At the end I still returned the Shine 5 because the small front-facing LED kept shining for no reason. I don’t know if it was hardware related or happened because of the firmware switch.
Which sadly does not work very reliably. At least on my end the selection changes back to default every few days. I reported this issue over the Apple Feedback app already…
Yes, that’s my experience too. I have to choose during each call by opening the control centre and choosing the audio settings option for the ongoing call.
This does seem to let me enable voice isolation though, which seems to work very well.
For music on iOS I can't recommend foobar2000 [1] enough - and I tested ALL of the alternatives. You can import ANY folder (probably what OP is looking for) or use your "iPod Library". [2]
Personally, I sync my music via Synctrain (a Syncthing client). [3]
I was unaware that synctrain existed! That solved my last issue I had with my iPhone. I have been using keepass on various platforms to sync my password list, and with keepassium + synctrain I have my iPhone covered. Thank you!
I was unaware foobar2000 existed on iOS too, but the Windows version is my favorite audio player on that platform too.
I've looked at the codebase. The ones I listed do a significant amount of audio processing to get better transcripts, avoid the "Thank you" issues with whisper large turbo, handle bluetooth and noisy environments.
Hopefully VoiceInk gets there. It is a neat project and really well done for a first time dev but rough around the edges. Careless is ~20$ and if you just need dictation is the best option.
Are there plans to add ReplayGain support?