the car’s auxiliary audio input to avoid that. That phone didn’t have a great DAC.
But I’m sure that you can also make a USB-C audio interface with a bad DAC. I have a USB-powered analog mixer that also lets a noticeable amount of noise in when plugged into my USB hub. I put it on a dedicated USB power supply to reduce that.
As far as I know, nobody’s tried rounding up a bunch of USB-powered DACs, feeding them dirty power, and measuring the amount of noise that comes out of them, so… shrug Probably have to try one and see how that one compares.
Ive owned 2 Hiby devices, and bought one for my Mother for a Christmas gift. Honestly its such a niche piece of tech that there’s not really a pro repair company making DAPs, I think IBasso make DAPs with somewhat removable batteries but they charge a pretty penny, maybe hold out till post 2027 to see if some companies conform to EU regulations with user serviceable batteries.
Alas, HIBY are my favourite go to, the R4 is a value king around 250 and my personal DAP currently, the R3 ii is also a good choice at 150/175. But if thats too much, they do cheaper models at 90-ish for the R1.
Pretty excited to see mine show up in checks notes march of next year.
Monodeal CD707 is a discman that can play WAV/FLAC/MP3 from flashcard or CDs. Can cast to FM or Bluetooth. Headphone jack. USBC charging.
I just got done watching a video where a dude built a TinyLlama computer to install DOS and a DOS based MP3 player. Since it’s DOS based, you should fairly easily be able to install a WAV file player on it instead, or in addition to an MP3 player…
The player software in that video, MPXPlay supports WAV “out-of-the-box”, so to speak.
That’s cool 👍
I was the commenter that mentioned to him that Nullsoft, the developers of Winamp, also made DOSamp, a DOS based MP3 player. Unfortunately it only plays MP3s, but given that their mascot is a llama, it definitely should be installed on the TinyLlama as well.
WinampDOSamp, it really whips the llama’s ass!
Oooh, thank you. I’ll check it out.
Check out fiio or other audiophile portable players. Maybe more pricey but I think some of them will fit your needs
