Comment by nl
4 days ago
> If I want to buy a new MP3 player, I have to buy something from a company I've never heard of with a terrible screen, use an old phone, or buy some sort of enthusiast audiophile flac player thing that costs way too much.
Is this surprising?
They are a commodity (you can literally build a fairly decent for less than $10 in parts) so therefore are low profit. Brands you have heard of generally don't want to play in commodity markets.
The alternative is to move upmarket where prestige or specific features are important:
> some sort of enthusiast audiophile flac player thing that costs way too much.
There you go.
> Why can't somebody take simple smartphone hardware and make a modern media player that is not a phone?
They can and do. Look on Amazon.
They call into the two buckets you outline above. Just buy one of the $50 ones from the companies you haven't heard of.
I've bought several of these and they don't last. You're right that they are commodity items. The components and quality are shit, there's no support, and six months later the company has vanished.
I guess I just want somewhere between $30 and $500, somewhere between absolutely piece of shit and extreme prestige. But I'm dreaming if I think anyone is going to serve that market
Doesn't Fiio and the like make a bunch of fairly affordable stuff ? Definitely well under 500$
Apparently they do, but I'd never heard of them before this thread
Sounds like you're unironically describing a Tangara [0]. They most certainly hit their goal, though I can't verify if they get restocked or how often.
Mine's lasted, and it works pretty well, though the touchwheel isn't quite on-par with an iPod. I like the modern connector and openness (both hardware and software) though
[0] https://www.crowdsupply.com/cool-tech-zone/tangara
it's a little weird but most of the sub $50 ESP-32 boards on waveshare include an MP3 player as one of many demo bits of code (primarily because it shows off code for "read from microSD card" and "drive the DAC".) It's not quite what you're asking for, just a benchmark that it's kind of "too easy to build" which might get in the way of actual products.
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