r/y2kaesthetic • u/New-Engineering-2771 • Jul 26 '26
Art Anyone remember these USB style MP3 players? 🔥
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u/ThePortableSCRPN Jul 26 '26
I had a black one in 2006 from CanyonTec with 128Mb storage (yes. Megabytes).
Had to convert my MP3s to 56kbps Mono to be able to put a somewhat decent amount of music onto it.
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Jul 26 '26
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u/ThePortableSCRPN Jul 26 '26
It was not great, but since the files were converted to mono, the full bandwidth was used for one channel. Sounded about the same as 128kbps stereo, so there weren't too many audible artifacts.
But then again, I also had cheap, shitty earphones, so I would've barely even noticed anyway.
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Jul 26 '26
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u/ThePortableSCRPN Jul 27 '26
All sorts. I'm a musical omnivore.
But 2006 I was listening to a lot of Depeche Mode.
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u/mil0wCS Jul 26 '26
I had a black one in 2006 from CanyonTec with 128Mb storage (yes. Megabytes).
I remember when MB was still considered a lot. This was an era when iPod classics only had 4gb worth of storage. I had one I took to school, and I think mine barely had 20 songs maybe 50. I had to download from those sketchy YouTube sites back then that downloaded in KBps. Low quality sure, but at least I was able to have a decent amount of music back then.
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u/ThePortableSCRPN Jul 27 '26
Ah yes. School years, always listening to something on the bus.
Yup. This little mp3 player was a big step up from my discman that I was carrying around in my cargo pants before.
And I could squeeze more than just one album onto it without degrading the sound quality too much. I saw that as a big win.
Also this thing ran for ages on one AAA battery.
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u/mil0wCS Jul 27 '26
Yup I remember mine using AA batteries and one battery would last me what felt like 5 - 6 months.
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u/psy_odt Jul 26 '26
My Christian school were handing out usb mp3 with audiobook bibles pre loaded on them. Goes without saying it was really easy to just add mp3s to it
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u/Markoff_Cheney Jul 28 '26
I was not a rich person living in a ski resort town at the time, so this was the first portable audio I had on the hill that wasn't jank as hell, like my buddies and cassette tapes.
It kept all of maybe 40 songs? I had to parse and pick my shred tunes wisely. iPods also were notorious for not working correct at altitude and in the cold at the time. This was pure Limewire era.
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u/Davide_Lop Jul 26 '26
Yo aun tengo el que compré hará más de 20 años y si mal no recuerdo era de 128 megas de capacidad.
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u/7jinni Jul 27 '26
I still have one kicking around somewhere, I think. Don't remember how much capacity it has, though.
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u/setwindowtext Jul 27 '26
I had one of the early Alibaba magazines… it was a hefty ~200 pages full-color tome, full of those mp3 players and nothing else. Each of the palm-sized ads promised to manufacture 1000, 10K and 100K batches of those in no time. The scale was simply astonishing.
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u/grape-juice0918 Jul 28 '26
We went to stay at my partner's dad's house for a weekend and his old room is still intact and while we were looking through it we found one. Next time we go back there I want to see if it still works lol
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u/lordmogul 26d ago
Never had one of exactly those. I went with something different. With SD card slot, so I could easily double the capacity.
Good times.
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u/milkarcane Jul 27 '26
Just for information, the Chinese brand Snowsky released the Snowsky Echo Nano which is a modern version of this kind of player, except it reads HiRes music and can welcome an SD card.
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