Fiio m3k digital player

[Introverted]

I had various ipods for years, and several years ago when the last one kicked the bucket, I bought a massive SD card for my Android phone, installed Poweramp, and I've never looked back.  Works great, supports FLAC, plays through bluetooth speakers, etc.  It also fixes one of my main gripes with ipods, which was lack of space -- it doesn't hold all of my music, but with a 512 GB SD card it's way more than enough to be carrying around...     

My "setup" is similar to yours - Personally I think the SQ on my Phone is better than either of my old iPods...

[Roasted Swan]

It's been a week since it arrived and I tested it on all kind of music, orchestral, vocal and solo piano. Great sound (on no-name ear buds I inherited from my mother, may God rest her soul in peace!) and ergonomy. I'm very pleased with it.

I'd been toying with upgrading my music player and in the light of this debate went for a FiiO Mk.3 too.  VERY happy indeed with it as a piece of kit so thanks Florestan for the heads up!.  Has a nice solid feel but more to the point handles FLAC and Studio Master files with ease.  My previous Cowon player was excellent - I particularly liked the ability to tweak the EQ setting on that to suit different styles of music.  But it really wasn't happy trying to deal with the bigger files and the Studio Masters just locked it up.  So now I'm able to rip all my CD's as FLAC files regardless of how I will then listen to them.  Being able to use a memory card of the size of your choice is great too - my Cowon had a fixed 8 GB internal memory which meant regularly swapping over music files even at 320 kps.  Now with a 128 GB external card that's a lot of FLAC files!  No idea if an average phone processor is able to handle these high res files or not.  The sound quality through the FiiO is really excellent - fingers crossed for durability.....

[mc ukrneal]

I'd been toying with upgrading my music player and in the light of this debate went for a FiiO Mk.3 too.  VERY happy indeed with it as a piece of kit so thanks Florestan for the heads up!.  Has a nice solid feel but more to the point handles FLAC and Studio Master files with ease.  My previous Cowon player was excellent - I particularly liked the ability to tweak the EQ setting on that to suit different styles of music.  But it really wasn't happy trying to deal with the bigger files and the Studio Masters just locked it up.  So now I'm able to rip all my CD's as FLAC files regardless of how I will then listen to them.  Being able to use a memory card of the size of your choice is great too - my Cowon had a fixed 8 GB internal memory which meant regularly swapping over music files even at 320 kps.  Now with a 128 GB external card that's a lot of FLAC files!  No idea if an average phone processor is able to handle these high res files or not.  The sound quality through the FiiO is really excellent - fingers crossed for durability.....

It's been a week since it arrived and I tested it on all kind of music, orchestral, vocal and solo piano. Great sound (on no-name ear buds I inherited from my mother, may God rest her soul in peace!) and ergonomy. I'm very pleased with it.

Glad to hear you are both enjoying it!

[Introverted]

No idea if an average phone processor is able to handle these high res files or not. 

The App Poweramp for Android Phones will play FLAC and ALAC files (providing the DAC on your Phone can handle it - with a newish Phone it shouldn't be a problem)...