What device do you use to listen to music while riding?
 

Hey guys and gals,

I've been looking for ideas on what music player to get for my bike. I do relatively short rides (15 miles round trip) but with warm weather approaching, I will be looking to do more night riding. What better way to hit the road then to listen to some tunes/audiobooks/talk radio. I've thought about just getting a phone mount for my smartphone, but my phone doesn't have AM/FM radio. So I guess the question is, what do you all use to listen to music while biking?

For stereo FM and MP3 I use Tommyca


For far away stations I use a PLL radio BR24

Fahrradradios - MLSOLUTION GMBH

Wow, I just see that they have new model.

Most folks I know who play music while riding, including group rides, use smart phones to play music -- usually with the phone mounted on the handlebar -- through speakers that fit in their water bottle cages or otherwise attached to the bike. The sound quality is usually very good.

One of my old slider phones has a built in FM radio. Last time I used it was on a Christmas season ride a year or so ago to listen to low power FM holiday theme broadcasts along the route.

I had a bunch of music and podcasts on my iPhone but rarely listened to them and never while riding. I don't object to the idea of music, etc., while riding, I just prefer to hear the ambient sounds around me. So I deleted all that stuff a couple of days ago to make room for taking photos and videos along the way.

Friday I took a small portable shortwave radio in my handlebar bag and stopped in a quiet elevated area to listen for awhile. But I haven't rigged up a mount to hold the radio to play while riding. Not sure I'd do that anyway.

I only listen to audiobooks and podcasts. I use a bluetooth headset, an LG Tone, with just the right earbud in.

The Sandisk 8GB Clip Jam MP3 Player has an FM tuner and micro SD card expansion slot.

JLab has one or two in-ear single earphone models -- you get both left and right channels in one ear.

Maybe better yet is the discontinued SanDisk Sansa Clip+ 8 GB MP3 Player. But they're $60+ on ebay.

Boombot PRO. Twenty bucks on Amazon... until they run out.

$15 at Wal-Mart.

Diver (TM) Waterproof MP3 Player. Swim. USB IPX8 4GB



My favorite after trying several different players (iPod shuffle, SanDisk Sansa and I am sure others) is the 'Diver Waterproof mp3 Player - Swim' . It is the one I use when I swim. I don't listen to music just podcasts and audio books so the fact that it doesn't have much in the way of controls beside "Next & Last, Volume and Off/On" is not a problem for me. It's small, cheap and water proof which are my primary requirements. The included earbuds are junk however (they hurt my ears after a very short period of use and I hate the over the ear thingie). I use old swimming, fairly high quality earbuds with one failed side that I nip off. The player is usually on Ebay for less than $30.

Plantronics backbeat fit earbuds with my iphone...they let in ALL the ambient sound but also let me use Pandora or listen to ballgames on mlb at bat.

The Tommyca is along the lines of what I was envisioning although it doesnt seem to have an SD card slot.

I guess I could just buy a phone mount and use my smartphone for mp3 and a cheap AM FM radio with a speaker for OTA. (id have to find a way to mount that as well) Seriously though, I cant believe there isnt more of a market for bike radios that arent bluetooth. Im in my 30's and I feel like im 60 when it comes to tech. Older seems to be better to me, in most cases lol

With that said, I must say that I surprised about how many folks use earbuds. I think I would feel constrained by the wire and annoyed that it would get in the way while getting on and off the bike, plus safety is always a concern.

If I am riding a vintage bike, I prefer to have a tube amp and vinyl setup. It takes up a bit of space, but sometimes it is best to maintain authenticity. For this application, I prefer 1972 Sansui bookshelf speakers mounted at the ends of the handlebars.

If I am using my modern bike, I prefer to bring along B&W 800D speakers, mounted on low-riders, in order to get the best soundstage. I use a Bob trailer (the one with the shock absorber) and two Class A monoblock amplifiers and a separate digital-analogue converter. The whole setup weighs several hundred pounds, but it is important to get high sound quality when on a bike ride.

People do not want to spend more on their bike radio or player than on their bike making it difficult to make money on this kind of product. I bought my Tommyca for $90 or so when it was disappearing from the market and left-overs were being sold out. At the peak the asking price was $200 and I doubt there were many takers, making their effort to sell to bikers fold. For a while Tommyca was offered thereafter as a shower radio and indeed it is pretty well waterproofed.

From current offerings, BR28 from MLSolution apparently has an SD slot but it is mono and has bad reviews. I will presumably give it a go at some point, just out of curiosity.

I am afraid you may be left to improvise such as per other suggestions. Myself I actually gave up on dedicated bluetooth earbuds and rather use very good ones with a bluetooth adapter, but not on a bike where I refrain from blocking my ears in any fashion.

I picked up a super cheap little speaker on Amazon that fits in the bottle cage, is rechargable, and has an SD slot along with bluetooth. It say's it's water resistant as well. Reviews show a fairly high fail rate, but it seems that IF you get a good one they last pretty well. Given the price factor as compared to some of the "name" speakers in this same segment, you can afford to buy a few before you near the cost..... The one I have is green (you will see it on Amazon) and works really well so far. I have used it two years. It holds charge well over 5 hrs of fairly loud volume, which I understand is on the better side for these.
I typically connect to Pandora and use it through my smart phone to stream to the cage speaker. Works really well and I can hear ambient noises.

I use cheap bluetooth headphones that wrap around the back of the head and hook onto the tops of the ears. I can use one earpiece or both. I've bought several of these for friends and family, and they have proven to be durable. They run for weeks on a charge!

They don't seal out all the sound, and as a result, they don't sound amazing, but I like them this way so I'm not totally unaware of my surroundings. Still, I won't wear them in city traffic. When I wear them on a lightly traveled road, I prefer spoken words because that blocks out less sound than music.

For music, I use the Spotify app on my phone. For spoken word, I use the podcasts app on my phone. I can also use the headphones for audible turn by turn directions, though they're not great for that: if I miss an instruction, my navigation app (google maps) doesn't have a button to repeat it. I can also use the headphones for phone calls, but they catch a lot of wind noise, and as a result, I can't go more than 8 mph without creating huge noise for my caller. But I can stop and answer quickly and safely, more safely than grabbing the phone.

No additional devices, I just put my phone in the chest pocket of my jacket with the speaker pointed up. I mostly listen to podcasts--I just queue them up in Stitcher (podcast app) and press play. I think if I were listening to music I might not be as happy with the sound, but it works.

What environment do you ride in? Sounds residential. I don't think in some places in my ride I could even hear actual speakers. I've had times when I couldn't even hear the earbud because of wind and traffic noise and had to just give up. Even with my current phone which has the best/loudest speaker of any I've owned, I doubt I'd be able to hear much more than enough to know it was on, there's no way I'd be able to hear what it was saying.

My commute is mostly on a two-lane city street with light traffic, but there are buses, trucks, and other loud things to contend with. With the phone chest-high, the speaker is close enough to my ear that I can hear it over almost anything. Usually. I have a Pixel; I'm surprised at how loud it gets.

Gold. Pure gold.

A little Walkman with speakers that only works on AM and since we have a 5,000 watt oldies AM down the street, that's groovy.


Otherwise, I listen to the sounds around me.

Coros Linx helmet

Fugoo XL
 

HEAVY but great volume and sound, waterproof, dustproof and can charge USB items.

I'm lucky in that my local AM/FM station broadcasts on iHeart Radio. I also like iHeart since I can also get the LA stations, as well as my original home station WJR in Detroit. I've configured the Strava and iHeart widgets on my phone to make them easy to manipulate on the bike.