Ask Lemmy

You can install rockbox on the Hifi Walker H2.

When buying hardware in the present age, shop for FOSS software you want to run first. Then, clone the git in full. Finally, use the gource package to create a visual tree video that plays against the commit history. This will show you who is getting their pulls merged, how often, and how they contribute to the project.

What you're looking for is who is consistent, and what they are using for hardware. It will always be obvious on larger projects. They will make little tweaks and changes a bunch between the hardware and software.

You may see stuff like company employees and subcontracting devs come in and make large commits that support some specific hardware, but if you watch carefully, these are only a handful of commits, and then they never return. They likely had a checklist in a contract, completed it, and got paid. They will never return. Likewise, if one of the main devs gets a new device, they will shift to it and you're unlikely to see them make any further commits to the old stuff. The timespan between this transition infers much about the state of the old device support. Maybe just ask them why they switched and what is missing on the old stuff, or just cd to the hardware supporting directory and do $ grep -rin todo or similar types of stuff like code comments or words like hack or need.

Hardware specs and advertising nonsense are worthless and irrelevant. Don't let highway robbers dictate your expectations. The only products that exist are those with FOSS support, so start with the FOSS and ignore everything else as criminal warlords. Who gives a fuck what products and deals the proprietary fascists churn out of Auschwitz or a Palestinian camp.

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.

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.

Unfortunately, the only open source physical media player I'm aware of is the Tangara. Their most recent blog post is from July, 2025, and mentions some tweaks they want to make before doing another production run. So there might be more units coming, but there will be a wait.

Have you considered just putting the files on your phone? If you are okay with MP3 compression, the files won't take much space. But you could also use an SD card or a USB-C USB-Stick.

And I'm sure there are plenty of FOSS media player apps out there. Especially if you are willing to install APKs from outside the play store.

I should also add some nice to haves I guess haha, I prefer physical buttons to touch screen. SD card support would be a big plus. I am not an audiophile so by quality I mean build quality rather than audio quality. I even use BT headphones (forgive my sins)

if you can find one for cheap nearby, an ipod is decent. the full sized models can take large ssds and run foss rockbox fw. the price is insane in my area though so i can't have one, but my friend uses it and it's great.

I've been thinking about it. I've been considering lately buying a cheap second hand phone compatible with lineageOS and use it exclusively as an mp3 player without a sim card.

I agree that spending time fixing metadata is not great. It is easily fixable by ripping from qobuz/others and/or using better torrenting websites, with higher quality uploads.

I haven't bought one in a while because I'm still using the one I bought a decade ago, but Cowon makes really good media players. They can play lossless media, too, if that's your thing.

Wildly, I recall there’s still a community out there that use the Zune. Software is still available and you can find them on eBay. Honestly miss mine. Had the 1TB version and that thing was great