Hi everyone! I've recently purchased the Bose QC35II after a long absence from portable music, and I'm currently considering a dedicated portable player as transferring music to Apple Music on my iPhone is just too much of a headache for me to bother with. I have never used any music managing application and don't ever intend to; my music is currently stored in a neatly organised folder structure on my PC and when listening to music on my desktop I simply navigate through my folders to find what I'm looking for.
(Part of the reason is that almost all of my music is stored in WAV with zero tags what-so-ever, since I still do buy a lot of music CD's and I also purchase a lot through Bandcamp where I download everything in WAV. Yes I know listening to WAV on the QC35II's might sound somewhat pointless
but for me WAV has always been the most portable format (especially since storage is so cheap these days), not to mention in the past I always got maximum battery life playing music in a format that doesn't require extra decoding.)
Anyway... so I'm kinda looking for the same "user experience" but with a portable player. Ideally the player will just plug into my PC and be recognised as a USB mass storage device whereby I can just copy my entire music collection over, or alternatively I don't mind if the player uses a Micro SD and I transfer my music via that.
I was originally quite intrigued by the Sony A55 or ZX300 (this will roughly be my budget), but I'm not so sure how I feel about Sony's annoying proprietary WM connector. I've spent the last few months migrating most of my accessories to only use USB-C and it's such a bliss to only really have to worry about one connector. The Bose QC35II being Micro-USB is definitely rather annoying, but I kinda let that slip since my wireless mouse is charged via Micro-USB so I simply charge my headphones on my desk where my mouse is.
Either way I'm really trying to avoid yet another connector.
Just as some additional information so you know what I'd likely be interested in: I do like what Sony did with their own custom OS though on both the A55 and ZX300; I've always found android-based players to be a little bit on the "bloaty" end, and I do enjoy simplicity.
So, what else should I be looking at? I'm well and truly out of the loop with anything audio related. Thanksies!
And as a final side-note; if it does eventually boil down to choosing between the A55 and ZX300, should I really bother pay extra for the ZX300 if all I'm ever going to be using with the player are the Bose QC35II headphones? I believe I might have read that the A55 is actually better over Bluetooth, but I can't remember where I saw that.
(Part of the reason is that almost all of my music is stored in WAV with zero tags what-so-ever, since I still do buy a lot of music CD's and I also purchase a lot through Bandcamp where I download everything in WAV. Yes I know listening to WAV on the QC35II's might sound somewhat pointless
but for me WAV has always been the most portable format (especially since storage is so cheap these days), not to mention in the past I always got maximum battery life playing music in a format that doesn't require extra decoding.)Anyway... so I'm kinda looking for the same "user experience" but with a portable player. Ideally the player will just plug into my PC and be recognised as a USB mass storage device whereby I can just copy my entire music collection over, or alternatively I don't mind if the player uses a Micro SD and I transfer my music via that.
I was originally quite intrigued by the Sony A55 or ZX300 (this will roughly be my budget), but I'm not so sure how I feel about Sony's annoying proprietary WM connector. I've spent the last few months migrating most of my accessories to only use USB-C and it's such a bliss to only really have to worry about one connector. The Bose QC35II being Micro-USB is definitely rather annoying, but I kinda let that slip since my wireless mouse is charged via Micro-USB so I simply charge my headphones on my desk where my mouse is.
Either way I'm really trying to avoid yet another connector.
Just as some additional information so you know what I'd likely be interested in: I do like what Sony did with their own custom OS though on both the A55 and ZX300; I've always found android-based players to be a little bit on the "bloaty" end, and I do enjoy simplicity.
So, what else should I be looking at? I'm well and truly out of the loop with anything audio related. Thanksies!
And as a final side-note; if it does eventually boil down to choosing between the A55 and ZX300, should I really bother pay extra for the ZX300 if all I'm ever going to be using with the player are the Bose QC35II headphones? I believe I might have read that the A55 is actually better over Bluetooth, but I can't remember where I saw that.
