How to Build an Mp3 Player with a *copious* amount of Storage

Are you frustrated with the state of your music consumption?  Do you hate using spotify/streaming because:

1. They don’t pay artists anything
2. Having an AI recommend you music all the time is terrifying
3. They’re terribly coded applications that suck and make it hard to find your own music
4. It’s on your phone and sometimes you want to listen to music on the go and not have to navigate into your phone to look at your music library because your brain is really really controlled by it and you end up checking all your apps and you look up and 15 minutes have gone by and yeeeeeesh
5. They legitimately don’t have a lot of the music you want to listen to

Idk, I’ve had all of these thoughts occur to me at one time or another.  I grew up in a pre-streaming era – as most people on the face of the earth still did to some extent.  We remember using iPods, pirating (or even sometimes buying) digital music files, storing them on your computer, and copying them onto your iPod.  

It was pretty easy, but you also spent some time researching and acquiring what you were listening to, which gave you a moment of time to affirm and absorb the reality of what you were about to consume.  I think this process (minor as it is compared to buying physical media), is some thing I really value and noticed that you really don’t get when using streaming.

So buy an iPod, right? Well….

• iPods HAVE BEEN COMPLETELY DISCONTINUED AS OF THIS YEAR
• iPods are rapidly turning into nostalgic vintage tech, and are therefore rapidly becoming more expensive
• iPods break all the time and there’s usually no way to fix them
• iPods max out at 160gb, which, for a large music library, it very reasonably not enough space

I think the last point there is key.  If you have a couple gb of music, the world is your oyster.  You can grab any old, low memory capacity iPod and use it without any issues.

However, if you’re a maniac like me with like 250gb of shitty mp3s, you’re presented with a larger issue.  Music streaming has destroyed the market for portable music players to the point where they are barely manufactured anymore – and most that do have weird arbitrary limits on storage capacity.  It’s funny that – in a world where storage is becoming very cheap, this tech has been essentially going backwards for 10 years as people have stopped buying it and old devices break and die.

Though years of trial and error, I’ve found a way to build a portable mp3 player that has plenty of space for all my music, is easy to navigate, and costs about 110 bucks.

What follows is all you need to know to put one of these bad boys together yourself.

The essential components are:

A SanDisk Sansa Fuze

Small, light, with decent battery life.  I bought mine on eBay for 50 bucks.  I’d recommend slicing up a phone screen protector with a razor blade to add a screen protector, and getting a little rubber case.  I’ve had two of these and the screen on the first one was absolutely trashed by the time I lost it.  I’m trying to treat my second one better.  Ultimately though they’re extremely durable.

Rockbox

This is the 3^rd party firmware that can be used to mod any number of different music player devices, from iPods and Zunes and all the other good o’l boys.  Rockbox also has hundreds of sick themes to make your user interface look awesome.

You could use the Sansa’s firmware, but it doesn’t provide access to the basic file system the way that Rockbox does.

I organize my files in memory by artist, then by album.  This allows for browsing the way I want to, with little issue.  This obviously could be a lot of work to pull off if your files aren’t in a good structure, but idk, I already did the work so it’s not my problem if it’s a lot of work for you, and if you’re not willing to spend a long-ass time organizing your mp3s (i.e. a fun Tuesday night for some) this whole thing might not be your vibe ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

That being said, if you have metadata on all of your files, you’re also in a good place, as Rockbox can compile a iTunes-like library from well labeled files.

To install Rockbox, you download the RockboxUtility.exe application from their website, plug your Sansa Fuze into the computer, open up the application, and let ‘er rip.  The UI of RockboxUtility is pretty straightforward – your device should show up in the drop down menu, and then you choose check boxes to choose what you install.  The first time, you need to install both the bootloader and the rockbox firmware.

One major note – you need to know which version of Sansa Fuze you have – V1 or V2 to find this, you can start up your device (before you’ve installed Rockbox), and follow these steps:

·  Select Settings from the main menu  

·  Select System Settings  

·  Select Info   

·  Verify the Version #

V1 = 1.XX.XX (example: 1.02.28)

V2 = 2.XX.XX (example: 2.02.28)

This will determine which version of rockbox you install – Sansa Fuze (Stable) for V1 or Sansa Fuze V2 (Stable) for V2.

One other note --

After you’ve installed Rockbox, it will boot by default.  Hold left on the click wheel while you boot the Fuze to boot into the original Sansa firmware.

Resources:

• Sansa Fuze Roxbox Wiki
• Sana Fuze Rockbox User Manual

A microSD Card

The key to the whole sitch is you can buy any size microSD card you want and plug it into the slot on the side of the Sansa Fuze.  From 2gb to 1 terabyte -- however much music you want, you can have.  I bought a 400gb SanDisk microSDXC for $54 on amazon.  

The main issue that you’ll run into, however, is modern microSDXC cards cannot be easily formatted to the required fat32 memory format (a seemingly outdated format that isn’t really used anymore).  I have a windows OS, and so I can’t speak to a Mac’s capabilities to format a large microSDXC card to fat32, but it is simply not supported by Windows.  I’ve found two programs that, when used one after the other, will do the job.  They’ll be attached in a zip file.

Note: Do not add any music to your microSD card before you format it – it won’t be recognized by the Sansa Fuze, and formatting it deletes all files.

1. Hard Disk Low Level Format Tool
   1. Completely removes all formatting.
   2. Takes literally hours to do so.  Really sinks its teeth into the lower level formatting and rips it out.
2. GUIformat
   1. With the card unformatted, used this application to format the card to fat32.

And that’s it! Here is a link to a google drive with both of these apps, in case the links above break.

Some tips:

• I’d recommend adding music to your microSD via an adapter, plugged straight into your computer, because while plugging the whole device into the computer and transferring files does work, it seems to be much slower.
• The Sansa Fuze battery, like most older devices, is susceptible to overcharging, so I wouldn’t leave it charging overnight all the time.
• Try a different device and make this better!  I don’t really know what I’m doing.  If you’ve found a better, affordable, high capacity portable music player out there, let me know!

And with all that being said,

~~~keep on groovin~~~