I have an old Fiio music player but I would like a better one. My current player (years old) does not support BlueTooth. I have a new set of headphones (Sennheiser Momentum 4) that has BlueTooth.
When I look at amazon I see .. (approximate prices) ..
AiMoonsa ~ £30 (never heard of them)
HifiWalker ~ £120 (ditto)
FiiO (M21) ~ £350 (upwards)
Astell and kern ~ don’t ask
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Here is what I want (I want to use it when travelling on trains, boats or aeroplanes – not walking in the street)
I want to listen to music stored on the device. No interest in connecting to the internet (I have not signed up to any streaming services). No interest in video.
Don’t want it to double as a mobile phone and download apps.
Decent sound
Physical (analog) connection to headphones but also BlueTooth.
Decent user interface (not necessarily great but not dire either).
Decent battery life.
Not pushed about size, weight, colour etc.
The amazon devices get good reviews on amazon (that’s amazing!) but I found a review (elsewhere) of the HiFiWalker that said the user interface was really bad.
I don’t want to spend a fortune because I don’t travel that much.
I would like the option of extending the memory with a memory card.
CD quality is enough but if higher quality is available (including DSD) that’s a bonus.
I have always found Fiio to offer a good balance between quality and cost and have a Fiio M23 which is superb! Beautifully built, flawlessly reliable and great sounding with mny technics EAH AZ100’s.
I have an Astell & Kern SP1000M. The sound quality is fantastic, but the user interface is awful.
I say it’s awful; I use Qobuz and getting Qobuz loaded onto it was an ordeal, requiring a Computer Sciences degree. I got the player a while ago, so things may have improved now. Once fully set up, the SQ outweighs the other issues. If you’re transferring music in from local files then the set-up might be a whole lot easier. Good luck in your search.
For a sub £500 budget you should be able to get a secondhand AK380. This player is head and shoulders above the lower cost AKs in sound that I have either had, heard or tried. It has Bluetooth APTx onboard, has a decent battery life and can take a 1TB Micro SD card alongside its own 256GB internal memory.
Recently bought a sony wm1z for £600 in Japan, actually it’s my second time having it, and won’t part with it this time.
Always miss it in the last 8 years, can never forget the warmth and rich sound which is really rare in modern days. And that totally dark background and rounded bass, overall sounds like a Luxman L550AXII.
One of the few devices I use before sleeping (other are kindle/kobo fully silent machine for reading) If you are not into warm sound wm1a is great choice.
The 1Z is a lovely device. Coming up to 8 years of ownership and with the internal memory and its ability to take a 1Tb memory card, I can take my whole music collection with me.
Its very hard to beat an old phone and a mojo 2 on sound quality and can be had very cheaply.
Ok its not the most friendly when it comes to neat, compact. But if you have old phone that can take a micro card, then you are all set to go.
I do just this with my old Samsung phone, plus i can stream from it as well if i want, but mainly just play from the memory xard
Forgive me, I know you specifically said you didn’t want to use a phone, but FWIW I use an iPhone Max Pro with 1TB of memory, which is simply vast.
I use it mainly for travelling. You can use it bare, with a Dragonfly (I do sometimes and it sounds great) or as other have said, a more bulky but excellent Mojo (2).
I find it very good for commuting and longer journeys. I am sure a more expensive dedicated player would be better sonically, but it’s a compromise whatever you do.
I was always gonna buy the phone anyway, so virtually no real cost (I’ve had the Dragonfly years).
I can stream from Tidal, but I have a huge downloaded library which is my goto.
Added bonus that I have a lot of audiobooks and 100’s of classic movies downloaded, in case I fancy those.
As I say, a compromise. Super easy, convenient and cheap versus potentially much better sound.
You pays your peas and takes your choice.
Good luck whichever way you go. Tell us what you got, and why
Using an old mobile phone plus DAC is something I had not considerred. My wife upgraded her phone a few years ago and the old one (Nokia) is somewhere in the house.
I would start by trying it with BlueTooth because I think in that case the DAC is in the headphones (I know it’s not lossless).
To clarify .. I don’t want to use my main phone in case I use up the battery but happy to use a second phone (without sim card) and an external DAC. (My son has suggested an A+K dongle for a few hundred £)
I am not to keen on second hand stuff unless it has a replaceable battery (I don’t mind second hand stuff in general and most of my naim stuff is second hand). I don’t want to buy something on the internet and find it needs a new battery and I can’t get anyone to repair it.
I bought the Sennheiser Momentum 4 for the noise cancelling option since I want them for flights. I tried using them with my mobile phone over BlueTooth and the sound was not that bad and easier than plugging in cables. I suspect that on a plane with all the noise BlueTooth is probably nearly as good as a cable from a dedicated player.
If I go the spare mobile phone route I may buy a dongle DAC.
Yep old phone, no sim, just memory card.
I have put velcro on both my phone and mojo so they stick together, very short cable between both and ready to go.
This combo sounds absolutely amazing, it cost about £250 if you take the old phone out the mix, and can certainly compete with anything you want to try beat it at any price.
As said the only thing is it doesn’t look that tidy, but in your pocket or bag, who cares.
I have a 1tb card in mine and never run out of music and use a free app to control it all. It works very well, much better than using the poly, which i also have.
I’ve found my wife’s old phone (Nokia TA-1060 running Android 10) and I am charging it. I will try, over the weekend, to get it working with my headphones using BlueTooth.
Not disagreeing with the ‘old phone, no sim’ strategy, but if you are going to strap an old phone to a Mojo, you could equally strap a power bank to the Mojo and use your current phone (assuming you’re carrying your phone anyway).
That way you have extra power, and probably a more modern phone (more memory, bigger screen - in my case??) and live streaming if you so wished.
Having said that, a sim-only phone and a Mojo is a pretty good solution
