Peak technology for its time

Such a simple but effective device. And every model that takes AA/AAA batteries and mounts as a standard mass storage device is still useful.

bump

No, it was just the perfect solution for poorfags.
True chads used iRiver players.

>>105890473
>muh iriver

>>105890007 (OP)
jfc I am old

>>105890694
Yes and that one is 300% the quality of the cheap noname shit in the OP.
That being said the cheap noname shit in the OP still did its job "fine" for the 2 years I've used it. Compare that to cheap shit shit you can buy now. Even trash was still usable back then.

>>105890007 (OP)
I had one kinda like that, but without a screen, just a rocker control on the ass.
And after using it in a Linux machine it just completely died.

>>105890007 (OP)
I was a fan of this style, just so nice and straightforward

>be me
>Unc

good shit pal

>>105890007 (OP)
I remember having one with 128mb of storage and I had to convert my music to 64kbps mp3

>>105891258
My first mp3 player only had 32MB and I didn't want to spend money on a multimedia card so I also converted my shit to 64kbps so I can get at least close to one hour of music on that thing

First one I owned only had 128MB of storage which sucked, so I kept using a discman till they hit the 1GB/2GB mark.

>>105891191
Now this is a technology I will never miss.

>>105890007 (OP)
I wanted an iRiver N12 so badly.
Worn around your neck like a pendant, with the earphones integrated into the necklace.

A terrible idea in hindsight, but still.

>>105891410
Sounds like a good idea, why terrible?

>>105890007 (OP)
I literally had that exact same mp3 player when I was a teen

>>105890007 (OP)
I skipped these and used these instead

>>105891894
I love this discs. I have one similar to the yellow one, and there is something beautiful about it that I can't shake off, after so many years.

There were so many of these they were given out to kids for free. Had mine loaded up with Alexisonfire and other emo shit.

>>105891410
>worn around your neck like a pendant
That's what the little ring is for on OP's pic

No it wasn't because of the dumb cap that would get lost all the time or the need to use AAA batteries, which would run out at the most inconvenient time. Also the little navigating knob was utter crap, often went bad and navigating the menus was terrible. However I had later a Sony MP3 player that addressed many of these issues, but cost like 4x what the generic MP3 players did.

>>105893147

....... by whom

>>105893199
>AAA batteries, which would run out at the most inconvenient time.
AA and AAA batteries were an IQ test and most people (you included) failed it.
The era when most devices used them was great because people who were smart stocked up big time on the rechargeable ones. So whenever they ran out you simply swapped in a recharged pair. Bam. Device instantly usable again without having to wait for it to charge and you just charged the empty ones at home in the evening completely independent of your device.

>>105893199
>dumb cap that would get lost all the time
Unironic skill issue.

this was the best mp3 player
no idea why they discontinued it
I still have mine but I haven't tried to use it in years so the battery probably doesn't work anymore

>>105893582
>no idea why they discontinued it
>I haven't tried to use it in years
big think right there.

>>105890007 (OP)
Oh yeah, I remember back in 2008, my mom bought me this. I'd listen to it on my way to and from school. Used it until I got my first smartphone towards the end of 2014. I bet I could still find it somewhere at my parents house, maybe in the attic.

i threw out a bunch of junk during covid, but i kept this. i don't think i even have wired earbuds to connect it.

>>105892537
Still have them with old mixtapes on it, however collecting dust now.

>>105893582
>no screen
>"controls"

>>105890007 (OP)
the PSP was up there too in terms of multimedia

I've been using this one for years and I'm pretty happy with it.

>>105893595
..because I changed jobs where I can now wear proper headphones instead of earbuds
I still see plenty of other people using wired earbuds connected to a huge phone and it looks stupid. Saw a woman jogging in the park with a tablet strapped to her arm just so she could apparently listen to music.

>>105891176
I still have a 512MB early version of this, only player I ever had skip on digital tracks

>>105894187
Normies have watches now. Basically the same form factor.

>>105890007 (OP)
I have this exact one but red. Only 256 MB. Still has all the songs my cousin loaded up on it when I got it back in 2007.

>>105890007 (OP)
Its still peak technology.
>tells the time
>cheap

>>105893582
In a world where iPhone screens are STILL fabrige eggs, I miss these minimalist audio players. So convenient for a 5 mile run

>>105891191
>Goes for $900+ because of some stupid capeshit movie
It's got a great design, most other walkmans look like shit.

>>105890007 (OP)
>>105890694
Asian dads be like I got you an iPod (before iPods existed)
Mine got me a 64mb one and you could fit like maybe one album and a half, depending on whether you're balling with 128kbps or lower yourself to a 64kbps peasant.

>>105897724
all of those that i know of support wma as well, which sounds okay at 64kbps (ok for the standards at the time). far better than 64kbps mp3
one i got also supported vorbis, though i'm aware not all of them did. iirc i was doing something like 80kbps vorbis. the things we had to do due to limited storage...

>>105897931
>all of those that i know of support wma as well, which sounds okay at 64kbps
What's the point if you are transcoding? I doubt kids back then were ripping losslessly from their CD collections then transcoding

>>105890007 (OP)
>be in middleschool
>dad gets me some chinkshit MP4 player for birthday
> 6MP Camera
> MP3 player
> voice recorder
>128MB USB space
>LED flashlight
>special effects webcam
>SD/MMC card reader
blew my mind

>>105898145
generational loss was something you just had to accept. the standards were lower back then out of practicality. you downloaded 128kbps mp3's because even those took 15 minutes a pop to get via dial-up, and you converted them down if you wanted to get more music on your $30 mp3 player with 64M of storage. going from cd straight to 64k wma would be better of course, but not by all that much. still sounded better than your average self-recorded cassette tapes lets be honest

>>105890007 (OP)
take me back

>>105890694
>muh iriver
I have an iHP-120 sitting at the back of my desk hooked up to my speakers as a white noise generator.
It's now more than twenty years old and has been serving in this role 24/7 for at least twelve years.

>>105898209
I started with this thing. I'm surprised I was able to obtain such an expensive mp3 player at 11 years old. No I wasn't listening to a bunch of shitty 128k mp3s on it either. I knew how to go on IRC and find 192k scene rips of full albums.

>>105898258
yea don't get me wrong, i could hear the artifacts at 128k, and if you had the storage space and cared enough you would get higher bitrate stuff, it was available. i did get higher bitrate files for songs i really liked. but most people went with 128kbps, that was the baseline/standard. it's kinda like streaming video today, streaming video is the "128k mp3" of today "good enough if you don't think too much on it"

>>105898258
>>105898282
-- i've personally never been big into music also. i bet if i had a decent pair of headphones back then i would have balked at 128kbps mp3

ps. if anyone is encoding 128kbps mp3's now to see what they sound like, keep in mind also that mp3 codecs have improved over time. one encoded today with the latest LAME sounds better than they did back in like 2001

>>105890007 (OP)
someone should make a mix of these and dumb phones that have rechargeable batteries and can only receive (and make maybe?) calls.

>>105898319
Even if you were using LAME back then it sounded better than the 128k mp3s that were just floating around out there on p2p networks. A couple years later we had people coming around to what was being said on the hydrogenaudio forums. By 2004 the scene switched to the dibrom modified 3.90.3 and alt preset standard. So after the mid 2000s the majority of new music that was floating around and being put on devices by people were good quality VBR encodes. There was still some trash, like myspace rips which were 96k/22khz mp3s and people would transcode them.

>>105898361
i miss being able to instantly tell if something was encoded to 32kHz instead of 44.1kHz

>>105898282
>>105898319
>>105898361
There seems to be a lot of misconceptions in the music community regarding the differences between 320kbps mp3 and FLAC format. It is true that 320kbps is technically as good as FLAC, but there are other reasons to get music in a lossless format. Hearing the difference now isn’t the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression, while MP3 is ‘lossy’. What this means is that for each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps, assuming you have SATA – it’s about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7kbps on SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don’t want to know how much worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media. I started collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrange…well don’t get me started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps. FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren’t stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you’ll be glad you did.

>>105898404
i knew bringing up codec improvements would remind people of this

>>105890007 (OP)
LITERALLY had 1 of those. Amazing 128Mb and times where I could rip my CD's to 32kpbs to only enjoy 4 o 5 discs of instead of 1.

>>105898550
>32kbps

Loved that era of mp3 players. Cheap, standard batteries, SD card storage, fm tuner using headphones as antenna. It's funny that smartphones destroyed this market while being inferior products 15 years later.

>>105898595
smartphones took over back when they too had swappable batteries, sd card storage, and fm tuner using headphones as an antenna. the first android phone i got had all of them, and was as small as these mp3 players, too

>>105893162
I had a little mobiblu cube mp3 player, came with a jelly case and a necklace to wear it, I wore that thing everywhere.

>>105893582
Did these actually only play songs on "shuffle"?

>>105890007 (OP)
There's no way this sounded even decent.

>>105898615
This is true. Before brickworld I was following the minification of phones. One concept was just a pen with vertical number keys and a narrow screen for reading texts. I was kinda hoping AR glasses would bring back tech minification but I guess we got VR instead.

>>105898639
>Did these actually only play songs on "shuffle"?

>>105898666
it sounded

>>105898701
Should be called the iPod Play in Order or Shuffle or Turn Off then

>>105898701
what does the voiceover button do?

>>105898801
>what does the voiceover button do?

>>105890007 (OP)
>peak
You weren't even born when this was a thing.

>>105898824
oh interesting, so it did support playlists

>>105898595
>It's funny that smartphones destroyed this market while being inferior products 15 years later.
Smartphones fucked up A TON of shit.
Like compact cameras. The market of them completely collapsed due to phones and they did have was better features and especially great optical zoom.

>>105890889
how old
im 33 and it hit me

>>105890007 (OP)

>>105897690
My iPhone 12 has been through hell and back and still has its orignal screen

>>105900842
a decade ahead, boy

>>105898176
looks fun

>>105898595
Well I have a lot of experience with both eras. My phone is a better mp3 player than any mp3 player I owned in the 2000s. I went through several simply because I used them so heavily that I wore the fucking things out. I've experienced hard drive based, flash based with sd card slot, and also mp3 CD based players. My Android phone has 256GB of storage, I can choose the player I want as in software wise, and it can support basically any codec ever because devs can simply bundle ffmpeg with their app. Needing to use a USB-C adapter to plug in headphones is annoying but the DAC in my phone is excellent. I kind of want to own a DAP for nostalgia reasons but it would likely be a waste of money. Why would I need to when I have a phone that serves my needs better than anything I owned before it?

>>105898404
didn't recognise it until "for each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive".

>>105901602
Replying to myself with some more stuff I think is relevant. Earlier in the thread I was talking about my experience with this thing >>105898258 back in 2001 or 2002. At that time my family computer had 20GB of storage and the mp3 player had a hard drive with 6GB. A few years later in 2004 I got the iRiver H320 which was pocket sized with 20GB of storage.

Now in 2025 the workflow is totally different. Hard drives are way larger. I have a seedbox with 14TB of storage and I have been loading it up with all kinds of FLAC music. In the past I was downloading mp3s from the internet instead. I am currently making 320k AAC files to load onto my phone from this library I am building. This is how big it is already. Having flash storage of this size > all the obsolete crap we used to deal with.

>>105891858
Because you can't replace the headphones without replacing the entire necklace.

>>105893162
Yeah, but this is a lot neater.

>>105890007 (OP)
S1 MP3 player

>>105891176
This ones great, i have the non-FM version and i still use it for listening to music.
Such a simple design that's really easy to fiddle around with in your pocket unlike those newer ones (the ones with full color screens) or your phone.

>>105890007 (OP)
>>105893582
These still are, the main reason they were discontinued was to push smartphones, it became the "medium pizza" of the media platforms and people went for smartphones because it had more resources. If we only knew they'd become surveillance and corporate shill spammming machines

I remember in high school this kid came to school with one of these. I was hella jelly

i usually use a wm1a but i got this circa 2007 a708 a few weeks ago and it's pretty nice too. doesn't sound nearly as good, granted, but i never realized how soulful it is to have no touch screen and actual buttons for everything

>>105891324
>Now this is a technology I will never miss.
I've used a high end Aiwa "walkman" until like 2007 and it was great. Now the belts inside are gone and it would be an insane mess to repair

>>105890694
I had that iriver (gold or silver) then switched to this because it was so smol & could hold a lot more, for me at least.

>>105890694
I had that iriver (gold or silver) then switched to this because it was so smol & could hold a lot more, for me at least.

>>105890007 (OP)
>chink shit with Z80 inside was peak technology in 2005

>>105905375
>it became the "medium pizza" of the media platforms
I know food analogies are not meant to be smart, but what the fuck does this even mean?

>>105890007 (OP)
that form factor was great, barely bigger than a pendrive and the screen was so funky with so many colors before rgb fans on computers were a thing

>>105893478
I still do that with my xbox controller and a GBC I have around, just keeping a pair of batteries already charged around and you're good to go

>>105907380
I once found one of these in the bathroom sink when I was 6-8 years old and didn't understand what that was.
>mfw thinking back

>>105907276
>>chink shit
I wonder: were all of these chinese? was it a original chinese design?

>>105907660
it's not actually a fleshlight you know

>>105890007 (OP)
fuck that shit, the main button broke after 3 months.

>>105910559
Skill issue

>>105890007 (OP)
god I loved that thing

>>105898583
>>105898550
my headphones were so garbage I couldn't tell the difference between 16kbs and 32 so I would just put everything at 16 and enjoy my large library
I had just come off cheap hand-recorded mix tapes so it was still a major step up

>>105910910
it's always crazy to me when I listen to one of the cds I burned from 96 or 128kbps, they sound unlistenably bad to me now but somehow I just didn't hear it when played from my car stereo or garbage headphones. oh to be so simple again

>>105910996
still works

>>105896391
>best for it's time
>it's time has never ended
The only watch any man should consider owning.

>>105909465
literally what is it

>>105911509
it's just a toy
https://youtu.be/wQoD-wmgI8Y
i know it's squishy and has a hole in it, but good luck trying to fuck one

What's a modern equivalent? I've only seen either cheap chinese stuff that will obviously not last or overpriced devices

I miss the sansa clip

>>105910839
A knockoff of the Olympus M:robe mr-100 and with a funny name. At least this one doesn't require additional software for file transfer and has a screen color. The music industry has probably pressured big names of mp3 players to implement crappy proprietary file manager for many years to combat piracy (and they fail hard). By 2007, most brands have move to MTP, which is still inferior to Mass storage class.

This little cunt right here. I fondly and vividly remember filling it's entire memory with a loop of mute city from melee and listening to it WAY too fucking loud in bed to the point of distortion and turbofucking my hearing at like 13 because I was an absolute retarded dumbfuck of a child while the little dude on the screen danced around or whatever he did I don't fuckin remember.
Ahh... Good motherfuckin times...

>>105891176
I have a white one of these and still use it sometimes as temp usb storage.

>>105909139
>I wonder: were all of these chinese?
they all share a common core to say the least

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S1_MP3_player
https://web.archive.org/web/20120503154111/http://wiki.s1mp3.org/Hardware
https://web.archive.org/web/20120320144959/http://wiki.s1mp3.org/S1mp3_types
https://web.archive.org/web/20120430232514/http://wiki.s1mp3.org/S1mp3_device_database

>was it a original chinese design?
it would appear so

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actions_Semiconductor
https://web.archive.org/web/20120420100232/http://wiki.s1mp3.org/S1mp3_History

>>105907357
It's the product option that only exists to make the more expensive option a better option. Let's say, the medium pizza is 8 bucks and half the size the large. The large pizza is 10 bucks. It's the same reason the RTX5060 have an 8gb memory option, to make you pay the extra hundred bucks on the 16gb memory version

>>105890007 (OP)
these were great. I loved the rocker switch.

>>105912129
interesting. thanks for the data, anon

Still got mine! Love these things. There's modern styles out there that mimic this type of thing too. :D

>>105893199
>>105893478
I miss this kind of technology and I would've never imagined it would go away.
I hate smartphones being soulless everything machines like you wouldn't believe.

>>105897690
It's "fabergé" you absolute american.

>>105911673
Yeah, that's basically been a fleshlight if you find it abandoned in some bathroom.

>>105890007 (OP)
That thing carried me through college.

>>105890007 (OP)
It was cool but having a removable cap that could get lost was shit design. Didn't they redesign it where the cap was attached?

>>105890007 (OP)
you can get one of these if you want something fairly modern (still only works with WMA and MP3). reads fat32 microsd cards, is read like a USB drive and runs off AAA battery. honestly i would call it the holy grail of USB stick mp3 players. yeah you can still buy it and i use mine for my car audio then i take it out to listen to some tunes. i also have an xDuoo X2 but the battery crapped out
>>105893199
more like you can have a pack of batteries or go to a near grocery store and grab one to get a 100% charged battery, very convenient all around if you are on the go.

i wish they made a USB stick player that can run high fidelity .flac files tho

>>105890007 (OP)
I had one of these. I really liked it, but eventually replaced it with an iPod classic for more capacity.

>>105905375
You can still buy MP3 players all day
It's just a reality that smartphones are good enough. It's not some scheme, just market forces.
Some things got worse because its impossible to compete with the rapid price drops on smartphones. You can only charge so much for something like a media player when cell companies where offering high end smartphones for $200 on contract.