Audiophiles have long looked down on digital music because its sound quality is decidedly inferior to listeners with unique golden ears. The development of lossless file formats (such as FLAC) and cheap, abundant multi-gigabyte storage has made portable high-fidelity music a reality.
Currently, there are really only two major manufacturers in the high-end portable music space: Astell & Kern and Sony (the Walkman brand still exists). We have used earlier versions of each brand, but not the current models.
If you’re the kind of person who has a hard drive full of uncompressed music audio files and can hear the difference between them and the relatively lower resolution MP3 and AAC files, be sure to pair one of these players Use wired headphones of your choice.
Almost all streaming music services now offer lossless or high-bitrate options; this covers almost all the big players, from Tidal and Qobuz to Amazon and Apple. (Spotify Hi-Fi AudioStrangely, still nothing appears.
If you like what you hear, please consider upgrading to Nice headphone DAC (i.e. “digital-to-analog converter”) like Aofei Dragonfly And a serious pair of wired headphones. Then you’ll have a solid audiophile option for your journey without the need for a separate music player.