Technology

Do you need an mp3 player?

Power to you if you're doing it for giggles and shits, but can't you load VLC onto that Pixle of yours?

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.

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 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...)

I haven't tested, but you should be able to hook up a USB CD drive to an Android phone. No idea if anyone's bothered to make a CD ripping app for Android, though.

If you're willing to skip the CD step then they're are lots of ways, even without SD cards. Lots of cheap MP3 players work as USB drives. You can turn your phone into host mode and just plug them in to your phone and transfer files.

To get the songs, torrent or download or rip your songs with NewPipe or whatever. Lots of ways to get mp3s.

Or rip the CDs at the library and put them directly into your MP3 player. You can borrow the CDs from the library for free, too, as an added bonus.

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.

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.

Here's a cheap Sandisk one and here's a cheap Sony one. I'd probably just install foobar2000 on your phone though. They also sell USB CD drives that you can pick up for cheap. I'm sure there's plenty of Android apps that can rip CDs.

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.

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.

Looks like they stopped dev in '21, but RockBox is what I used to use. Amazing software.

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?"

https://www.picoreplayer.org/

In theory, any MP3 player / DAP that can have music loaded onto it by drag and drop could work with your iPad (assuming you have the means to connect it, of course).

But there are a number of things to consider.

Firstly; storage. Obviously, your iPad doesn't have expandable storage, so depending on the size of your collection, you might run out of space. Using the same method you'll need to connect the player to your iPad, you can hook up an external drive of some description. Files should be able to see it (as long as it's formatted to exFAT or FAT). From there, using Files you can simply drag from one place to another.

However, this doesn't allow you to change metadata or anything. There are apps you can download that will allow you to do it, but it can be a pain in the ass if you've got quite a bit of music.

Finally, there's where you get the music from.

If you buy from somewhere like Bandcamp, then you can download directly to your iPad, though they don't make it easy. You can't buy from iTunes because the app won't let you open them in Files. Torrents are obviously out, so is CD ripping, as there are no CD drivers for iPad that I'm aware of.

So while it's entirely possible to run a DAP with just an iPad, it's kind of a pain in the arse, unless you already have a ready supply of music and it's either already tagged well, or you don't really care about that sort of thing. As others have suggested, it might be just as easy for you to pick up a cheap PC. It doesn't need to have any bells and whistles, just the ability to store music and have some way of managing the library.

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 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.

Find the cheapest MP3 player possible, maybe one of those built like a USB stick that can plug into a computer.

Here's one. There might be better options out there. The idea here is no wifi, no Bluetooth, etc. You could presumably load MP3s onto it just like you could a flash drive. Unlike the flash drive, it can play it back.

As far as ripping CDs, I use EAC. It supports ripping compressed to MP3, among other things. The linked player can play FLAC as well. I imagine most can, but the larger files size of FLAC might become an issue. Other programs exist, of course. It can be done!

Double post, but focusing more on the real computer. Do you have access to a library? Sometimes they have computers people can use. You might be able to load a program to rip onto a USB stick and run it portably (that is, without installing it onto the computer.) Not ideal, but if it's Windows I think Windows Media Player can rip CDs natively.

In that case, bring in the CDs and the MP3 player, rip the CDs, then load them all at the library. There might even be CDs at the library you can check out as well.

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 would buy some shitty old desktop off ebay and use that to rip CDs. Almost any old PC with DVD or CD drive will do this easily...preference on a DVD drive because you can do more with it like play DVDs.

I still sort of do what you describe. My truck has a CD player in it and I've bought a lot of CDs for cheap in the last few years. I do also have an MP3 player but I have not changed the music on it for a long time now.

I don't let my purchased CDs out of the house now. Baking them in my truck seems like a BAD idea. I copy them using something like this: https://store.microboards.com/CDDVD-Duplicators_c_37.html . I got the 2 drive one from someone on Craigslist for $50.

I also bought this CD player: https://www.amazon.com/Studebaker-SB3705BW-Portable-wirelessly-Coordinated/dp/B092KNSWH9/ref=sr_1_9?crid=38LK1C3LHFN0Y&keywords=studebaker+cd+player&qid=1694140260&sprefix=studebak%2Caps%2C486&sr=8-9

Thing is pretty awesome. Outputs FM radio from your CD with good "skip protection". I was considering paying for Satellite radio on a rental car before I bought this. Now I can play my music on any car. And on several receivers in my house at the same time. I can make my own little radio station. So it really extends the usefulness of my CDs. I can also take it hiking / biking / etc. because of the great skip protection (60 seconds!).

If you wanna make your life more painful, you could do this with a playdate! It’s even got themes!

I like to self host my stuff and have an Airsonic server with all my music. I can connect to it via web or a number of compatible apps available in the Play and App Stores. All the convenience of streaming and none of the subscription fees