I’ve already spent some time stepping away from streaming with another digital audio player, but the Snowsky Echo sits in a slightly different space. Where something like the Innioasis Y1 leans heavily into affordable nostalgia as a concept, the Echo feels more like an attempt to refine it, to
I would argue both points.
First, most phones have at least 20GB, which is a LOT of music storage if you’re using 320vbr compression, and if you’re an audiophile who absolutely positively must have flac for everything, you’re already going to be familiar enough with storage to know what size microSD card to get. Add in a synced dropbox/gdrive/nextcloud/whatever folder, and you don’t even have to manually plug it in to transfer files anymore, so space is kind if irrelevant.
Second, most people who are mobile are going to be listening with bluetooth headphones, and those who aren’t can still use a USB-C to jack adapter, which are pretty inexpensive and ubiquitous now, have passthrough charging solved, etc. For the audiophiles, there are very good USB-C DACs out now.
I guess I’m just confused about where this device fits into my life. If I’m mobile, it’s extra stuff to carry that duplicates functions I already have on me. If I’m home, I have fixed audio equipment that is way more versatile.
All Android phones support Opus which makes it a great format if storage space is limited, as it’s optimized for low bitrates. You can go as low as 64 kbps if you are not picky. 128 kbps is near transparent and certainly enjoyable, while 192 kbps is basically a 320 kbps mp3 equivalent.
At 128 kbps, one can store 5000 songs even if they have just 20 GB to spare, as mentioned above.
Opus (and its predecessor Vorbis) is intended for telephony. It’s compression algorithm is optimised for low latency encoding of speech.
USBC to headphone jack adapters, at least on my phone (Pixal 9 GOS), are noisy as hell.