I Built My Own Audio Player

Dang, I thought he had built his own hardware.

I'd still love to get a proper successor to the Sandisk Sansa Fuze, just with USB-C charging instead of its proprietary charging cable.

There's plenty of "luxury" /audiophile MP3 players out there which cost in the hundreds of dollars, but that one was in the sweet spot of bang-for-your-buck music player that I could just use for listening to music on long plane rides etc. without draining my smartphone battery.

I wonder if you could get an iPod Classic and upgrade the storage/replace the battery...