It’s a Creative Zen Stone that I got as a Christmas gift in 2008. I just found it in a drawer, and it’s still holding charge. The last thing I put on it was The Life And Times Of Scrooge by Tuomas Holopainen, in 2015 – I don’t know why, at that time I definitely had a smartphone.
It has a headphone jack, which immediately makes it better than every smartphone produced in the last several years, and it can easily drive my 80-ohm Beyerdynamic. The audio quality is as good as one can expect. The only drawback is that it only holds 1GB… my old CD rips had to be compressed to hell and back.
Let me reiterate that this has been sitting untouched for a decade and was immediately ready for action. No login, no annoying software updates, expired subscription, or remote bricking by the manufacturer. Eat my shorts, Spotify Car Thing.
P.s. A Lifetime Of Adventure is a banger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWwSVOo5K_k
The phone is terrible for listening to music while riding a motorcycle or bicycle.
Impossible to use a touchscreen without looking at it.
Over the years I’ve used a series of cheap players. For the past few years sandisc clip, last I checked discontinued, replaced with something 4 times the price. I have a few different makes & models. I like to give them away as sort of a digital mix tape of a few 1000 songs I need tactile buttons, which I augment with stick on jewels so I can operate with gloves for the pause/play & next song. Ideally single click for either function. My helmets either have headphone pockets or I add them. Wired headphones, no BT disconnect, no dead batteries.
I clip the player to my right lapel so I can change songs without taking my hand off the throttle :D.
The random on everything including ipods sucks, I usually do a bunch of folders with 200-500 files each