Looking for at 120+GB FLAC Player, dimensions L<=6 W<=3 D<=.5 Options

[Jonathan217]

Before we get started, I've Googled it.

I have a music library that expands at the rate of about one cd every month. I encode all of my music as FLAC files and then lock my little plastic discs away for safe keeping.

I had a Rockboxed iPod with a 60GB drive in it, but I have long since outgrown it. I could have expanded the Hard Drive, but I am looking for something with native FLAC support and better hardware.

I don't mind discontinued devices being listed, but I would like to see what is currently out there too. I'd say the player should provide a minimum of 3 hours of play time on a single charge, 8 would be 'cherry.'

I need to be able to put music on it with out proprietary transfer software.

The player will be plugged into a pair of ATH M50s and will be listened to by someone who puts his hands over his ears when a track from iTunes is played.

A good bonus would be support for 96khz/24bit files, but I'm not holding my breath.

Lastly, I'm looking at spending less than $200USD. If it is a little over budget and meet the aforementioned requirements perfectly, I'd still like to know about it.

Thanks in advance for your time.

[yourlord]

I know it's not what you want to hear, but honestly, the days of portable media players with that kind of storage are gone, for at least a little while longer.. Until flash storage at that capacity gets within the reasonable cost range you're gonna be stuck with constrained storage..

Like you, if storage wasn't an issue, I'd love nothing more than to carry my entire library around in flac format. I detest having to transcode my flac library to lossy to get a reasonable music density on my devices. That being said, I don't detest transcoding because of a problem with the audio quality, but just because it's an extra step in the process.

Get an 8GB Sansa Clip+, add a 32GB uSDHC card and transcode your library onto the thing using Ogg Vorbis at quality 5 or 6. If you think you can hear a difference between that and flac, you're wrong.. If you have a friend who thinks they can hear a difference, they are wrong too (unless they/you provide positive ABX results that say otherwise). It's your best CURRENT option for high music density on a portable device. You won't even need to rockbox the clip+ to play Ogg Vorbis (unless you just really want to rockbox it)..

This post has been edited by yourlord: Oct 18 2012, 21:40

[eahm]

It's your best CURRENT option for high music density on a portable device. You won't even need to rockbox the clip+ to play Ogg Vorbis (unless you just really want to rockbox it)..

Why is that "the best"? I rather using and find more practical AAC for example. AAC performs also better than Ogg Vorbis at the same bitrate so you can go lower. Lower = smaller files = better for portable use.

Jonathan217, use ALAC, use whatever makes you happy.

This post has been edited by eahm: Oct 19 2012, 02:27