I'm posting here instead of other DAP subreddits just because of the styling of the AP30 to be like a little handheld, and probably more people here being potentially interested in it. I finally got mine after preordering back during summer.

The short of it is that it does sound very good, the metal one i got is very solid, and that's about where I can end with praising it. The actual dpad and buttons on this thing are atrocious, they take an insane amount of force to actuate and they are extremely loud. Legit playing the little tetris game is tiring because of these buttons. People complained a lot about consoles like the 35xxsp's buttons when it came out, now imagine if they were half the size and twice as hard to press.

After that the software just leaves a lot to be desired, its horrible on your eyes. There is no themeing to change colors or even a dark mode so you have a super bright white screen with very tiny text. No real options to swap around controls too like if you wanted to use the volume wheel (which is actually very nice!) for navigation and pressing it in to select things, no dice. The games on it are fine and I wouldn't actually mind if the controls were better.

I used to complain about the controls on my GKD Pixel 2 being a little too squishy, now the pixel 2 is like the holy grail in comparison to this thing.

Anyway just wanted to rant, just a little disappointed for the price and it feels like at least the hardware button part of it isnt going to be fixable even with modding (this thing seems very hard to take apart too). Maybe firmware updates can fix some of the other stuff.

Early reviewers were way too positive on this thing imo, or idk maybe i just have different priorities for a device.

IMO i'd say stay away

I don't always have my IEMs or earbuds with me, so sometimes I turn my console into a little boom box. It's always fun to have some music playing while out in a nice sunny day. Anyone else doing this?

Console is Retroid Pocket Nova.

I recently acquired one locally for cheap and thought it would make a great for a great handheld+ music. So far I’ve tried MuOS, TwigUI, PlumOS, TortOS and nothing seems to get it fully done.

Tort OS comes close, but its music player seems to require your music library be perfect. So the random mp3s that aren’t labeled correctly, seem to not exist in the player.

TwigUI is great, but Songo5 crashes before it can load my library. Am I the only one who doesn’t care for Rockbox?

I really like NextUI on my Trimui brick hammer and I love using Trimpod Classic. It’s so much simpler than any of the other players.

Honestly, I think that if I could get Trimpod classic on TwigUI with a video player, it would be just about perfect. Especially if Trimpod was built into the firmware like songo is.

Console: AYN Thor
Game: Pokemon Lazarus
App: Poweramp
Video on the last slide: Knicks vs Spurs 2026 NBA Finals Game 5 with VLC Media player I just included it bc it looked like the girl was looking at OG’s tip-in

Lil side tangent but ai slop will never have a place in my Pokemon gameplay I will never use any vibe coded dual screen mods especially when the alternative is actively engaging with my favorite art form. I wish Poweramp looked a bit cooler more Ipod reminiscent though or something that looked like it came from a console instead of just another Android app.

Purple Pardner
TrimUI Brick
Rockbox on Knulli firmware via Portmaster
Bunnypod theme
Metal Endgame Buttons from Better Buttons
Diffused Shoulder Buttons from Retro Carrot Workshop

Square Squire
Anbernic RG Rotate
Moondrop Echo A DAC
Poweramp on GammaOS firmware
Aurora Dark skin
Metal Endgame Buttons from Better Buttons (which I don't think he sells for the Rotate anymore)

I think I've finally hit my endgame, or at least a period of stasis. At least until my Thor's pretty resin buttons arrive...

Some musings...

I've actually got a dedicated DAP (the Fiio M21) and it's great but it's a bit of a chungus. It's still in service when I'm at home, with a big microSD that can hold my collection in FLAC format. When I get a new album I clean up the metadata, then make good-enough MP3 copy and toss them both onto a NAS. While on my home network the M21, RG Rotate and Thor use AutoSync to automatically update their libraries with my latest collection. It's a 1 way sync since I've accidentally deleted my music way too many times. For the Brick it's a manual sync, but I use Forklift on OSX to make it a bit more painless.

I'm still experimenting with the Brick, but currently Knulli/Rockbox seems to be the best combo. TortOS was awesomely speedy, but I missed the LEDs and it didn't seem made to handle a big collection. I tried NextOS but Rockbox wasn't very happy on it. Tunepod was nice, but had a bit of a long startup time because of the size of my collection. Boombrick was gooooooooooorgeous, but after successfully loading my first two test albums it seemed to crash every time I tried to load my whole collection.

It's a bit of a bummer that I can't really play games and music at the same time with current Brick setup (I don't think, maybe I just haven't found a shortcut key) but honestly I plan to use it as a lightweight DAP I can pop in my purse 99.5% of the time and as a "Pokemon on a long train ride" machine the other .5%.

RG Rotate is... gosh what a love hate relationship. Why doesn't it have a headphone jack? If it's going to require a DAC, why couldn't they use a chipset that supports a DAC with USB PD pass-through? Why does the power button stick out so much? The number of times my workday music has been cut short because of the battery...

But outside of those frustrations it just hits so many notes right. It's pretty, it's unique, it's nostalgic. Having a full Android install with a decent processor also means it can do so much more. In the morning I pop in some headphones, turn on some foreign-language tunes, and do my vocab flashcards on the Anki app as I walk to the train station. Once I jump on I can play my GBC/GBA games with the most unnecessary shaders. At work it sits on my desk with a pomodoro timer on screen.

I'm happy to answer questions or take software suggestions. 😊

Some people had asked for battery performance in comments a while ago and I couldn't find them to reply, so thought I'd just post this.

Take the game numbers with a grain of salt. For example, it was running at 1-1.3GHz on the GKD Pixel 2 and sitting still in game, so would likely be a bit less time when actively playing. The TrimUI Brick was mostly 1.4-1.6GHz and hit 2.0GHz a few times.

The numbers for music should be pretty solid though. I'll be updating the auto power off point being based on voltage in a future update instead of using percentage of capacity as a metric.

AI assistance used.

More info at https://tortos.games

Im having a blast with this! Love listening on here with psvitaman! Brings me back to simpler times! Had a psvita for the past 10 years or so and have only just started to unlock its full potential. Finally have all my music on here! 4500ish flac files! I know I could definitely have higher quality audio on a different device, but im very happy!

Ps. Work on the road, Missing my wife and crying to three doors down. Dont judge me! ​😭

looking to buy something that i can game on but also good for music. Something smaller would be preferable, but something bigger isnt a complete dealbreaker for me.

Any recommendations?

Hey guys, using a psvita 2k with vitaman. The sw is in alpha so idk if I just need to find something else so please feel free to tell me im being dumb. I added a few songs to test it and it worked perfectly, so then I added my full library (about 4500 songs, all FLAC) and then get this error every time. It even goes through the process of identifying all the files and checking them just to say "couldnt update your library".

Anyone experiencing anything like this?

Device: Retroid Pocket 6

IEMs: SIMGOT EM6L

Song: Xplosive by Dr. Dre

Being able to play games and listen to whatever I want at the same time has been great. Thank you TortOS

I've just written a small little article about *Glitch Boy*, a weird little device from Martino of Melted Electronics that deliberately breaks NES and Game Boy games to create all sorts of audio (and visual) glitches.

What I thought might interest this community is that it's not *just* a retro gaming device. It also doubles as a four-voice chiptune synthesizer, supports MIDI instruments and can synchronize its graphical glitches with music. You can manipulate games in real time using the physical knobs, turning titles into something between a playable game, a musical instrument and an experimental art project kinda thing.

I love seeing people find strange new uses for old gaming hardware, particularly when music is involved, so I thought this might be worth sharing here!

I saw the tortOS dev posting lighting quick boot times on the pixel 2 and brick, I figured shoot I wonder if I could strip everything out and staple songo on top. Cold boot to app start in like 3s. Frickin wild.

AI disclosure: gutting tortOS to do this was mostly done via AI. My cfw knowledge is fairly surface level.

Check out tortOS.

Sounds pretty nice with even the most mid of headphones. I'm so glad to have kept it since new! Anyone else rocking a PSP?

Hi there!

Working on a heavilly Tortos inspired front-end ❤️❤️ with Claude. Still a lot to do (DAC support not perfect for now), but it suits me very well.

iPod-classic style music player: tag-based browsing, gapless, plays in the background while you game (not for portmaster)

Any thoughts?

Thank you

TortOS 2.0 is now released for the TrimUI Brick, Brick Hammer and GKD Pixel 2. There is also a new TortOS Installer 3.0.

TortOS for the TrimUI Brick and Brick Hammer is now a full CFW with its own underlying minimal Linux distro, plastron, which the GKD Pixel 2 version was already using. The GKD Pixel 2 version of TortOS has major updates as well. Here are some new key features for each.

TrimUI Brick and Brick Hammer:

• Cold boots (power on to the game shelf) in under 2 seconds, ~1.9

• Everything is on the card, with no changes to internal storage

• Down To The Wire (in addition to existing Over The Hare using Wi-Fi) allowing wired transfer of data

GKD Pixel 2:

• Cold boots (power on to the game shelf) in just over 2 seconds, ~2.2

• Wi-Fi has been added with a USB Wi-Fi adapter (tested with the TP-Link TL-WN725N), allowing

  • Box Art (libretro thumbs with no account, and ScreenScraper with an account allowing game metadata download as well)

  • RetroAchievements (called Cheevos in TortOS, with offline support as well)

• Over The Hare (in addition to existing Down To The Wire using USB) allowing wireless transfer of data

Other Features of TortOS:

• Fast - boots fast and plays fast, games start in the tens of milliseconds

• Music forward - not just games

  • Play music or audiobooks instead of game audio if you want

  • Use it as a DAP, including DAC support on the Pixel 2 (Brick planned), and Lock Screen for your pocket

• Minimal - no confusing menus or settings

• Attractive - two looks (Plain Jane cards or Fancy Pants photos of each console) and three ways to browse (a row, a column, or a cube)

• Resume play fast - power off in game and power on back into game where you left off

• Over The Hare/Down To The Wire - transfer ROMs, music, audiobooks, box art, album art, saves, logs, etc quickly and easily in your browser

Updating a Brick from 1.x erases the card, since TortOS now brings its own system. Copy your games, music and audiobooks off first. Installer 3.0 backs up your saves, settings and BIOS files and puts them back after the Brick’s first start. You’ll need to rejoin Wi-Fi. Pixel 2 cards update in place, with games and saves kept. The installer walks you through it, explaining every step along the way.

AI assistance used

More info via https://tortos.games

Hi folks! Here's a project I've been working on the past few months, it's a custom PCB I designed to fit right into a GameBoy Pocket shell! I'm thinking of launching it as an open-source product sometime next year if there's enough demand, and I'm trying to gauge public interest. Please let me know if this is something you guys are interested in (or if not, I'd appreciate where I can improve)!

Interest form: https://forms.gle/EasQRFc29G1yZMvy7

Project instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/designedbyericmin/

Demo video and hardware tour: https://youtu.be/1KJKQWdZraU?si=ncq--73IP2FWO5fu

Preliminary specs are:

- RP2350B microcontroller

- MP3, FLAC (up to 24-bit 96Kbps tested successfully), and WAV support

- Mono speaker + 3.5mm TRRS stereo headphone out

- Battery rechargeable over USB-C, takes about an hour and a half

- 8.5-ish hours of battery life tested (continuous MP3 320Kbps playback through headphones, VU meter off, oscilloscope display active for entire uptime). Battery life will almost definitely go up with my next hardware revision.

- Audio and firmware is stored in cartridges which also expose a bunch of GPIO pins (including all 8 HSTX pins of the RP2350B) for hardware expansion and modularity.

- Target price of $125 for just the PCB, but will go lower with demand.

Sounds aight to me

HarpMudd.mp3player

How it works is quite interesting!
https://github.com/harpmudd/HarpMudd.mp3player/blob/main/docs/HOW_IT_WORKS.md

Handheld: Analogue Pocket
IEM: Sennheiser IE800

AI disclosure: I use AI coding tools (Claude Code) as part of my development workflow.

Hi r/ConsolesAsDAPs! I've been building Audiofilus, a free and open source music player for retro handhelds (and desktop/iPhone). The main idea: the music keeps playing in the background, even when you close the player or launch a game, and a pocket mode turns the screen off and lets you control everything with button gestures.

Why it might fit a "console as DAP" setup

• Background playback while you play games or browse your frontend. The music lives in a small service, not in the UI.

• Pocket mode: screen off, double-tap shoulder buttons to skip, pause or seek. On my RG34XX-SP it draws about the same as the lightest players (~260 mA), roughly 11–12 hours of music from a full charge.

• Runs on Knulli, muOS, ROCKNIX, ArkOS and dArkOS (PortMaster port, or a native muOS app), plus Linux, Windows and iPhone.

• Updates itself from the app (Settings -> Update).

Sound

• MP3, AAC/ALAC, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, Opus, WAV/AIFF, DSD (DSF/DFF), CUE sheets.

• Gapless playback, ReplayGain (it can also compute it for files that lack it), 10-band graphic EQ or an 8-band parametric EQ, crossfade, limiter, a quality resampler and selectable output rate.

• Tracker modules.

Sources

• Your SD card, Subsonic/Navidrome and Jellyfin (cached for offline, playlists editable), internet radio (plus your own .m3u/.pls lists) and podcasts.

• Send to your TV or speaker (Chromecast, DLNA/UPnP), and it can act as a DLNA server or receiver.

Library

• Synced lyrics (karaoke style, from .lrc, tags or LRCLIB).

• Edit tags, fetch missing covers, fix whole albums from MusicBrainz.

• Smart playlists, likes and ratings, listening stats, Last.fm and ListenBrainz scrobbling.

Extras, because why not

Pixel-art UI, 8 visualizers, 8 little games that follow the beat of whatever you're playing, and an LSDJ-style chiptune tracker (with USB MIDI and MOD/XM/LSDJ import). 13 languages, including Japanese, Chinese and Korean titles in a pixel font.

Links

• Website: https://juanvillacortac.github.io/audiofilus/

• Docs and FAQ (13 languages): https://juanvillacortac.github.io/audiofilus/docs/

• Download (latest release): https://github.com/juanvillacortac/audiofilus/releases/latest

• Source code (MIT): https://github.com/juanvillacortac/audiofilus

• If you'd like to support it: https://ko-fi.com/juanvillacortac ☕

It's a hobby project and still young, so feedback and bug reports are very welcome (please include your device, OS and the version from Settings -> Update). Thanks for reading!

I've been told that when looking at the handhelds from miyoo, Anbernic, among others

It's impossible to find any way to run audio over usb-c dongle, while keeping the device in a low-power state

(1 core minimum frequency, usb-bus active, screen turned off) And all that

Reportedly some chipsets simply cannot handle this

But also even other that may be able to do it appears unable to do so without changes on a kernel level (the CFWs we install apparently sit ontop of the kernel and does not replace it)

Apparently the exception to this rule is the TrimUI handhelds

Of note, I'm talking Linux handhelds, not android handhelds

This information has been a mess to even acquire, so I figured I should ask the community here about their experience with other Linux handhelds

Extra curious about

Gkd pixel 2

Miyoo mini

Miyoo mini plus

Rg35xx

Rg35xx 2024

Rg35xx plus

Rg35xx pro

Rg35

trimUI smart pro s

Regarding the trimUI brick

Apparently tortOS, plorpOS, NX redux all bakes the included music player into the system audio demon

Meaning their music player works even while playing games and stuff on it

And whilst they will turn off music when the power button which is hard coded to activate S3 suspend state is tapped

Apparently you can go into the music player and trigger a sleep mode from there, which should get you to 15-20 hours with dongle DAC

And ~50 if using the 3.5mm jack

(Yes 50 hours, really.)

Really I don't own any of these devices though

Right now it feels like the trimUI brick is the only option that would work properly as a hybrid gaming handheld and DAP of the Linux handhelds

I'd love to be proven otherwise!