If I wanted an MP3 player again, in 2023, and wanted to rip cds to it and put digitally purchased albums on it, as actual owned files (not inside an proprietary ecosystem where I pay to only listen to that track within that service) could I still do that? What would I need? I don’t own, and can’t afford, a “real computer”, but i recall having lots of compatibility issues at the time between my mp3 player and computer os anyway. I’ve got an ipad and a pixel. Is there any feasible, non-ridiculously-difficult way to do this? Do they still sell any mp3 players? Do any of the old ones work with modern tech? I miss hearing my music on a simple, quiet, offline device without ads or streaming services.
As others have suggested you could just your phone as an MP3 player, which I have been doing for multiple years now and works just fine, you just need an app for playback (you could just use something that’s already on the phone, but the experience will definitely be better with something dedicated); I use Poweramp, which is like 5 bucks but it’s definitely worth that much. If you want to use an MP3 player, they definitely still make these, from cheap ones for like 20 bucks to, in my opinion, completely overpriced ones for 300+ bucks for audiophiles. If you also want to rip your CDs, you can try this reddit thread. They used a tablet but I guess it should work an android phone just as well (unless Pixel doesn’t want to…)
There are lots of MP3 players on aliexpress for under $20. You just need to get the audio files on a micro sd card.
You will need a PC if you want to rip CDs. You should be able to find an old, used laptop with a CD drive pretty cheaply, possibly even free.You can just buy a usb cd drive. No need to get an old laptop. Spend 20 bucks and use your modern pc.
OP specified that they do not have a PC. They have a Pixel phone and an iPad. I’m not sure if there are any Android or iOS apps that support connecting to a CD drive to rip audio files.
You can connect a usb cd drive to android. Probably depends on your phone and you might need some adapter but android is pretty robust that way. I don’t know what apps they could use to rip music from cd on android though.
So then just get a real computer. Go to goodwill or ebay and get yourself one of those $20 HP desktops the size of a book. It will be more than adequate for putting music on an MP3 player.
I think you’ll need a “real computer” to act as host device. Having said that, you could use a Raspberry Pi to be your “real computer”. You might be able to fake something out, but an MP3 player will usually act as a storage device, and another device will have to act as host to load it with files. You might find an MP3 player that can connect to some cloud service, but that undermines the whole point.
I’ve currently got 2 functioning MP3 devices. Well, technically 1, since I gave one to my dad.
The one I gave to my dad is this guy, a Sandisk Sansa Clip. It connects as an MTP device via USB cable. Copy files into it’s storage, disconnect, and go. Any computer capable of acting as an MTP host should work.
The one still in my possession is an earlier version of this one, the Mixxtape. They are regularly on sale for around $60 USD IIRC, so not the cheapest, but it can also play back via a tape deck, like my very first MP3 player, the Digisette Duo Aria MP3 player, with a whopping 32MB of storage! I guess my first MP3 player wasn’t the most capable, but the Mixxtape evokes that nostalgia for me, plus is far more capable. Again, it mounts as an MTP storage device, so any other device capable of hosting an MTP connection should work.
As to your comment on OS, I’ve been using Linux primarily for well over a decade, and it supports MTP just fine. The only problem you’ll run into is older MP3 players from before USB Mass Storage Class (MSC), Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) and Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) were widespread. I think some early models had custom file transfer schemes. That hasn’t been a thing for well over a decade. Except maybe for iDevices. Apple (as always) is special. From my experience, plugging any MSC/PTP/ or MTP device into just about any Linux computer will “just work”. It should “just work” for Windows as well.
Finally, a “real computer”. Something like a Raspberry Pi 400 kit should work fine, but there are also lots of perfectly fine ex-office computers for sale refurbished at similar prices. Best Buy also has refurbs. An old laptop would work as well. You might be able to use the Pixel to host. I know the Pixel supports USB-OTG or whatever the successor protocol is, allowing it to act as a USB host for limited power devices. Only way to find out is to try.
As an 80s kid, that Mixxtape just blew me away 🤯😍 Talk about must-own gadgets that I absolutely don’t need! Man, that’s slick!
Analog playback, insane 😳😍
Now I just need Paulthings to make the Mixxtape’s older sister: a digital to analog reel-to-reel tape 😱 Maybe call it the 2real2reel? REELxREEL?
I saw a product mock-up years back of a digital device shaped like a roll of 35mm camera film. The concept was that you insert it into your old analog 35mm camera instead of film, and it turns the camera into a digital one. Basically a universal digital SLR back. Was heartbroken when it turned out it was just a concept with no plans to create it. I’d go and buy an old Pentax 35mm SLR faster than the guy in the Mixxtape video can dish out Yo Mamma jokes.
I’ll see if I can find it. I still think it would be the most revolutionary camera gadget to come out in ages; imagine being able to take any old 35mm camera and turn it digital in an instant 😮❤️ Old cameras on eBay would quadruple in price overnight.
Edit: Found the “digital film” concept, was released back in 2011.
You can buy anything from a basic model to a super deluxe audiophile player. But you are going to need some kind of desktop or laptop for transferring files, an ipad probably won’t work.
I use a Sandisk clip, it’s 12 years old and the battery still lasts a few days. Sandisk players are still for sale - they have a few models, their sound quality is quite good and they are less than $50? Though I’m sure a lot of lesser known brands would also be decent at this point also.
The new term is “digital audio player”. http://www.reddit.com/r/digitalaudioplayer is a good community for that. mp3s are out, if you want a really small file size, opus has better quality. If quality is more important than file size, rip to FLAC. I know at least for android, there are music player apps like musicolet and poweramp that will allow you to play songs from your phone if you have the storage space. The old ones work with modern computers. You can buy reconditioned ipods on ebay, but the new ones are better IMO. For ripping music a good community is http://www.reddit.com/r/musichoarder
Yeah, just get an MP3 player that uses an SD card, and copy your MP3 files to the card.
The question is, where are your files? Are they already on your phone or iPad? If not, you have the challenge of ripping from a USB CD player to the iPad or Pixel. I have no idea what software can do that, but there are apps on the Google Play store that claim to be able to.
Sounds like a great opportunity to dig up an old laptop and use Linux, though. I’ve got a couple of USB DVD readers sitting in a drawer that I pull out for these jobs, they’ve worked fine for years.
My Sansa Clip mp3 player is still plodding along. I use it daily. Plug it into my computer, drag and drop my music and enjoy ad free music in my worktruck. I can’t stand to listen the crappy radio anymore.
we got an ‘assortment’ of sansa players from old woot bags (pre-amazon days), enough to still have a couple working ones over a decade later. my co-worker uses hers every morning.
Just got a new Sansa Clip to replace my dad’s old Sansa Clip. Solid device.
I bought a first gen Sansa Clip ages ago on Black Friday sale and fell in love with the damn thing. Small but not too small, good controls, good sound, intuitive UI, uses universal drivers (not a sure thing at the time), even has an FM radio built in. I’ve picked up so many more advanced devices over the years but I keep coming back to it. It’s just a solid piece of hardware.
Also you can install Rockbox on it and play DOOM, if you’re into that sort of thing.
If you have an Android, use a USB adapter which allows you to connect flash drives and more to your phone. Then a file manager can be used to move music files to an attached MP3 player.
And yes standalone mp3 players still exists
You already have a bunch of answers so I’m gonna go one further and guess your next question “Can I stream these mp3s around the house using free and open source software too?”
Bless you
Looks like they stopped dev in '21, but RockBox is what I used to use. Amazing software.
Rockbox was awesome. I used it on many iPods. I remember one of my irc friends was the one of the main devs of the clock app that shipped with it.
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Development hasn’t stopped, it’s just that they haven’t made new releases. I would suggest you install one of the dev builds instead.
Your iPad is an MP3 player, but as far as ripping a CD, first you need a USB CD drive, which is easy enough to get.
BUT… iOS doesn’t recognize optical drives, so once you have the USB drive, you need some other device to connect it to in order to rip the CDs.
Could be something like a Steam Deck or an inexpensive laptop or Chrome Book.
Once you rip the files to the device, you need to probably upload them to cloud storage accessible by both that device and the iPad.
Once the files are transferred to the iPad, you should be good to go!
I personally use an iPod with rockbox to listeb to music as FLAC files
You can buy MP3 players on Aliexpress. They still make them and they are not expensive, and you can even get bluetooth compatible ones.
I recently went about trying to do what you’re doing. I have a laptop and it was still pretty hard. Just buying digital music is tricky. I ended up downloading iTunes for some music, and buying others from Bandcamp for the few artists I could find on there.
I can still see problems. Without a computer, how will you transfer the files onto the MP3 player? Without a CD drive, how will you rip CDs?
I think you’re going to need to borrow a computer from a friend, but other than that it’s all feasible if a little annoying.
Yeah…I was hoping by now that maybe they made mp3 players by now that could sync to phones or tablets. I’m not above transferring files slowly and a few at a time - I used to type in the song names manually haha so it can’t be much worse. CDs are trickier. But I’m glad to know it was annoying but feasible. They really have made owning media such a high effort thing. Sigh.
most phones these days are an mp3 player. even my flip phones back to my first cdma one ~ 20 years ago.
I’m not certain, but you might be able to make an iPod Classic talk to an iPad (you might also be able to do it with a raspberry pi + Linux + iTunes running in wine). If it does work, there’s the catch that you’d have to convert your files to aac (also known as m4a, lossy and similar to mp3) or alac (lossless and similar to flac).
If you try an iPod and rip CDs or convert from flac/wav, make sure you convert directly to your desired iPod-compatible format, avoid converting from mp3->aac unless you don’t have the original lossless rip. Doing so is like repeatedly opening and saving a jpg. Each time you do it, you lose some quality.
