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!

  • Seefra 1@lemmy.zip
    31·
    2 days ago

    What’s wrong with just using a phone and playing from it’s memory or micro SD card? Why do people insist on streaming even from a home server?

    Buying a high end DAP seems like an unnecessary expense in 2026.

    Does your phone have a small internal memory and no card slot? In that case you can still probably find an old phone with micro SD and a replacement battery for much cheaper than a high end music player.

    I have a 512 GB microsd on my phone and more music than I can possibly listen in a lifetime on it.

    I have 128kbps mp3 and 64kbps opus on it, and seriously, that’s more than enough bitrate for outside use. Whatever loss in quality those files may have, it’s undistinguishable in most situations people usually use personal music players for.

    Music player Go, is the only app (on Fdroid) that I know that can handle my library tho, all others tend to crash.

    https://github.com/enricocid/Music-Player-GO

    And don’t forgot to install James DSP.

    For old phones RockBox for android works well.

    • zo0@programming.devOPEnglish
      2·
      1 day ago

      All valid points, except 128kbps mp3, that is straight up nasty unless your whole library is black metal I guess :))

      But yeah storage smol, no sd hole

      • Seefra 1@lemmy.zip
        1·
        1 day ago

        128kbps mp3, that is straight up nasty unless your whole library is black metal

        I think 128kbps mp3 has a really bad reputation because most people associate it with those early 2000s encodes, a modern 128kbps file encoded with a modern version of LAME will sound pretty good imo, technically not as good as an opus or vorbis at the same bitrate, but still only noticeable when compared side by side in a very good listening environment.