[DavidLai]

Hi, my name is David, a 3rd-year doctoral piano student at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music who happens to be completely blind. My portable devices are the Sony NWZ-A27 and the Sennheiser Momentum 4 headphones. Nice to meet you all!

Recently, the 9-year-old WM cable for the player finally broke, and I bought a new cable from Amazon. I was surprised they even can be found there. However, I know that since this player is old technology, there will come a day when I need to look for a replacement.

What I like about the A27 is its built-in 64GB storage, an all-button interface, and long battery life. I could use the expanded SD card and manage 2 separate music libraries, one on device, one on the card. As long as I memorize the bnumber of button presses, I can navigate the menu system and choose the music I want to listen to. With support for gapless and lossless playback, my FLAC music libraries have the perfect "mobile home."

Now, I'm looking for a replacement player. I'm looking for something as reliable as the A27, with big built-in storage, long battery life, and an all-button interface. Of course, something with text-to-speech was also good, but I don't want to make the search too small. Unfortunately, all my searches turned out a bit frustrating.

In the accessibility department, the Victor Reader Stream III sounds good, but with its 15-hour battery life and other bonus features that I don't need to use, it's basically a jack of all trades, master of few, if not none. If I can't find a better replacement, I'll just graduate to that machine.

But I'm not giving up on my search, which is why I've turned to the collective knowledge of this forum. Thank you for reading this long post, and hope what I say here makes sense. Please help me find a good replacement digital audio player. Thank you!

David

 

[InvisibleInk]

Welcome to Head-Fi, David. Players with button-only user interfaces are usually found these days at the opposites of the price spectrum. The Chinese product xDuoo used to make a variety of button interface players. Currently I am only aware of one still on the market, the X2s. It sells for less than $100 U.S. dollars. Another Chinese player I’m familiar with is the Zisan Z5. It has an even more simplified operation that might be suitable for memorization. It sells for just over $200 dollars on the Chinese e-tailer AliExpress. Niether of the aforementioned players have internal storage, both only offering microSD card storage. There are much more expensive players with buttons-only operation, but I have no direct experience with them. In the U.S. the online shop MusicTeck carries some. Calling them and discussing your needs might be worth your time.

 

[DavidLai]

Thank you for your reply! I'll try contacting them later today and see if there's any hope for me. Appreciated!!!

 

[DavidLai]

Thank you for your reply! I'll try contacting them later today and see if there's any hope for me. Appreciated!!!

OK, I've contacted the people at MusicTech. Turns out they speak my mother tongue, so we had a conversation in Chinese. Here's what I got from the call:

Unfortunately, players like my beloved NWZ-A27 are few and far between now, and super long battery life is also a thing of the past. They believe the best for Android-based players is 10 hours, and non-Android based players can stretch up to 15 hours or so. The owner recommended the Hiby R3 II as a possible solution, but there are lots of compromises: it's a machine with a touch screen, and the battery life isn't that long. But it has a good sound, which is nice.

The tech support person later took over, and he said he could test some players to see if Talkback (the built-in screen reader for Android) can be installed and used on Android-based players.

Maybe for me, the future lies in forcing me to adopt Android? But if I was to take a 24-hour flight, and want to listen to music for most of it? (of course, this is a hypothetical situation, as I know I may spend half of the time on that flight slepping, too, but take it as it is)

This search is not turning up anything, and is making my portable music experience future look even more frustrating. When this 9-year-old Sony breaks down, I will have nothing to listen to music with on the road!

 

[andrewski]

I hope this isn't a silly question.Have you considered the modern Sony players? They are very expensive at near $500 to $5000. But they all have buttons, support microSD cards, and have better battery life than the competition. My Sony NW-WM1AM2 gets over 20 hours per charge. Be warned that Sony has introduced volume caps for the relatively more affordable ZX-707 and A306 in a few new regions like North America and Singapore. And they all run on Android.

I hope you find what you're looking for

 

[DavidLai]

IMO, there are no silly questions! That said, whether or not I can get accessible features like TalkBack to work on these Sony players remains to be seen. Without text-to-speech features like TalkBack, touch screen devices are of no use to blind people like me.

 

[InvisibleInk]

Unfortunately, players like my beloved NWZ-A27 are few and far between now, and super long battery life is also a thing of the past.

As I feared. I think if I was in your situation I'd choose something like the Zisan Z5, of the earlier Z4 version, that I mentioned earlier. It is so dead simple primitive that navigating by touch might work well. I can imagine myself setting it to play my songs in random shuffle mode in the settings. It starts playing when you turn it on, so in that scenario you just select play/pause, forward track/last track, and volume from memory. The Chinese online retailer HiFiGo.com sells it, plus some other relatively inexpensive players. They speak Mandarin, but their English might not be too bad. Their phone number is 0086 18676398186.

If all else fails, possibly Sony's customer support here in the U.S. can replace the battery for you, extending your unit's life infefinitely.

 

[DavidLai]

As I feared. I think if I was in your situation I'd choose something like the Zisan Z5, of the earlier Z4 version, that I mentioned earlier. It is so dead simple primitive that navigating by touch might work well. I can imagine myself setting it to play my songs in random shuffle mode in the settings. It starts playing when you turn it on, so in that scenario you just select play/pause, forward track/last track, and volume from memory. The Chinese online retailer HiFiGo.com sells it, plus some other relatively inexpensive players. They speak Mandarin, but their English might not be too bad. Their phone number is 0086 18676398186.

If all else fails, possibly Sony's customer support here in the U.S. can replace the battery for you, extending your unit's life infefinitely.

I have a bit of an interesting update.

MusicTech recommended me the Hiby Digital M300, and they have an open box deal for $140. Because it was open boxed, they installed TalkBack on the device, tried it and actually made the device talk!!! Not only that, the device will come to me talking when I power it on. I've since found out from their hands that the library / music scanning process is very accessible. TalkBack reads every element of the app on screen, and one can interact with it and perform related actions.

With this out of the way, and a generous battery life (they claim 29 hours of playback (on screen?) time and more than 400 hours of standby time), I think I can live with it. Anything above 20 hours is good in my book for this day and age, and if I want, powering the player through the USB port on an aircraft shouldn't be a hard thing, I assume.

So far, so good. I've heard the demo, and I think I can start using it. Once it comes to me, I can learn how to work with TalkBack on the device.

 

[InvisibleInk]

I have a bit of an interesting update.

MusicTech recommended me the Hiby Digital M300, and they have an open box deal for $140. Because it was open boxed, they installed TalkBack on the device, tried it and actually made the device talk!!! Not only that, the device will come to me talking when I power it on. I've since found out from their hands that the library / music scanning process is very accessible. TalkBack reads every element of the app on screen, and one can interact with it and perform related actions.

With this out of the way, and a generous battery life (they claim 29 hours of playback (on screen?) time and more than 400 hours of standby time), I think I can live with it. Anything above 20 hours is good in my book for this day and age, and if I want, powering the player through the USB port on an aircraft shouldn't be a hard thing, I assume.

So far, so good. I've heard the demo, and I think I can start using it. Once it comes to me, I can learn how to work with TalkBack on the device.

Those guys are great; they're a good, helpful crew. I'm glad they were able to set you up that effectively.

 

[DavidLai]

Those guys are great; they're a good, helpful crew. I'm glad they were able to set you up that effectively.

Yes, I'm also very happy how this is turning out. They helped me do extensive tests and demos on the phone. I even taught them some basic TalkBack navigation gestures. The likelyhood I'm keeping this is high since they've helped me demo everything.

 

[InvisibleInk]

Yes, I'm also very happy how this is turning out. They helped me do extensive tests and demos on the phone. I even taught them some basic TalkBack navigation gestures. The likelyhood I'm keeping this is high since they've helped me demo everything.

Excellent. I'm glad they learned something valuable, too. Don't hesitate to keep us updated on your journey. Your use case is pretty rare and very interesting.

 

[XTF1]

Yes, I'm also very happy how this is turning out. They helped me do extensive tests and demos on the phone. I even taught them some basic TalkBack navigation gestures. The likelyhood I'm keeping this is high since they've helped me demo everything.

There is a thread dedicated to the M300 where you may find good information and tips if you end up getting one.
I don’t have the Momentum 4, but if you need help, I do have an M300 and a few comparable Bluetooth headphones.

@Joe Bloggs from Hiby is a great resource as well, always ready to help!

 

[Joe Bloggs]

With this out of the way, and a generous battery life (they claim 29 hours of playback (on screen?) time and more than 400 hours of standby time), I think I can live with it. Anything above 20 hours is good in my book for this day and age, and if I want, powering the player through the USB port on an aircraft shouldn't be a hard thing, I assume.

It is, admittedly, a small device with a small battery, the claimed 29 hours of playback is with screen off and no interaction. With regular browsing etc. most people are getting somewhere between 7 and 10 hours, I guess. It tends to vary more because of the small battery size and the big difference in consumption between just the headphone jack and the CPU, WiFi, screen and everything. So keep that USB power port handy

 

[DavidLai]

It is, admittedly, a small device with a small battery, the claimed 29 hours of playback is with screen off and no interaction. With regular browsing etc. most people are getting somewhere between 7 and 10 hours, I guess. It tends to vary more because of the small battery size and the big difference in consumption between just the headphone jack and the CPU, WiFi, screen and everything. So keep that USB power port handy

Oh... I'm sorry to ask, but do you think I've made a wrong decision? Of course, I won't be using this player like a phone, I'll just be listening to music, with the WiFi turned off, of course.

 

[DavidLai]

There is a thread dedicated to the M300 where you may find good information and tips if you end up getting one.
I don’t have the Momentum 4, but if you need help, I do have an M300 and a few comparable Bluetooth headphones.

@Joe Bloggs from Hiby is a great resource as well, always ready to help!

Sounds good, thank you! The M300 is on its way to me...

And, I use the wired connection of the Momentum 4.