9 Oct
2025
9 Oct
'25
12:54 a.m.
Hello everyone,
I need some recommendations for a portable hardware audio player (mp3, ogg, flac) that
supports Linux, and is of reasonable quality. A quick search on Amazon pulls up
everything from $18 - $200, and I'm afraid to pull the trigger without some kind of
recommendation. My needs are simple, I just need to put tons of practice tracks on it and
plug it up to my keyboard via some kind of audio jack (1/8"). Power on, select a
track, play, experience musical disappointment, power off. :)
General brand recommendations are useful, pretty much any info is more than welcome - my
trusty mp3 player that was recommended by this list many years ago has vanished, so I must
replace it.
Thanks everyone!
Josh
9 Oct
9 Oct
12:56 a.m.
"Josh Lawrence" <joshlawrence(a)fastmail.com> writes:
Hello everyone,
I need some recommendations for a portable hardware audio player (mp3,
ogg, flac) that supports Linux, and is of reasonable quality. A quick
search on Amazon pulls up everything from $18 - $200, and I'm afraid
to pull the trigger without some kind of recommendation. My needs are
simple, I just need to put tons of practice tracks on it and plug it
up to my keyboard via some kind of audio jack (1/8"). Power on,
select a track, play, experience musical disappointment, power off.
:)
General brand recommendations are useful, pretty much any info is more
than welcome - my trusty mp3 player that was recommended by this list
many years ago has vanished, so I must replace it.
Thanks everyone!
What does "support Linux" mean here?
--
David Kastrup
1:06 a.m.
On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, at 5:56 PM, David Kastrup wrote:
What does "support Linux" mean here?
Excellent question, I apologize for not being more clear. By "support Linux" I
mean, I can plug this device into a modern Linux machine and transfer audio files without
having to compile custom software.
Josh
1:03 a.m.
Hello Josh,
Check out the rockbox project. I bought a HiFi walker digital media player and installed
rockbox on it and copying files over to it with Linux is a breeze and couldn't be
easier. I've used strawberry to copy things and nowadays I just manually copy files
with nautilus.
Rockbox supports lots of older devices too that you can snag for cheap as well if you dont
want to spend $100+ on a new device.
Let me know if you have any questions,
Brandon Hale
Oct 8, 2025 6:54:46 PM Josh Lawrence <joshlawrence(a)fastmail.com>om>:
Hello everyone,
I need some recommendations for a portable hardware audio player (mp3, ogg, flac) that
supports Linux, and is of reasonable quality. A quick search on Amazon pulls up
everything from $18 - $200, and I'm afraid to pull the trigger without some kind of
recommendation. My needs are simple, I just need to put tons of practice tracks on it and
plug it up to my keyboard via some kind of audio jack (1/8"). Power on, select a
track, play, experience musical disappointment, power off. :)
General brand recommendations are useful, pretty much any info is more than welcome - my
trusty mp3 player that was recommended by this list many years ago has vanished, so I must
replace it.
Thanks everyone!
Josh
1:06 a.m.
Hi Brandon,
it's been a while siince I looked at Rockbox. Do they still support newer
players? At the moment I'm lucky enough to have an old Sansa Clip player, but
I wonder how long that will work. -- Last thing I knew, no new hardware would
be supported.
Best wishes,
Jeanette
--
* Website: http://juliencoder.de - for summer is a state of sound
* Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMS4rfGrTwz8W7jhC1Jnv7g
* Audiobombs: https://www.audiobombs.com/users/jeanette_c
* GitHub: https://github.com/jeanette-c
All I need is time
A moment that is mine
While I'm in between <3
(Britney Spears)
4 a.m.
As far as I know, new devices have been added recently. For instance, there was recently
an anbernic device that was added (they make emulation gaming handhelds) and now has
support for rockbox. Also, the device I use with rockbox, the HiFi walker, is a newer
device as well. So, I think they are still working on it, just slowly (and I will say that
rockbox is everything I dreamed of in 2009).
Let me know if you have any other questions,
Brandon Hale
Oct 8, 2025 7:06:24 PM Jeanette C. <julien(a)mail.upb.de>de>:
Hi Brandon,
it's been a while siince I looked at Rockbox. Do they still support newer players? At
the moment I'm lucky enough to have an old Sansa Clip player, but I wonder how long
that will work. -- Last thing I knew, no new hardware would be supported.
Best wishes,
Jeanette
--
* Website: http://juliencoder.de - for summer is a state of sound
* Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMS4rfGrTwz8W7jhC1Jnv7g
* Audiobombs: https://www.audiobombs.com/users/jeanette_c
* GitHub: https://github.com/jeanette-c
All I need is time
A moment that is mine
While I'm in between <3
(Britney Spears)
1:19 a.m.
Hi Josh,
if you are open to go rogue: you might consider portable recorders. It
depends. Some can read more formats than others. The Olympus LSP recorders are
fine. Not sure if they can play ogg, but mp3 and flac is fine and you could
even record performances. double duty...
AFAIK the Zoom recorders all support MSC, i.e. standard USB storage device
connections. Not sure about their format support, but the new ones are quite
good, or so I've heard from many sides.
Best wishes,
Jeanette
--
* Website: http://juliencoder.de - for summer is a state of sound
* Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMS4rfGrTwz8W7jhC1Jnv7g
* Audiobombs: https://www.audiobombs.com/users/jeanette_c
* GitHub: https://github.com/jeanette-c
All I need is time
A moment that is mine
While I'm in between <3
(Britney Spears)
1:32 a.m.
On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, at 6:19 PM, Jeanette C. wrote:
Hi Josh,
if you are open to go rogue: you might consider portable recorders. It
depends. Some can read more formats than others. The Olympus LSP recorders are
fine. Not sure if they can play ogg, but mp3 and flac is fine and you could
even record performances. double duty...
NICE! So I've been looking for an excuse to pick up one of those handy Zoom
recorders, and I think you might have given me one. Great suggestion, I wouldn't have
thought of that! I'll check out the Olympus ones, too.
--
Josh Lawrence
joshlawrence(a)fastmail.com
5:44 a.m.
New subject: OT: Linux-compatible audio player?
On 9/10/25 09:54, Josh Lawrence wrote:
Hello everyone,
I need some recommendations for a portable hardware audio player (mp3,
ogg, flac) that supports Linux, and is of reasonable quality. A quick
search on Amazon pulls up everything from $18 - $200, and I'm afraid
to pull the trigger without some kind of recommendation. My needs are
simple, I just need to put tons of practice tracks on it and plug it
up to my keyboard via some kind of audio jack (1/8"). Power on,
select a track, play, experience musical disappointment, power off. :)
General brand recommendations are useful, pretty much any info is more
than welcome - my trusty mp3 player that was recommended by this list
many years ago has vanished, so I must replace it.
Thanks everyone!
Josh
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list -- linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
To unsubscribe send an email to linux-audio-user-leave(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
I use and recommend old Android phones. I have a Galaxy S2, LG G3, and
Pixel which can all have their file systems made visible to Linux when
plugged in via USB, although some require more tinkering than others
maybe like enabling Dev mode on the phone. YMMV.
It's good for them to have a purpose after the network they originally
worked on is mothballed eg. 3G is no longer available here but phone
with SIM removed still plays music. ;)
They play MP3, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, Opus, AAC, WAV and make fine audio
players. I use an Android player application called Rocket Player but
most will work.
Roger
8:18 a.m.
New subject: OT: Linux-compatible audio player?
On 09/10/2025 00:54, Josh Lawrence wrote:
Hello everyone,
I need some recommendations for a portable hardware audio player (mp3,
ogg, flac) that supports Linux, and is of reasonable quality. A quick
search on Amazon pulls up everything from $18 - $200, and I'm afraid to
pull the trigger without some kind of recommendation. My needs are
simple, I just need to put tons of practice tracks on it and plug it up
to my keyboard via some kind of audio jack (1/8"). Power on, select a
track, play, experience musical disappointment, power off. :)
General brand recommendations are useful, pretty much any info is more
than welcome - my trusty mp3 player that was recommended by this list
many years ago has vanished, so I must replace it.
I'll admit that I have
switched to just using my Android phone for
'offline music play' and I also use it for practice (e.g. I load tracks
to play along with bass).
The advantage is that now Android plays opus which I currently use as a
preferred lossy format.
I use KDE plasma as a DE so with KDE connect and related Android App
it's quite convenient to copy files to the phone (including the SD card
which I use for music files).
There are loads of player apps, I have the Android version of VLC and
another rather simple one plus sometimes one of those which allows you
to slow down files.
As you mentioned practice scnario, I also have a cheap battery powered
bass 'preamp pedal' which supports bluetooth: using the phone as file
player eliminates two cable when practicing: Play track-list on phone
via bluetooth, plug bass and headphones in the pedal (no mains as it's
battery powered) and play.
This is essentially my most 'mobile' (literally) set-up for bass practic
/ play-along of 3/4 I have. I can elaborate if interesting.
And.. hope I didn't go too off-topic on your off-topic, but maybe it's
useful as you mentioned practice tracks :-)
Lorenzo
9:21 a.m.
New subject: OT: Linux-compatible audio player?
Lorenzo Sutton <lorenzofsutton(a)gmail.com> writes:
I'll admit that I have switched to just using my
Android phone for
'offline music play' and I also use it for practice (e.g. I load
tracks to play along with bass).
The advantage is that now Android plays opus which I currently use as
a preferred lossy format.
It is worth noting that while various proprietary systems take a dim
view on Opus _files_ (which pack the encoded data in Ogg containers),
they do generally support the Opus _Codec_.
So creating a WEBM file without video track and with Opus-encoded audio
track tends to work on a lot more devices than a "proper" Opus file,
taking up very much the same file space.
--
David Kastrup
3:04 p.m.
New subject: OT: Linux-compatible audio player?
On Thu, Oct 9, 2025, at 1:18 AM, Lorenzo Sutton wrote:
And.. hope I didn't go too off-topic on your
off-topic, but maybe it's
useful as you mentioned practice tracks :-)
Hey Lorenzo,
Nope, this is perfect! I find all of this information very useful, as I am using this to
practice. Feel free to mail me off-list as much OT info about your practice setup as you
feel like writing down, it's all very useful to me!
Josh
5:32 p.m.
New subject: OT: Linux-compatible audio player?
Hi!
If you loke open hardware then you might want to have a look into this:
https://cooltech.zone/tangara/
Yeah, it's a few bucks more than 200$, but it really looks insanely good…
Greets!
Mitsch
Am 09.10.25 um 00:54 schrieb Josh Lawrence:
Hello everyone,
I need some recommendations for a portable hardware audio player (mp3,
ogg, flac) that supports Linux, and is of reasonable quality. A quick
search on Amazon pulls up everything from $18 - $200, and I'm afraid
to pull the trigger without some kind of recommendation. My needs are
simple, I just need to put tons of practice tracks on it and plug it
up to my keyboard via some kind of audio jack (1/8"). Power on,
select a track, play, experience musical disappointment, power off. :)
General brand recommendations are useful, pretty much any info is more
than welcome - my trusty mp3 player that was recommended by this list
many years ago has vanished, so I must replace it.
Thanks everyone!
Josh
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list -- linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
To unsubscribe send an email to linux-audio-user-leave(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
5:47 p.m.
New subject: OT: Linux-compatible audio player?
On Thu, Oct 9, 2025, at 10:32 AM, Michael Jarosch wrote:
If you loke open hardware then you might want to have
a look into this:
Funny you mention this: I have a few Raspberry Pi 4s that a friend gave me, and I
wondered if there was a way to use this as a hardware audio player. I'm sure that
could be done easily, but I would need some kind of project instructions to follow.
I'll keep looking!
Josh
40
days inactive
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days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
13 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
Brandon Hale -
David Kastrup -
Jeanette C. -
Josh Lawrence -
Lorenzo Sutton -
Michael Jarosch -
Roger