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Comment by r0m4n0 | Hacker News Reader

Agree, I look forward to the day I can leave my iPhone in a gym locker and work out with just headphones

I'd highly recommend getting a tiny mp3 player (say Clip Zip, though they are now discontinued...) and a short light headphone cable. Why send audio wirelessly when the tech to play it is as small as the receiver?

There are also headphones with built in players, I don't know how the quality of those is though.

Why send audio wirelessly when the tech to play it is as small as the receiver?

Because you might want to stream audio from the Internet, or you don't want to waste time converting newer audio formats to MP3 and then copying them over, or you'd rather not have cables around you when you work out, or you might want to track what you've listen (particularly useful for audiobooks and long podcasts), etc.

Yes, these are not indispensable life necessities nor anything like that, but given the choice, I'd rather beam the audio from my tablet than carry an extra player.

So you'd be happy with a Chromecast Audio receiver built into a set of headphones?

Bluetooth headphones tend to have device volume control, play, pause, and skip. Many also have microphones and also allow to to take and make calls.

Because it's impossible to stream music, podcasts and take calls ?

If you take calls at the gym then you are doing it wrong.

Pretty much all the decent dedicated MP3 players have been discontinued. The last really great one for me was the Samsung's range (nee Yepp). But unfortunately the last one was the YP-U7 back in 2012 and it's very obvious they aren't going to make any more, even though they never announced it.

Sony still does players but they're not very good.

Care to elaborate on that? I find the Sony players deliver what they promise, especially the NW-A20 series.

You can still get iPods in all sizes and colors. They're pretty decent.

Because cables get caught on things, tangled up, and are just generally annoying to deal with on your person.

I hate wires with a passion. I don't what's wrong with me but I manage to tie, bust, wrap, tangle them in every most ridiculous possible wrong way all the time. I'm always sniping for multipairing mp3 capable headphones.

Aren't they often made out of metal and act like a faraday cage thus?

Typically, but not always. I've belonged to gyms that have had a metal mesh (along the lines of a stiffer chain-link fence), flat metal (like a high school locker), and wood cabinets for their lockers.

If your gym has metal lockers I don't think it will happen any time soon.

Would you be able to pause or control songs though?

Sure, bluetooth had media controls for ages. I have a bluetooth waterproof speaker that I just take with me in the shower - and I leave my phone outside of the bathroom so it doesn't get wet. I can change songs and pause with buttons on the speaker, with the phone safely on the other side of the wall.

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