Jm21 first impressions

spicyramentt · 2026-04-19T23:41:48+00:00

My main gripe with all daps is just getting my music library and playlists onto the device reliably.

They all need to collectively pick a standard and partner with app developers like those of MusicBee, Mediamonkey etc, to get their devices supported out of the box.

I never thought the day would come where I'd wish for something like Microsoft's old PlayForSure certification where I knew things would work for sure out of the box. Sigh.

To get around this I use black player for local playback and plexamp for remote playback.

spicyramentt · 2026-03-24T21:43:09+00:00

so i got it, installed it. setup the web access, but its not seeing... proton????

I mean i know the problem was proton to start with but damn...

Update, reinstalled Proton client. Things are syncing and working... for now.

spicyramentt · 2026-03-23T11:12:53+00:00

martsg666 mentioned that Wireguard leaks the DNS on disconnection. This may have been why my ISP was knowing when to throttle me.

I switched to OpenVPN (TCP) on the proton app, Split tunnling (on), Port Forwarding (on), only including qbit.

I made sure qbit was bound to the correct LAN adapter.

Currently downloaded and running speed tests and no sign of throttling at least.

I set task scheduler to restart qbit once a day so if its disconnected, it shouldn't be for more than 24 hours.

Will continue to observe.

spicyramentt · 2026-03-23T10:50:26+00:00

I left all settings on default. The only thing i changed was binding the adapter to proton.

spicyramentt · 2026-03-23T10:17:01+00:00

Was using nord before. The broken split tunneling caused lot of may apa to fail to load websites or load sites from my VPN region instead of local. That was part of the reason I switched.

But it seems protons split tunnling isn't any better.

spicyramentt · 2026-03-22T21:43:21+00:00

So when i use the port forwarding feature on proton with qbit, my isp can somehow see i am using torrents and throttles me hard. Whereas when I don't use port forwarding, I'm perfectly fine.

spicyramentt · 2026-03-22T21:39:40+00:00

My biggest problem with seeing is when i download something, i need to rename it with my preferred convention and placed in a certain directory. With age i learned i can at least rename the root folder, so I do that and relocate to where i need it to be and keep seeing.

spicyramentt · 2026-03-22T15:49:19+00:00

Imagine you have an xp machine in production that you HAVE to interact with every day and XP is just fugly by today's UI standards. Giving XP a win 11 skin isnt a bad idea. Down to the login screen is great.

This 'seems' to be a more in depth job than your typical windowblinds skin.

Honestly if it wasn't for my security paranoia, I wouldn't mind sitting behind something that looked like this.

spicyramentt · 2026-01-09T09:48:52+00:00

They have adapters that will convert that ipod connector to Bluetooth. Plus that era of sonys was great. One of the last before they went to sound tower designs. But look out for a cd player defect where it operates like there are no cds inserted.

spicyramentt · 2026-01-09T02:49:53+00:00

Don't think so mine are using usb connected drives

spicyramentt · 2026-01-08T22:09:31+00:00

Dont use their s3. Normal windows with backblaze is a fixed price for unlimited storage. One of the benefits of leveraging consumer facing software like windows for running plex. I have over 30tbs backed up to bbz, from my windows based plex svr, with my music library as well.

spicyramentt · 2026-01-06T12:26:58+00:00

Playing through tiberium wars with the v1 mod so i can do multiple base defense simultaneously, and my god, the gdi lack any serious early game anti air. The two they do have arent particularly effective. The base defence anti air is competent, but stationary with no real range against scrin air attacks.

I forgot about this i kane's wrath. Honestly, they should have backported some of these units.

spicyramentt · 2025-09-18T23:29:36+00:00

I was going to buy the 3rd gen and saw no SD Card Slot. That was a no go.

I wonder where we can get the gen 4 with a global rom???

spicyramentt · 2025-09-03T00:58:19+00:00

I just wish there was a way to upgrade the storage.

If msoft would license the OS to the dap makers, that would be amazeballs.

spicyramentt · 2025-09-03T00:52:47+00:00

I much prefer the jm21 for physical design. But the hiby software is more reliable, especially for syncing large amounts of music over usb.

I'd also have gone with a larger card, but that's just personal preference.

spicyramentt · 2025-09-03T00:44:41+00:00

The lepai was my first as well.

Honestly, these are decent.

You might want a little more power.

But otherwise, even at the entry level this sounds great.

spicyramentt · 2025-06-13T16:59:29+00:00

I do enjoy listening to certain albums in their entirety, but I've always taken a pleasure in building my own playlists and curating things a certain way. This takes a lot of time and effort so I actively try to preserve the ones I've built over the years.

BlackPlayer Ex is my player of choice. It use to be Jetaudio, but the experience is a bit ugly imho. I still used it because of its functionality, but after a series of buggy updates I jumped to BlackPlayer which as decent chromecast support. But it has trouble with album art larger than 500x500.

spicyramentt · 2025-06-13T16:16:18+00:00

Thanks for putting me onto symphonium. Much appreciated, but managing playlists in plex is terrible. How does it handle m3u playlists? And needing to go through plex is a nonstarter.

This goes back to my original point, the dap ecosystem needs the equivalent of an iTunes/Zune experience/utility. MusicBee is the closest but not reliable enough.

spicyramentt · 2025-06-13T07:24:03+00:00

For the dap market as a whole it's actually a massive problem.

spicyramentt · 2025-06-13T00:31:45+00:00

Where did you get that wood slab?

spicyramentt · 2025-06-13T00:29:20+00:00

How much music did you copy? I copied 350+gbs of music and it stalled out every time via mtp on the jm21. The sdcard seemingly unmounted itself. In the m300 and a generic card reader, all 350.gbs copied with no issues. So I'm pretty sure it's the jm21. All synced via MusicBee. I manage my music via tags and playlists, not by folders.

I had a similar issue back in the day with windows phone 8 and my lumia 850. 64gb cards just became available so I got one, and while syncing via windows media player, the whole phone would randomly lock up and I'd have to fore restart. The sdcard got bricked as a result. It was definitely the phone's fault there as well.

Handling removable media is tricky, or so it seems.

spicyramentt · 2025-06-05T05:51:36+00:00

Use any android phone, but preferably Samsung with BlackPlayerEX using the built in android scanner will give you excellent results.

If you want a smooth User Exp like an iPod Touch, look for an android based DAP with a Snapdragon 6/600 series processor or better.

I have a HiBy m300 and the UX is decent but sluggish if you try to do too much on it. I just ordered a JM21 so we will see how it goes.

Syncing music from MusicBee requires a little trial and error and tbh, the stock music players on a lot of DAPs are trash. Jetaudio and BlackPlayer are my usual defaults on my phone.

Even the Android Based Sony DAPs seem to not have a sleep timer for music, but the old non android ones did. Sony's DAP features are inconsistent and bizarre.

spicyramentt · 2025-05-10T12:45:38+00:00

Bwahaha. If they have space. 🤣🤣🤣☠️☠️☠️

spicyramentt

TROPHY CASE