[Punchy71]

Hi,
I'm wanting to buy a portable device of some kind so that I can take music with me on the go whenever I go walking or running outdoors or on the indoor treadmill. I have access to the internet and can start downloading music pretty much right away which will allow me to get started instantly and very inexpensively.
My problem is I don't know where I can go to start downloading music files nor which standard to adopt for my personal use. In general, I’m not particularly fond of proprietary codecs, software or hardware. I like the idea of standardizing on lossless music file types, as space is very plentiful and very cheap now days and lossless tends to take up lots of space.
If I wanted to start downloading such music files, where are some places I could visit to do so?
Also; I don't know if I should look into getting into Hi-Res audio, DSD, MQA or PCM audio as the next generation of audio standard, or just stick with more commonly adopted current standards (whatever they may be at this time, I'm not entirely sure to be honest, probably still MP3 I’m guessing).
Any help you might provide would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you

 

[ProtegeManiac]

I'm wanting to buy a portable device of some kind so that I can take music with me on the go whenever I go walking or running outdoors or on the indoor treadmill. I have access to the internet and can start downloading music pretty much right away which will allow me to get started instantly and very inexpensively.
My problem is I don't know where I can go to start downloading music files nor which standard to adopt for my personal use. In general, I’m not particularly fond of proprietary codecs, software or hardware. I like the idea of standardizing on lossless music file types, as space is very plentiful and very cheap now days and lossless tends to take up lots of space.
If I wanted to start downloading such music files, where are some places I could visit to do so?
Also; I don't know if I should look into getting into Hi-Res audio, DSD, MQA or PCM audio as the next generation of audio standard, or just stick with more commonly adopted current standards (whatever they may be at this time, I'm not entirely sure to be honest, probably still MP3 I’m guessing).

If you have your music in CDs then just rip them to FLAC, if at least for archival use, at the highest compression rate so the file will be smaller (ripping process will be noticeably longer if you're not using at least a relatively recent hexacore, although i7 quads aren't bad). If you use an Android phone with a microSD slot then load them into that microSD, put that into the phone, then scan the card using your preferred music player in case they don't show up on restart.

 

[cossix]

Definitely go for lossless files, like flac or wav, of 16bit/44.1khz quality or higher. You can find these on plenty of sites like HDtracks or torrent from Piratebay. Stay away from MQA for now because it's quite new and not many companies want to bother adopting it into their product line. It's also just a solution for streaming, not for local files.

As for the player, check out FiiO's lineup. I use the X3 gen 2 and love it!

 

[Punchy71]

Heh, I don't own CD's anymore. I'm basically starting all over from scratch.
I'm currently running Linux Mint on my home desktop PC. I wonder if I would best off starting out with using the Windows operating system on my PC to make things easier for myself when it comes to downloading, saving, archiving, storing, transferring music files to whatever portable device I end up getting, and just generally working with music audio files. Like I said, I'm not really keen on proprietary software, but I can always boot into Windows if I need to in order to work with music files.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Heh, I don't own CD's anymore. I'm basically starting all over from scratch.
I'm currently running Linux Mint on my home desktop PC. I wonder if I would best off starting out with using the Windows operating system on my PC to make things easier for myself when it comes to downloading, saving, archiving, storing, transferring music files to whatever portable device I end up getting, and just generally working with music audio files. Like I said, I'm not really keen on proprietary software, but I can always boot into Windows if I need to in order to work with music files.

You can get high res files from sites like HDTracks.com, and some albums are no longer available in 16/44.1 lossless download (only MP3, and from sites like Amazon) but that's not really a problem since DAPs and DACs can decode them and if you had to use anything that can't, you can convert them to 16/44.1 on a Windows program.

Maybe get a DAP that has BT or WiFi to minimize your initial outlay considering you have no copies of your own music. Use Spotify and connect the DAP to your phone via BT. The DAP will have an amp that can drive more headphones and IEMs with low distortion and noise, your best albums that you prioritize for purchase online lossless copies for will be on the microSD in the DAP, and then the albums you haven't purchased yet will be on Spotify through your phone streaming to hte DAP via BT (and I recommend Spotify rather than Tidal because BT will compress it). If you get a DAP that has WiFi, and it has Android, then you can run Spotify or Tidal on it and download from there. Just keep in mind that if there's any argument between the record label/artist and either service even downloaded copies will become unplayable.