I did a lot of research in this field and additionally in audiobooks.
While I still think that the iPod Nano 7 is the perfect device for me, I recently got my hands on a HiBy R1. For 60 bucks it is a remarkable non Android device (in fact it is buildroot based with a publicly available toolchain and a modding community). I have to prepare for my iPod nano collection slowly dying over the next years.
I also use an old Android GrapheneOS phone (Pixel 4a) along with some apps as a backup:
Substreamer APP (cross platform)
DSub
Navidrome (Backend)
Audiobookshelf (Backend)
Prologue (iOS)
Voice (Android, Paul Woitaschek)
Navidrome backend even supports smart playlists while Substreamer App supports Offline Sync, this is very handy to use.
My workflow is:
1. Obtaining Audio CDs (cheap, high quality)
2. Ripping flac with EAC [1]
3. Tagging with beets music organizer
4. Convert inplace to mp3 v1 with beets
4b. Archive the flac (on disk and bluray)
5. Add to navidrome
6. Star / rate in navidrome
7. use a smart playlist to sync top titles and New Albums offline
8. use a shell script to download to USB for my old car without Bluetooth
Works pretty well and after the ripping step pretty much full auto. The only reason i still prefer iPod Nano 7 over Android is the limited remote of my cable headphones (longpress is not detected on Android) and the near flawless UX.
1: https://pilabor.com/blog/2022/10/audio-cd-ripping-hardware/
While I still think that the iPod Nano 7 is the perfect device for me, I recently got my hands on a HiBy R1. For 60 bucks it is a remarkable non Android device (in fact it is buildroot based with a publicly available toolchain and a modding community). I have to prepare for my iPod nano collection slowly dying over the next years.
I also use an old Android GrapheneOS phone (Pixel 4a) along with some apps as a backup:
Navidrome backend even supports smart playlists while Substreamer App supports Offline Sync, this is very handy to use.My workflow is:
Works pretty well and after the ripping step pretty much full auto. The only reason i still prefer iPod Nano 7 over Android is the limited remote of my cable headphones (longpress is not detected on Android) and the near flawless UX.1: https://pilabor.com/blog/2022/10/audio-cd-ripping-hardware/