Best portable digital music player?

A cheap second-hand smartphone like a Samsung Galaxy S3 with a 64GB micro-SD card, a couple of spare batteries and a Bitzie with or without powerwire would be my approach. Wouldn't have to spend too much to achieve excellent sound.

I only suggested this combo because I thought you had a Bitzie with powerwire already so adding an older cheaper phone with a long battery life and using USB power from the car and the microSD is straightforward to swap if you need more than 64GB storage.

Although the Bitzie is going to be overkill for the car amp and speakers. Probably just ignore my suggestion...

Edited by Ash - 15 May 2017 at 7:50am

The Bitzie and an S3 can do 7.5 hours continuous on one S3 charge. I remember driving for 8 hours once (to Wales...), but most journeys are less...

OK, I'm biased, but then again if something is sh*t I say so. I will say that I decided to use my Bitzie with my cheap Huawei/EE Kestrel for use in the garden (with my HD250s) when the sun decides to shine again. Although the current cabling is messy, it sounds bloody good to me. Overkill? Why should anyone want to deny their enjoyment of music?

I have hunted down a solid micro-USB OTG adapter to save on the bulk of two cables (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01B7OVW36/ref=od_aui_detailpages00?ie=UTF8&psc=1), and so the Lautus USB ferrite is now at the correct distance from the source. So I now have a micro-USB OTG version of the Lautus USB.

The files on my phone are FLAC and are no worse than CD quality. The USB signal is as good as it gets IMO - the connection direct to the Majestic USB input tells me that.

Therefore any suitable phone, the adapted Lautus USB and a Bitzie will perform the desired function of portable music player. The Bitzie will output to a line input/headphones, convert to toslink and coax, all at the same time as you know.

It's a simple solution. Now, if it's the cable that's the problem, I'm looking to try a shorty cable from China. It may sound OK, we will have to wait and see (hear).

Sadly my Bitzie needs to stay indoors as it will be feeding my custom Mark Audio speakers music (when we move again and I can start using them!). However the thought of having a Graham Slee source in the car is REALLY appealing! The issue I have with my phone is that music sometimes stutters (pauses for less than a second) and then plays normally. Both phones do this and I have no idea why.