I wonder what did you find so lacking about the ZX1 & AK100II?  I personally love the ZX1 as a "do everything very well player".  If you don't need a digital out, the battery is plenty long enough for all file types.  It also support hi-rez/lossless streaming from a wifi drive as well.  I love my AK100 modded too but mainly due to its 288gb storage capacity.

 

These two were actually the closest!

 

But the ZX1 didn't have enough memory, as I like to carry my whole library with me in trips – or at least a good chunk of it.

 

The AK, on the other hand, did have the memory (with a 128Gb card) and was extremely pleasurable to use but I just didn't think the jump in SQ was enough to justify the cost to me – especially having recently heard the Calyx M, which is the best player I've ever heard in SQ terms – and, to make matters worse, syncronization was a pain with a Mac. I couldn't get that Dapper utility to work with it because SyncMate just wouldn't see it, so synchronization had to be manual. 

 

And since I mentioned the Calyx, the main issue with it is battery life. With regular use, it would drain its battery in about 3 hours, which to me is something that doesn't make it really portable. 

Edited January 7, 201511 yr by Leonardo Drummond

Someone on another forum was also struggling with an iPod Classic replacement.  They installed a SSD, and got increased battery life out of it as a by-product.  I'm hard on the controls (so worry about how much life the iClassic has other than the drive), otherwise I'd do similarly.  There's a reddit thread that was mentioned.

These two were actually the closest!

 

But the ZX1 didn't have enough memory, as I like to carry my whole library with me in trips – or at least a good chunk of it.

 

The AK, on the other hand, did have the memory (with a 128Gb card) and was extremely pleasurable to use but I just didn't think the jump in SQ was enough to justify the cost to me – especially having recently heard the Calyx M, which is the best player I've ever heard in SQ terms – and, to make matters worse, syncronization was a pain with a Mac. I couldn't get that Dapper utility to work with it because SyncMate just wouldn't see it, so synchronization had to be manual. 

 

And since I mentioned the Calyx, the main issue with it is battery life. With regular use, it would drain its battery in about 3 hours, which to me is something that doesn't make it really portable. 

You got me there on the storage space.  128GB onboard isn't quite enough to store many hi-rez albums.

Someone on another forum was also struggling with an iPod Classic replacement.  They installed a SSD, and got increased battery life out of it as a by-product.  I'm hard on the controls (so worry about how much life the iClassic has other than the drive), otherwise I'd do similarly.  There's a reddit thread that was mentioned.

 

Yeah Peter, I was actually looking at some tutorials for this, but it goes well beyond my DIY skills... I guess I'll just try an amp and see where that gets me. There are some offers on head-fi for Pico Slims, I'll give it a go!

 

You got me there on the storage space.  128GB onboard isn't quite enough to store many hi-rez albums.

 

Indeed! I don't need much more than that actually, the iPod's 160Gb are enough to me.