In defense of the dedicated digital audio player.
The year is 2020, and our phones are awesome. We can safely say we can do plenty with them without the immediate need of a computer, they’re our media players, internet browsers, calendar planners and many more. Though the idea of playing music on your phone isn’t new, I still fondly remember my Nokia 5510, with its 64MB storage and its 2.5mm audio jack (very common at the time, other phones used proprietary connectors for either their headphones or 3.5mm audio jacks).
It was too demanding for phones at the time to also play music, storage at the time wasn’t cheap and the MP3 format was only at the beginning of the journey. It was not a strange sight to see phone companies announce an MP3 player model of their phones(see Sony Ericsson and their Walkman line way back when), eventually it became a feature in their higher end “media” phones. If I’m talking nonsense, let’s not forget that iPhones and iPod touch share common traits with telephony being the distinguishing ones.
Why am I talking old phones and old MP3 player phones? Because I want you to understand where portable media players came from and how today they are replaced with an app on your phone and a bit of storage. Now even storage doesn’t seem to be that relevant anymore either, apps like Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music and Google Play Music have taken that spot for music space. So MP3 players are irrelevant now, right?
Some might be surprised to know that portable media players or digital audio players (DAPs) have still hung around, probably not as nichey as you would expect either — The last iPod Touch was released in May 28th of Last year.
iPods were definitely not the beginning of portable digital audio playback, I still remember messing around with old Creative Labs MP3 players before apple caught on and disrupted the industry. At the time they were popularly called MP3 players back when the format was the widely popular format for portable media device. It’s not only apple, Sony has been going the premium route with their Walkman line and many Chinese and South Korean companies have been making a slew of high end DAPs.
While phones do more than enough fill the music listening gap, why do DAPs still stick around when they generally look and sound redundant to have around?
Guts better designed for audio
Today we see more phones opting out from having headphone jacks, and many people for a long time have been upset because of this decision. A headphone jack is simple, quick, efficient and never took the place of the same source you charge phones in. As wireless connectivity caught up to the point where it is convenient and phone batteries became more efficient for them, people started preferring Bluetooth headphones and stopped caring about wired ones.
I didn’t find trouble in removing the headphone jack back when many moaned about it, I thought wireless headsets were great. Especially for phone calls, podcasts and audiobooks, you didn’t need that much highs or lows in bluetooth headphone’s sound profile when it came to spoken word sound. Once I started getting back into listening to music I started seeing the problem as wired headphones didn’t rely on audio-compressing wireless signals to mess with the audio before transferring.
I’d argue even with headphone jacks, phones don’t output enough to headphones most of the time (LG V line being a major exception here). In most cases they output enough power for small in ear headphones or the horrid apple earpods, say you listen to headphones with an impedance over 32 ohms you will start to need portable amps to power more hungry headphones. DAPs are more prepared for power hungry headphones, more likely than phones.
If you look at the more higher-end DAPs found today, some will have more than one audio output jack to cater to a wider variety of headphone specs. While some of these jacks would require different connectors (some being mini xlr as found in the Astell & Kern Kann Cube, 2.5mm and 4.4mm plugs on various other makers), balanced ports supply nearly 4 times the power of a regular 3.5mm. It doesn’t end with plugs, some of the more major selling point in these DAPs are the DAC sound chips found within them.
It goes without saying that a separate device also means your music listening won’t drain your phone’s battery, as it has its own power source. Giving you at least a peace of mind that your music listening won’t drain your phone when you need it the most.
Uninterruptible music, where you want it whenever you want it
This factor can probably just be a part of the “better guts” bit, except it’s in terms of software rather than hardware. Being more dedicated devices for music, separation of the music from the telephone has its perks. For one, the music is not interrupted by phone calls or notifications. Another problem I personally faced with phones is that it would sometimes include voice notes and readable sound files from other programs (usually games) into the music library and make it a headache to keep the music library organized.
Of course, there are Android-based DAPs (mostly to take advantage of streaming services) which probably makes some of the issues I argue against more prevalent, but remember that they’re still dedicated music playing devices and likely to not have telephone hardware inside.
Makes everything else sounds better
I think this is a factor that’s not often discussed, more recent DAPs started having a feature where you can connect other devices (game consoles, computers, and phones to be used as amplifiers and DACs (digital to analog converters) via USB or Bluetooth. What I mean by that is say your device doesn’t have a headphone jack or the sound quality from it is sub-par, you can use the DAP to give you access to that. I found this especially useful when my Dell XPS 15 just sounds awful from both the headphone jack and the speakers.
On streaming services, you only have access to the music and don’t own it.
With the conveniences streaming services are offering, not everything is entirely rosy and happy. It is no surprise that music streaming has changed the music industry for better and for worse, more people are listening through streaming and the sale of albums keep plummeting. Where it is a problem applies to all streaming services and not just music, license holders dictate the availability of the music and take it away when it’s most convenient — you don’t own the music.
What music album you’re enjoying today, probably won’t be available tomorrow and who knows what will happen if Spotify one day stops existing. The listener isn’t the only one who is affected by the changes streaming has wrought, musicians earn very little when it comes streaming. While this is not a big deal to high profile artists who are already wealthy, but it’s the smaller artists that take the major hit.
Putting sympathy aside, having your music stored locally only means you will have access to your music at all times and no license holder will decide what you own and what you don’t.
So should I ditch streaming on my phone and get a DAP to listen to music locally?
No, of course not. Go with what’s more convenient for you. I’m just saying there is a place for DAPs and it’s a good solution for listening to music. Despite the perks, at the end of the day a DAP is extra bulk in your pocket.
Besides all that, Mighty Vibe to some could be a more fitting dedicated device for music. It’s a small iPod Shuffle style device for the modern day that connects to spotify through data. I haven’t tried it myself, I’m not even sure if it even works here in the UAE due to how backwards our telecom companies can be but it definitely looks like a nice little package.
Notable music-first audiophile and YouTuber John Darko has valid points for carrying a phone with an external DAC for music rather than a separate DAP. I do plan to look into mobile DACs in an upcoming article.
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